ABSTRACT
Knowledge is essential for informed action in virtually every context. In fact, action without a firm basis in knowledge could be regarded not as intentional but as a reflex involving neither the human nor the ‘organisational’ mind. Thus, for informed action knowledge and/or beliefs are crucial. This means that a discussion of knowledge and knowledge formation is of fundamental importance for neo-industrial organising. By using the concept ‘knowledge formation’ rather than the traditional word ‘learning’, the intention is to stress the fact that knowledge formation covers a whole range of phenomena related to various forms of knowledge acquisition and handling and to variants of knowledge embeddedness. In other words, there is more to knowledge acquisition than individual learning, as will be demonstrated below.
