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Journal ArticleDOI

Knowledge, Knowledge Work and Organizations: An Overview and Interpretation

Frank Blackler
- 01 Nov 1995 - 
- Vol. 16, Iss: 6, pp 1021-1046
TLDR
The concept of knowledge is complex and its relevance to organization theory has been insuficiently developed as discussed by the authors, and there is current interest in the competitive advantage that knowledge may provide for organizations and in the significance of knowledge workers, organ izational competencies and knowledge intensive firms.
Abstract
There is current interest in the competitive advantage that knowledge may provide for organizations and in the significance of knowledge workers, organ izational competencies and knowledge-intensive firms. Yet the concept of knowledge is complex and its relevance to organization theory has been insuf ficiently developed. The paper offers a review and critique of current approaches, and outlines an alternative. First, common images of knowledge in the organizational literature as embodied, embedded, embrained, encultured and encoded are identified and, to summarize popular writings on knowledge work, a typology of organizations and knowledge types is constructed. How ever, traditional assumptions about knowledge, upon which most current speculation about organizational knowledge is based, offer a compartmental ized and static approach to the subject. Drawing from recent studies of the impact of new technologies and from debates in philosophy, linguistics, social theory and cognitive science, the second par...

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Citations
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Journal ArticleDOI

Knowledge Management: An Organizational Capabilities Perspective

TL;DR: This research suggests that a knowledge infrastructure consisting of technology, structure, and culture along with a knowledge process architecture of acquisition, conversion, application, and protection are essential organizational capabilities or "preconditions" for effective knowledge management.
BookDOI

Deliberative policy analysis : understanding governance in the network society

TL;DR: Hajer and Wagenaar as discussed by the authors proposed a frame in the fields of policy analysis and policy conflict and deliberation in the network society to understand policy practices: action, dialectic, and discourse in policy analysis.
Journal ArticleDOI

Tacit Knowledge, Organizational Learning and Societal Institutions: An Integrated Framework

TL;DR: The importance of tacit knowledge in organizational learning and innovation has become the focus of considerable attention in the recent literature as discussed by the authors, and the extent to which tacit knowledge constitutes the knowledge base of the firm, and how it is formed and used are powerfully shaped by the broader institutional context.
Journal ArticleDOI

The wisdom hierarchy: representations of the DIKW hierarchy

TL;DR: This paper revisits the data-information-knowledge-wisdom (DIKW) hierarchy by examining the articulation of the hierarchy in a number of widely read textbooks, and analysing their statements about the nature of data, information, knowledge, and wisdom.
Journal ArticleDOI

Knowledge Sharing in Organizations: A Conceptual Framework

TL;DR: In this paper, the authors present a model that identifies factors that most significantly influence knowledge sharing at the most basic level, namely between individuals in organizations, based on a review of existing literature in this area.
References
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Book

Situated Learning: Legitimate Peripheral Participation

TL;DR: This work has shown that legitimate peripheral participation in communities of practice is not confined to midwives, tailors, quartermasters, butchers, non-drinking alcoholics and the like.
Journal ArticleDOI

Economic Action and Social Structure: The Problem of Embeddedness

TL;DR: In this article, the extent to which economic action is embedded in structures of social relations, in modern industrial society, is examined, and it is argued that reformist economists who attempt to bring social structure back in do so in the "oversocialized" way criticized by Dennis Wrong.
Journal ArticleDOI

A Dynamic Theory of Organizational Knowledge Creation

TL;DR: In this paper, the authors propose a paradigm for managing the dynamic aspects of organizational knowledge creating processes, arguing that organizational knowledge is created through a continuous dialogue between tacit and explicit knowledge.
Book

The Knowledge Creating Company

TL;DR: The Japanese companies, masters of manufacturing, have also been leaders in the creation, management, and use of knowledge-especially the tacit and often subjective insights, intuitions, and ideas of employees as discussed by the authors.
Journal ArticleDOI

The fifth discipline - the art and practice of the learning organization

TL;DR: Senge's Fifth Discipline is a set of principles for building a "learning organization" as discussed by the authors, where people expand their capacity to create the results they truly desire, where new and expansive patterns of thinking are nutured, where collective aspiration is set free, and where people are contually learning together.