Interactive Innovation Processes and the Problems of Managing Knowledge

In the early days of knowledge management both the literature and practice were relatively simplistic in orientation. Knowledge was seen as crucial in securing competitive advantage for all organizations and, consequently, organizations were encouraged to develop systems (often IT-based) in order to better manage their knowledge. Knowledge was typically treated as a resource, no different from any other organizational resource, such as land, labour or capital. Implicit in these approaches was the view that knowledge was a thing, or entity, located in people’s heads that could, and should, be extracted, stored and circulated. Over time, however, there has been growing recognition in much of the organizational literature that this ‘entitative’, cognitive view of knowledge may be limited (Hosking and Morley, 1991). Recognizing these limitations, significantly more attention has been paid to conceptual developments around situated or processual views of knowledge and learning (Newell et al., 2002; Tsoukas and Vladimirou, 2001; Brown and Duguid, 2001). According to such views, knowledge is inseparable from social relationships and practice. Attention in the knowledge management literature has shifted towards addressing the organization of such relationships and practices (for example through the mobilization of social networks and ‘communities of practice’ — Brown and Duguid, 2001).