Knowledge in Organizations
Lecture one: Introduction
Four discourses associated with these different assumptions about knowledge and its
manageability will be discussed:
- Neo-functionalist discourse: in which knowledge is regarded as a strategic asset of
organizations which needs to be carefully managed by creating a setting in which there is an
optimal allocation of resources and conditions
- Constructivist discourse: in which knowledge is regarded as distributed cognition in which
the challenge is to coordinate actions among multiple and potentially conflicting views of
actors with only partial knowledge, who take mindful actions
- Knowledge can thus not be managed as object separate from human action but is
located in practices
- Critical discourse: is marked by seeing knowledge as a power asset in an ongoing conflict
between those with and those without power. Knowledge is an object that can be owned,
bought and sold
- In the hands of the powerful: it is a tool of domination whereas in the hands of the
underprivileged, it is a tool of emancipation
- Dialogical discourse: is interested in the role of knowledge in the exercise of power and
control
- Relates knowledge to power and focuses on the disciplinary practices that both shape
and are shaped by knowledge
- Key: to unravel how certain things become known, how they become self-evident
concepts and how power is created through normalization
Based on these four discourses on knowledge in organizations: different aspects of knowledge in
organizations will be discussed
From automation/industrial society, through digitization to datafication/digitalization
- Automation (Fordism): production of industrial manufactured goods, supported by
technology
- Digitization (post-Fordism): service sector, offering knowledge-based goods/services
- More importance for theoretical knowledge
- Datafication (surveillance capitalism): more and more what we do is captured in data and
used/quantified
- Based on datafication you get digitalization
Trends in literature on knowledge in organizations
- 1980/90’s: explicit knowledge, digital storage (neo-functionalist perspective)
- 2000’s: tacit knowledge (can do something not having to think about it), knowledge is
captured in doing (social-constructivist perspective)
- 2010’s:
- 2020’s: collective knowledge, big data, decision-support systems (knowledge and data ICT)
1
,‘What is knowledge?’
- Knowledge is something valuable
Problems with the concept of knowledge; it is:
1. Ontologically/epistemologically incoherent: on the one hand we say ‘knowledge is this and
not that…’, on the other hand knowledge is what we interpret and without interpreting it
something can not be knowledge
- About the social perspective
2. Vague: knowledge is everything and everything is knowledge
- You need knowledge to understand something, in that way everything is knowledge
and when everything is knowledge we do not have a good definition for it
3. Not neutral or even always functional: it can be information used for a certain decision
(about the value of knowledge)
‘What is management?’
- Having a vision of the organization and how to achieve it: translating vision into goals
- Control work processes: oversee who is doing what
- Making decisions
- Designing, coordinating, controlling of work processes
- Normative control: create a culture in which certain things are done and certain things are
not done (what we as managers do)
The more emphasis we put on management → the less it is about knowledge:
The more emphasis on knowledge → the less management matters:
Two dimensions
1. Epistemology dimension
Know knowledge is defined is a matter of epistemology:
Epistemology: philosophy addressing the nature of knowledge. ‘knowledge about knowledge’. How
do we define what is true? What is regarded as valid knowledge and why?
- Dualism – what is knowledge?: sees knowledge as either/or; subjective/objective (most wanted)
- Frozen-in-time: define something in the moment
- Self/other, macro-micro levels, binaries, mutually exclusive opposites, uni-
directional, every object has a separate identity, emancipation
- Duality – when is knowledge?: knowledge is embedded in what we do, cannot be separated
from something else (when do we see knowledge happening?)
- Both/and/as well as, no clear cut distinction, one does not exist without the other,
pragmatism, theories of practice (knowledge is in the doing, associated with emergence,
cyclical causality, object is continuously shaped by context/situated practice
2. Social order dimension
Social order: continuum bounded by:
a. Sociology of regulation: if we regulate people in a good way, we come to a conclusion which
will lead us forward in the future
- Society tends towards ideal state of integration, equilibrium and order CONSENSUS
- Trust – common interest – science/knowledge is neutral
2
, b. Sociology of radical change: consensus is temporarily, then there will be a group causing
uproar of what is and is not knowledge after which the process starts over again
- Thesis → antithesis → conflict → synthesis → repeat
- Forces of coercion, conflict and change are continuously challenging the established
social order (‘truce’ is only temporary) DISSENSUS
- Suspicion – conflict of interest – science/knowledge is political
Objectivist perspective: typologies of knowledge
Tacit knowledge: knowledge we are not aware of that we know
- Tacit knowledge is ‘knowledge that is non verbalized, or even nonverbalizable, intuitive,
unarticulated’
- Inexpressible in a codifiable form, subjective, personal, context-specific, difficult to share
- Example: how my experiences as a knowledge management consultant and manager
are reflected in this course (I’m not even fully aware myself)
Explicit knowledge: knowledge we can see and touch
- Explicit knowledge is easy to replicate and transfer
- Codifiable, objective, impersonal, context independent, easy to share
- Example: the course description on Brightspace which contains all the information
you need to have when participating in this course (my explicit reflection of what I
know we are about to do and discuss)
3
, Constructivist (practice-based) perspective
Practice-based: refers to purposeful human activity
- Practise: a way to indicate people do certain things with a particular goal
- Assumption: activity includes both physical and cognitive elements, and that these elements
are inseparable
- Knowledge use and development: regarded as a fundamental aspect of activity
Critical discourse on knowledge in organizations
- Dualism: there is a good and bad, the powerful group that is evil vs the powerless groups that
are pure, innocent and helpless
- Knowledge: is an object to be owned, bought and sold
- Connects political issue (labor processes)
- Role of knowledge: to raise awareness of the prevailing social injustices
- Management of (tacit) knowledge is exploitation of managers (those owning capital) to own
all knowledge relevant to obtain more power and resources (money)
- Critical discourse is anti-management and aligns itself with interests of workers
Dialogical discourse on knowledge in organizations
- Interested in: the role of knowledge in the exercise of power and control, yet lacks the
political agenda and moral stance (does not pick sides, hence duality)
- Ongoing struggle, dynamically shifting positions (no right or wrong)
- Knowledge is discipline: the disciplinary practices that shape and are shaped by knowledge
- Power/knowledge: before something can be controlled/managed, it must first be known
- Power is part of something we perceive/see as knowledge
- Focus: on practices such as performance appraisals, mentoring and practices of the self, with
emphasis on the normalizing thought and actions
- Aim: to deconstruct self-evident concepts and power relations; prevention of normalization
and totalization (enough room for the marginalized)
4
Lecture one: Introduction
Four discourses associated with these different assumptions about knowledge and its
manageability will be discussed:
- Neo-functionalist discourse: in which knowledge is regarded as a strategic asset of
organizations which needs to be carefully managed by creating a setting in which there is an
optimal allocation of resources and conditions
- Constructivist discourse: in which knowledge is regarded as distributed cognition in which
the challenge is to coordinate actions among multiple and potentially conflicting views of
actors with only partial knowledge, who take mindful actions
- Knowledge can thus not be managed as object separate from human action but is
located in practices
- Critical discourse: is marked by seeing knowledge as a power asset in an ongoing conflict
between those with and those without power. Knowledge is an object that can be owned,
bought and sold
- In the hands of the powerful: it is a tool of domination whereas in the hands of the
underprivileged, it is a tool of emancipation
- Dialogical discourse: is interested in the role of knowledge in the exercise of power and
control
- Relates knowledge to power and focuses on the disciplinary practices that both shape
and are shaped by knowledge
- Key: to unravel how certain things become known, how they become self-evident
concepts and how power is created through normalization
Based on these four discourses on knowledge in organizations: different aspects of knowledge in
organizations will be discussed
From automation/industrial society, through digitization to datafication/digitalization
- Automation (Fordism): production of industrial manufactured goods, supported by
technology
- Digitization (post-Fordism): service sector, offering knowledge-based goods/services
- More importance for theoretical knowledge
- Datafication (surveillance capitalism): more and more what we do is captured in data and
used/quantified
- Based on datafication you get digitalization
Trends in literature on knowledge in organizations
- 1980/90’s: explicit knowledge, digital storage (neo-functionalist perspective)
- 2000’s: tacit knowledge (can do something not having to think about it), knowledge is
captured in doing (social-constructivist perspective)
- 2010’s:
- 2020’s: collective knowledge, big data, decision-support systems (knowledge and data ICT)
1
,‘What is knowledge?’
- Knowledge is something valuable
Problems with the concept of knowledge; it is:
1. Ontologically/epistemologically incoherent: on the one hand we say ‘knowledge is this and
not that…’, on the other hand knowledge is what we interpret and without interpreting it
something can not be knowledge
- About the social perspective
2. Vague: knowledge is everything and everything is knowledge
- You need knowledge to understand something, in that way everything is knowledge
and when everything is knowledge we do not have a good definition for it
3. Not neutral or even always functional: it can be information used for a certain decision
(about the value of knowledge)
‘What is management?’
- Having a vision of the organization and how to achieve it: translating vision into goals
- Control work processes: oversee who is doing what
- Making decisions
- Designing, coordinating, controlling of work processes
- Normative control: create a culture in which certain things are done and certain things are
not done (what we as managers do)
The more emphasis we put on management → the less it is about knowledge:
The more emphasis on knowledge → the less management matters:
Two dimensions
1. Epistemology dimension
Know knowledge is defined is a matter of epistemology:
Epistemology: philosophy addressing the nature of knowledge. ‘knowledge about knowledge’. How
do we define what is true? What is regarded as valid knowledge and why?
- Dualism – what is knowledge?: sees knowledge as either/or; subjective/objective (most wanted)
- Frozen-in-time: define something in the moment
- Self/other, macro-micro levels, binaries, mutually exclusive opposites, uni-
directional, every object has a separate identity, emancipation
- Duality – when is knowledge?: knowledge is embedded in what we do, cannot be separated
from something else (when do we see knowledge happening?)
- Both/and/as well as, no clear cut distinction, one does not exist without the other,
pragmatism, theories of practice (knowledge is in the doing, associated with emergence,
cyclical causality, object is continuously shaped by context/situated practice
2. Social order dimension
Social order: continuum bounded by:
a. Sociology of regulation: if we regulate people in a good way, we come to a conclusion which
will lead us forward in the future
- Society tends towards ideal state of integration, equilibrium and order CONSENSUS
- Trust – common interest – science/knowledge is neutral
2
, b. Sociology of radical change: consensus is temporarily, then there will be a group causing
uproar of what is and is not knowledge after which the process starts over again
- Thesis → antithesis → conflict → synthesis → repeat
- Forces of coercion, conflict and change are continuously challenging the established
social order (‘truce’ is only temporary) DISSENSUS
- Suspicion – conflict of interest – science/knowledge is political
Objectivist perspective: typologies of knowledge
Tacit knowledge: knowledge we are not aware of that we know
- Tacit knowledge is ‘knowledge that is non verbalized, or even nonverbalizable, intuitive,
unarticulated’
- Inexpressible in a codifiable form, subjective, personal, context-specific, difficult to share
- Example: how my experiences as a knowledge management consultant and manager
are reflected in this course (I’m not even fully aware myself)
Explicit knowledge: knowledge we can see and touch
- Explicit knowledge is easy to replicate and transfer
- Codifiable, objective, impersonal, context independent, easy to share
- Example: the course description on Brightspace which contains all the information
you need to have when participating in this course (my explicit reflection of what I
know we are about to do and discuss)
3
, Constructivist (practice-based) perspective
Practice-based: refers to purposeful human activity
- Practise: a way to indicate people do certain things with a particular goal
- Assumption: activity includes both physical and cognitive elements, and that these elements
are inseparable
- Knowledge use and development: regarded as a fundamental aspect of activity
Critical discourse on knowledge in organizations
- Dualism: there is a good and bad, the powerful group that is evil vs the powerless groups that
are pure, innocent and helpless
- Knowledge: is an object to be owned, bought and sold
- Connects political issue (labor processes)
- Role of knowledge: to raise awareness of the prevailing social injustices
- Management of (tacit) knowledge is exploitation of managers (those owning capital) to own
all knowledge relevant to obtain more power and resources (money)
- Critical discourse is anti-management and aligns itself with interests of workers
Dialogical discourse on knowledge in organizations
- Interested in: the role of knowledge in the exercise of power and control, yet lacks the
political agenda and moral stance (does not pick sides, hence duality)
- Ongoing struggle, dynamically shifting positions (no right or wrong)
- Knowledge is discipline: the disciplinary practices that shape and are shaped by knowledge
- Power/knowledge: before something can be controlled/managed, it must first be known
- Power is part of something we perceive/see as knowledge
- Focus: on practices such as performance appraisals, mentoring and practices of the self, with
emphasis on the normalizing thought and actions
- Aim: to deconstruct self-evident concepts and power relations; prevention of normalization
and totalization (enough room for the marginalized)
4
