Selected debate from the arena of knowledge management: new endorsements for established organizational practices

Abstract

Management theorists and practitioners have been allured recently to the contemporary field of knowledge management. This is a burgeoning subject that has enticed the involvement of specialists from established domains that are broad based in themselves: strategy, organizational behaviour, operations and information technology. In arguing the importance of knowledge in the strategic purpose of the organization, authorities essentially endorse practices that have been supported in the past: practices that appreciate the social context of knowledge. This paper reviews the debates in strategic theory that support the contemporary`knowledge-based' view of the organization, and describes how established practices relating to knowledge transfer and creation have been recently revitalized.

Advances in Knowledge Management

“…Secondly, CoPs are generally considered solutions for large companies: indeed, the application of this practice to small businesses may require special solutions. Introduction Over the last two decades the role of knowledge in organizations has attracted considerable attention from organizational practice and academia (Blackler et al 1993;Beamish and Armistead 2001;Jasimuddin 2006). A broad research community has emerged, supported by 25 peer-reviewed journals (Serenko and Bontis 2013a) which has attracted scholars from fields such as management, information management and library sciences, psychology and organizational studies, sociology and computer sciences, engineering, medicine and philosophy (Venzin et al 1998;Argote et al 2003;Baskerville and Dulipovici 2006;Nonaka et al 2006;Martin 2008;.…”

Socio-Technical Knowledge Management and Epistemological Paradigms: Theoretical Connections at the Individual and Organisational Level

“…The transferability of knowledge is of key importance to cognitivists (Marr et al, 2003) and is considered the most dynamic aspect of the knowledge transfer process (Haghirian, 2003). A great deal of literature within the strategic management field is based on the cognitivist view of information processing and knowledge structures (von Krogh et al, 1994); its origins of approach are based upon information theory and the approach of knowledge management from a technological perspective (Beamish & Armistead, 2001;Venzin et al, 1998). This cognitivist perspective is based in the tradition of western management where the organisation is viewed primarily as an information processing machine and knowledge is viewed as explicit (Nonaka, Toyama, & Konno, 2000).…”

Knowledge management in product innovation: an interpretative review

“…This entails overcoming organizational, time and space barriers, mostly due to the separation between the source of knowledge and the locus where knowledge itself is potentially applied (Bartezzaghi et al 1997;Clark and Wheelwright 1993). Overcoming these barriers that may hinder synergy and learning is the essence of KM, which is becoming one of the primary management concerns (Beamish and Armistead 2001).…”

“…Coming from different research fields, a rich stream of literature emerged in the last decade dealing with organizational learning in PI (Beamish and Armistead 2001). Compared with the previously described streams, these contributions place much more emphasis on the dynamic of knowledge creation and transfer over time.…”