Chapter 3:Theorizing Knowledge in Organizations

Tuesday, April 24, 2012 Knowledge Share No Comments

In order to better understand the notion of “managing” knowledge, there is a need to better understand what it is about knowledge flow in organizations that lends itself to any form of management. The process view, on the other hand, largely emphasizes the emergent nature of knowledge that is often embedded within a person or within organizational routines, activities, and outcomes, or arises from the interplay of persons and existing information or knowledge.


In the course of innovation and production of goods and services, information and knowledge are regarded as central inputs to organizational processes. Learning and knowledge are then seen as direct outcomes of activities performed commensurate with the organization’s central mission and core competencies. Whether as a resource or as a process, for organizations that have begun to recognize organizational knowledge as a source of competitive advantage, knowledge generation and retention have become strategic necessities for such knowledge dependent firms.

While knowledge it self 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].Sense-making [Weick, K.,1995] is then seen as an activity that reaffirms whether the decisions and actions taken are rational in hindsight, constituting the “knowledge” that is created. Nonaka and Takeuchi [1995] in their seminal work have also alluded to knowledge creation as a process of socialization that is predicated on the need for direct social interactions.

Instead of examining knowledge per se, 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.


Through immersion in joint activity, individuals in organizations gain tacit knowledge, the sharing of which occurs as a result of the mutual participation [Tsoukas, H., 1996].