Theorizing Knowledge in Organizations

The literature has discussed organizational knowledge both as a resource [Grant, R., 1996] and a process of learning [Argyris and Schon, 1978, Senge, P., 1990], often emphasizing one aspect over the other.


3.1 KNOWLEDGE AS RESOURCE AND PROCESS
Baumard, P. [1999] proposes looking at knowledge in organizations along two dimensions: tacit-explicit versus individual-collective. He defines four quadrants in which knowledge types are situated: tacit individual (intuitiveness), tacit-collective (social practice), explicit-individual (expertise), and, explicit collective (rules). Grounding the use of the quadrants in observations of exemplar case-study organizations, Baumard suggests that the creation of organizational knowledge can be tracked by locating actors’ responses (knowing) within the appropriate quadrants of the matrix


3.2 INTERACTIONS FOR KNOWLEDGE CREATION
While knowledge itself may be perceived as a resource, its creation occurs through human interactions, whether physical or virtual. For example, for knowledge to emerge from within a group, interactions that occur among its members shape the knowledge that emerges from the mutual engagement and participation of the group members. Those with a communication and interaction perspective have argued that through discourse and dialectics, individuals shape and re-shape the thought processes of others, eventually leading to a situation of negotiated or mutually co-constructed reasoning for action and knowledge [von Krogh et al.,1998]


3.3 ACTIVITY AS CONTEXT
Instead of examining knowledge Blackler, F. [1995] and others propose that attention should focus on systems through which knowing and doing are achieved. By suggesting an alternative stance of knowing as mediated, situated, provisional, pragmatic, and contested, as opposed to a more classic view of knowledge as embodied, embrained, encultured, and encoded, Blackler recognizes that knowledge permeates activity systems within the organization. Building on Engeström, Y. [1999] general model of socially distributed activity systems, Blackler, F. [1995] proposes that knowledge can be observed as emerging out of the tensions that arise within an organization’s activity systems, that is, among individuals and their communities, their environment (rules and regulations), and the instruments and resources that mediate their activities.