ABSTRACT
Many business and organizational functions and departments carry out their day-to-day duties without much need for detailed management oversight. Managers are employed to steer the organization in ways that maximize the value represented by their organization's various constituent parts. Knowledge management activities may occasionally involve exploring new knowledge fields that, after evaluation, turn out to be irrelevant to the organization's objectives. A major study in 1992 identified technology acquisition, including external technology acquisition, as the most prominent issue in technology management. In knowledge acquisition a high level of integration is provided, where researchers are our employees, bound to us by a contract of employment and over whom we have a high degree of control. The level of integration found in joint ventures cannot easily be characterized. Integration is based, to a large extent, on assumptions about shared will and intention. In the employment contract, integration assumes an employee's loyalty to his or her employer.
