Book review on: Max Boisot, Ian MacMillan, and Keyong Seok Han, Explorations in Information Space: Knowledge, Actors, and Firms, 2007, Oxford University Press

Much has been written about knowledge management and value creation. But a real theoretical framework for the creation and the distribution of knowledge is lacking in much of the work done so far.In fact, with the rise of the knowledge economy, economic value is increasingly seen as relying on intangible assets rather than physical assets. Strategies for managing knowledge thus become of central concern. This is one of the reasons why "knowledge" has been so crucial for economic and management fields over the last two decades. But since "knowledge" is not only bare data, or information, but rather the result of a process involving space and time, the nature of knowledge takes a strategic dimension. Across disciplines and functional borderlines, philosophers, economists, sociologists, organisational theorists as well as managers, have debated the nature of knowledge without a real theoretical consensus.This book is precisely concerned with this issue. It aims at providing a theoretical framework to explore the nature of relevant organisational knowledge within and between firms, and in any other social systems. The authors stress on the fact that current knowledge management approaches are mainly Information and Communication Technology driven, focusing on the application of tools, and considering knowledge as a stand-alone resource: something that can be commercialised, stocked, manipulated and defined with clear perimeters. In this book, the authors think knowledge as a value creating process, demonstrating that the knowledge management field lacks of a founding theory focused on the nature of knowledge and knowledge flows. It is, consequently, not possible to have a credible theory about how to manage knowledge in a firm without first developing a knowledge-based-theory of the firm.The two main goals of the book can be summarized as follows: Firstly, to build up the foundations of a theory for a conceptual framework centred on knowledge flows, which the authors call the Information Space or I-Space. Secondly, to connect the I-Space framework to the actual world by exposing the managerial implications deriving from the heterogeneous institutional structures that emerge from data processing strategies.