The practice-based view of knowledge is recognized as an important epistemological perspective in the knowledge management literature. However, there is also a growing awareness that approaches adopting this view do not always consider issues of power. This article draws on Foucault's conceptual lens of power/ knowledge and discursive positioning theory to gain a better understanding of how and why practitioners contest, accept, and/or further each other's knowledge. The article applies its theoretical framework to examine knowledge sharing in a dispersed network of HR practice. The empirical example illustrates how organizational power/knowledge struggles affect dynamics of participation in networks of practice and generate knowledge sharing issues between geographically dispersed practitioners. Based on the study's findings and analysis, the article promotes a power-sensitive view of organizational knowledge sharing that recognizes the discursively constructed nature of relationships within networks of practice.
For junior professionals, notions of professional identity established during their education are often called into question in the early stages of their professional careers. The workplace gives rise to identity challenges that manifest in significant emotional struggles. However, while extant literature highlights how emotions trigger and accompany identity work, the constitutive role of emotions in identity work is under-researched. In this article, we analyse how junior professionals mobilize emotions as discursive resources for identity work.Drawing on an empirical study of junior architects employed in professional service firms, we examine how professional identities, imbued with varying forms of discipline and agency, are discursively represented. The study makes two contributions to the literature on emotions and identity work. First, we identify three key identity work strategies (idealizing, reframing, and distancing) that are bound-up in junior architects' emotion talk. We suggest that these strategies act simultaneously as a coping mechanism and as a disciplinary force in junior architects' efforts to constitute themselves as professionals. Second, we argue that identity work may not always lead to the accomplishment of a positive sense of self but can express a sense of disillusionment that leads to the constitution of dejected professional identities.
Critical scholarship has challenged traditional assumptions of entrepreneurship as a ‘neutral’ economic activity; demonstrating instead how entrepreneurship is a cultural phenomenon. In particular, enterprise culture has been exposed as fundamentally masculinist, so that women entrepreneurs are said to be measured against gendered values and ideals. What remains relatively unexplored, however, are the ways the identity performances of women entrepreneurs on social media reflect and reproduce inequalities that extend beyond gender. In this article, we examine how highly privileged Australian women entrepreneurs perform their identities on Instagram. In applying intersectionality theory, our study finds that the entrepreneurs produced idealised feminine identities by leveraging the intersections of white, elite class, heteronormative, able-bodied power within a broader neoliberal discourse. In doing so, our analysis points to how romanticised ideals of women’s economic empowerment in digital spaces may obscure the perpetuation of systemic and structural oppression.
2015),"Development and validation of knowledge management performance measurement constructs for small and mediumIf you would like to write for this, or any other Emerald publication, then please use our Emerald for Authors service information about how to choose which publication to write for and submission guidelines are available for all. Please visit www.emeraldinsight.com/authors for more information.
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Abstract
Purpose -The purpose of this paper is to engage knowledge management (KM) researchers and practitioners with Foucault's power/knowledge lens as a way of thinking about and recognising the central role of power in organisational knowledge cultures. Design/methodology/approach -The empirical illustrations in this paper are drawn from two qualitative studies in different professional and institutional contexts (insurance and theatre work). Both studies used in-depth interviews and discourse analysis as their principal methods of data collection and analysis.
Findings -The empirical examples illustrate how practitioners operate within complex power/knowledge relations that shape their practices of knowledge sharing, generation and use. The findings show how an application of the power/knowledge lens renders visible both the constraining and productive force of power in KM.Research limitations/implications -Researchers may apply the conceptual tools presented here in a wider variety of institutional and professional contexts to examine the complex and multifaceted role of power in a more in-depth way. Practical implications -KM professionals will benefit from an understanding of organisational power/ knowledge relations when seeking to promote transformational changes in their organisations and build acceptance for KM initiatives. Originality/value -This paper addresses a gap in the literature around theoretical and empirical discussions of power as well as offering an alternative to prevailing resource-based views of power in KM.
Sustainability leadership, exercised towards ecologically sustainable practices in business and society, has emerged as an important aim of leadership development programmes. Through the multimodal discursive analysis of a sustainability leadership centre in Australia, we demonstrate how its identity narratives reproduce individualist ideals of leadership and take for granted the hyperagency of heroic individuals to single-handedly solve environmental crises. Specifically, we illustrate how the development of sustainability leaders is co-constructed through the Buddhist narrative of Prince Siddhartha via three stages: leaders first find their calling that activates their inherent capability to effect change, reach awakening through self-discovery and self-empowerment with the help of the development programme, and finally transform the world through building both successful and meaningful careers. In the light of these findings, we question whether sustainability leadership discourses glorify the self and ironically sustain our disconnection from nature in the pursuit of business success.
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