A central issue in the knowledge management literature is the definition of the nature of knowledge, and particularly the distinction between tacit and explicit knowledge. This paper reviews some of the common standpoints on this issue, but argues that, within an organisational context, a useful alternative view is one in which knowledge is viewed as a systemic property of the organisational system to which it belongs. Thus, attempts to codify knowledge, and position it on a tacitexplicit continuum, are sometimes misplaced. Instead, this paper advocates approaches that view knowledge as a holistic system property. The paper considers the practical implication of this stance, from the perspective of knowledge transfer between individuals and between organisations, and investigates the potential that this stance offers OR practitioners.
This article reports on an experiment in collaborative storytelling inspired by the Japanese art of 'renga'. A renga consists of several stanzas, each composed by a different poet, each seeking to find his/her own voice within a text that is jointly created and jointly owned. The chemist Djerassi has argued that by co-creating a prose version of the renga, a community of practitioners can explore dilemmas and views that would be unacceptable otherwise. He refers to this genre as 'science-in-fiction'-one in which fiction offers licence to address potentially embarrassing, dangerous or taboo topics. Following Djerassi's approach, the authors coordinated two rengas composed by groups of scholars interested in using stories to research social reality. The article analyses these two rengas, linking them to the genre of fictionalized ethnography pioneered in organizational studies by Watson and Czarniawska. It also discusses the pedagogic potential of such stories as vehicles of management learning.
The paper draws together previous research on a topic of increasing relevance to healthcare researchers, which has exercised management researchers for at least three decades. The paper acts as a guide to future research and practice.
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