Knowledge management

1
Knowledge management
Eric Monteiro, NTNU and Univ. of Oslo Oslo,
October 1999
2
Background (I)

• Widely read - flyplasslitteratur ??
• Taps into debates about innovation, strategy and
  the knowledge economy
• Popular - AND scholars!

3
Background (II)

• Organizational learning
• Argyris Schon
• Claudio

4
Core ideas

• Tacit vs. Explicit knowledge
• Dreyfus Dreyfus
• community of practise (J Orr)
• information vs. knowledge
• individual vs. Collective learning

5
The crux
TO
tacit
explicit
socialization
externalization
tacit
FROM
internalization
combination
explicit
6
Spirals out

• Individual
• group
• organization
• Dialogue - linking with explicit knowledge -
  learning by doing - field building

7
Implications (I)

• Robustness
• Redundancy
• Middle-management
• empowerment (?)

8
Implications (II)

• Fluctuations and creative chaos
• variety
• autonomy

9
Problematic issues

• Power - interests - actors - conflicts
• romatic
• social studies of technology
• Japanese - collective ??
• innovations? How big are the changes?
• Technology and IT - is there a place?

10
Autonomy - harmony
Autonomous individuals funciton as part of the
holografic structure, in which the whole and each
part share the same information. Original ideas
emanate from autonomous individuals, diffuse
within the team, and then become organizational
ideas. (p. 76)
11
References
The knowledge creating company, I Nonaka and H
Takeuchi, OUP, 1995 A dynamic theory of
organizational knowledge creation, I Nonaka,
Organization Science, 5, no. 114 -
37,1994 Organizatons as rhetoric knowledge
intensive firms and the struggle with ambiguity,
Mats Alvesson, Journal of Management studies,
366, pp. 997 - 1015 An evolutionary theory of
economic change, R Nelson, S Winter, Harvard UP,
1982