ABSTRACT
The preceding chapters reflect the variety of themes and perspectives that emerge when multidisciplinary scholars examine the concept of shared knowledge. Indeed, one's interpretation of the concept is likely to be discipline-specific. Those with a social cognitive perspective, for example, may focus on how individuals' perceptions and beliefs about what knowledge is shared with group members in turn affects their own information processing and resultant beliefs. Social psychologists, on the other hand, may conceptualize shared knowledge in terms of social norms and focus on their effects on behavior, or they may examine how one's majority or minority status and position in the social structure affects what information is shared or attended to. Organizational psychologists may explore shared knowledge as a function of the power structures inherent in organizations and examine how these structures lead to differences in status among members and affect beliefs about who can be trusted with knowledge. Industrial/Organizational psychologists may care about shared knowledge because to the extent that interdependent workers understand “who knows what”, organizational performance is likely to be enhanced. Sociologists tend to take a network systems approach and examine, for example, the value that accrues to individuals who strategically position themselves at the intersection of multiple networks and, thus, benefit from sharing multiple knowledge structures. Ethicists may be more concerned with organizational knowledge that is not shared, especially when society may suffer from this concealment. Thus, the multidisciplinary contributions to this volume ensure the reader is exposed to rich and multiple perspectives on shared knowledge in organizations.
