ABSTRACT
During the mid-1990s there emerged a growing sentiment that an organization’s stock of knowledge and how it is sustained, managed, and grown is a critical part of a wider movement toward a knowledge society (Drucker, 1994; Nonaka & Takeuchi, 1995; Spender, 1996). The concept of a knowledge society stands in contrast to industrial society, where workers need neither an education nor specialized skill in order to obtain work in most industrial firms. Industrial workers could be taught their craft on the job. A knowledge society, however, requires workers with formal education, and the ability and drive to seek out continuous opportunities for learning (Drucker, 1994). Knowledge workers make use of reflective practices in order to accomplish their work, such as actively managing a network of contacts and resources that enables the worker to accomplish his or her job. This emphasis on knowledge generally, and organizational knowledge specifically, is attributed to the emergence of globalized economies, highly competitive business environments, and the advancement of information and communication technologies (Alavi, 2000; David & Foray, 2002; Zorn & May, 2002). Organizational knowledge is enabled by the interrelation of organizational members who each possess individual stocks of knowledge, but who
interact within the shared context of the firm (Nonaka, 2005). Formal organizations serve to integrate the disparate knowledge of individuals in order to accomplish larger goals, such as achieving competitive advantage (Chakravarthy, McEvily, Doz, & Rau, 2003), and knowledge takes on its organizational status when individuals “draw distinctions in the courses of their work by taking into account the contextuality of their actions” (Tsoukas & Vladimirou, 2001, p. 979). Although it is most often assumed that knowledge resides in the individual, other perspectives emphasize knowledge as socially embedded (Lundvall & Johnson, 1994), as a collective resource that is greater than individual inputs (Wegner, 1995), as a network phenomenon (Contractor & Monge, 2002), or as a social property of communities of practice (Brown & Duguid, 1998; see also Iverson & McPhee, 2002). Boundaries demarcating where knowledge resides are not always clear in a knowledge society where free markets allow greater flows of materials and information, information and communication technologies contribute to a dramatic increase in and improved accessibility of knowledge, and competitive business environments force organizations to innovate in order to establish or maintain competitive advantage. In addition, how knowledge differs from information is sometimes ambiguous when electronic communication tools enable immediate access to a wealth of resources, both within and between organizations. Issues of where knowledge resides and how it differs from information are particularly salient to firms that seek to understand and manage the public knowledge generated by consumers, professional groups, advocates, and others that affect a business’s operations on a daily basis. In this fashion, organizational knowledge is critical, yet sometimes illdefined and indistinct, in the context of a knowledge society.
