also to be aware that objects (including KM systems themselves) can also be sites for significant conflict—“creating and reshaping boundary objects is an exercise of power that can be collaborative or unilateral” (Boland and Tenkasi, 1995, p. 362).
Table 1.Production, Process and Practice Perspectives
Production Process Practice
Major view of the social
Individual cognition located in an objective external world
Individual &
collective interpretations embedded in social interactions, roles &
structures
Materially interwoven (human &
non-human) practices centrally organized around shared practical understandings Understanding
of Knowledge Knowledge as an object; a resource to be accumulated, captured, transferred
Knowing as a social &
organizational activity Socially constructed through interactions in particular contexts
Knowing as practice (“knowledgeability”) Constituted by and constituting fields of interconnected practices
Locus of knowledge
Embrained in heads of employees
Embedded &
encultured in social context
Embedded, embodied and invested in practice Understanding
of innovation
Linear process where
knowledge is created in one place and transferred to another
Episodic, recursive, iterative process involving interactions of organizational actors, tasks and multiple forms of knowing
Emerging within specialized communities of practice through the improvised responses to local problems
Link between knowledge and innovation
Knowledge is directly related to, and functional (good) for, innovation
Relationship between knowledge and innovation is socially &
politically mediated:
innovation reflects interests of powerful groups
Relationship between knowledge and innovation mediated through practice:
knowledge/innov- ation sticks at practice boundaries
(continued)
Table 1.(continued)
Production Process Practice
Major focus of knowledge management
Transfer/conversion of knowledge from one type (e.g., tacit to explicit) or location to another
Sharing, translation &
legitimation of knowledge amongst interacting groups
Transformation of knowledge through overlapping practices
Major tasks of knowledge management
Capture/transfer of knowledge (using IT)
Building networks, communities, trust
Overcoming practice boundaries, e.g., using objects
the craft elements of practice are acquired individually but the knowledge of what constitutes “acceptable” practice is developed and negotiated col- lectively, amongst a particular group or community. They may also forge a bridge between approaches to KM that see knowledge as either an objective entity—the production view—or as entirely subjective, constructed through human social interaction—the process view.
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