ABSTRACT
A primary reason people choose to organize is to achieve a common purpose with knowledge and abilities of multiple people. Accordingly, interests in who knows what, how they know it, and what they do with it are as old as the phenomenon of organizing. This volume attests to the complexities involved in understanding organizational knowledge, and to the many ways organizational knowledge is conceptualized. The book brings together several approaches to organizational knowledge, and many important issues scholars and practitioners grapple with as organizational members adapt to contemporary exigencies. The unifying element throughout this book is a focus on the communicative nature of organizational knowledge. That is, contributors to this volume address in varying manners how organizational knowledge is developed, manifested, managed, and/or utilized through communication. Organizational knowledge researchers and theorists have not consistently considered the interactive elements of knowledge, although much empirical research in the area “points to” communication (Bartel & Garud, 2003; Hayes & Walsham, 2003). Accordingly, this volume is devoted to explicating communicative perspectives of organizational knowledge. In this introduction, we discuss theoretical foundations of organizational knowledge research and articulate connections among the chapters included in the book. We start by reviewing major scholarly movements in the emergence of organizational knowledge as background for theory and research. This historical review is followed by a discussion of current perspectives on the topic as a vehicle for introducing the work that this volume comprises. Third, we discuss a general theoretical template that is used throughout the book for delineating knowledge processes. Finally, we discuss the four sections of this volume as they represent four problem fields emergent in the organizational knowledge literature.
