Business and Management

The book links the broad areas of organizational behavior and information management. It looks at how organizations behave as information-seeking, information-creating, and information-using communities, and introduces a unifying framework to show how organizations create meaning, knowledge, and action. The book presents a model of how organizations use information strategically to adapt to external change and to foster internal growth. This model examines how people and groups within organizations use information to create an identity and a shared context for action and reflection; to develop new knowledge and new capabilities; and to make decisions that commit resources and capabilities to purposeful action.

It is now widely recognized that the effective management of knowledge assets is a key requirement for securing competitive advantage in the emerging information economy. Yet the physical and institutional differences between tangible assets and knowledge assets remain poorly understood. In the case of knowledge, the ownership and control of assets are becoming ever more separate, a phenomenon that is actually exacerbated by the phenomenon of learning. If we are to meet the challenges of the information economy, then we need a new approach to property rights based on a deeper theoretical understanding of knowledge assets. This book provides some of the key building blocks that are needed for a theory of knowledge assets. The author develops a conceptual framework, the Information-Space or I-Space, for exploring the way knowledge flows within and between organizations.

This book looks at how the shift to a knowledge-based economy is redefining firms, empowering individuals, and reshaping the links between learning and work using economic, management and knowledge-based theories, supported by empirical data, illustrations, and trends. The book argues that industrial-era models of firm-market boundaries, work arrangements, and ownership and control are inhibiting firms and individuals success in the emerging knowledge economy. New models are proposed based on knowledge-centred organisation, knowledge-led growth, and knowledge supply as distinct from labour supply or flexible employment. Continuous learning is shown to be critical to firms as integrators of disparate knowledge resources, and the only practical route for individuals to become free agents. The book illuminates the new business landscape and provides a practical tool-set for business practitioners and theorists to interpret and manage change in a rapidly deconstructing economic environment.

Knowledge governance refers to choosing structures and mechanisms that can influence the processes of sharing and creating knowledge. The book argues that knowledge governance is a distinct issue in management and organization because knowledge processes differ on several dimensions from routine and more traditional processes. The relationship between governance issues and knowledge processes is under-researched, theoretically as well as empirically. Thematically, knowledge governance cuts across fields such as general management, human resource management, the management of intellectual capital, innovation theory, strategic management, technology strategy, and international business. Not surprisingly, existing ideas are developed from the perspectives of different fields and from different underlying disciplinary foundations; however, it often remains unclear how these ideas relate together and how they differ in terms of unit of analysis, mode of analysis, underlying logic and assumptions, etc. This book aims to bridge this gap.

Technology-based firms continue to compete primarily on innovation, and are continuously required to present new solutions to an exacting market. As technological complexity and specialization intensifies, firms increasingly need to integrate and co-ordinate knowledge by means of project groups, diversified organizations, inter-organizational partnerships, and strategic alliances. Innovation processes have progressively become interdisciplinary, collaborative, inter-organizational, and international, and a firm's ability to synthesize knowledge across disciplines, organizations, and geographical locations has a major influence on its viability and success. This book demonstrates how knowledge integration is crucial in facilitating innovation within modern firms. This book provides original, detailed empirical studies of prerequisites, mechanisms, and outcomes of knowledge integration processes on several organizational levels, from key individuals, projects, and internal organizations, to collaboration between firms. It stresses the need to understand knowledge integration as a multi-level phenomenon, which requires a broad repertoire of organizational and technical means. It further clarifies the need for strong internal capabilities for exploiting external knowledge, reveals how costs of knowledge integration affect outcomes and strategic decisions, and discusses the managerial implications of fostering knowledge integration, providing practical guidance and support for managers of knowledge integration in high technology enterprises.

Two themes have become epicentres of new management thinking in the late 1990s: knowledge management and competence-based approaches to strategic management. These two themes share a common interest in identifying important forms of organizational knowledge and in understanding processes through which knowledge can be transformed into organizational capabilities and competences. Drawing on the latest research by a number of noted management scholars, this book presents new insights into various kinds of knowledge that are of value to organizations, organizational interactions that can create strategically useful knowledge, alternative processes for managing knowledge, and approaches to integrating key forms of knowledge into organizational processes of competence building and leveraging. The papers in the volume collectively define a powerful conceptual framework for understanding organizational knowledge and its central role in building and leveraging organizational competence. They present well articulated, logically consistent conceptualizations that will provide new theoretical impetus for management researchers, while at the same time providing case studies and examples of practical applications that suggest useful new methods and tools for management practitioners.

The nature of Higher Education in the UK has changed over the last three decades. Academics can no longer be said to carry out their work in ‘ivory towers’, as increasing government intervention and a growing ‘target culture’ has changed the way they work. Increasingly universities have transformed from ‘communities of scholars’ to ‘workplaces’. The organization and administration of universities has seen a corresponding prevalence of ideas and strategies drawn from the ‘New Public Management’ ideology in response, promoting a more ‘business-focussed’ approach in the management of public services. This book examines the issues that these changes have had on academics, both as the ‘knowledge-workers’ managed, and the ‘manager-academic’. It draws on a study of academics holding management roles in sixteen UK universities, exploring their career histories and trajectories, and providing accounts of their values, practices, relationships with others, and their training and development as managers. Examining debates around ‘New Public Management’, knowledge management, and knowledge workers, the wider implications of these themes for policy innovation and strategy in HE and the public sector more generally are considered, developing a critical response to recent approaches to managing public services, and practical suggestions for improvements which could be made to the training and support of senior and middle managers in universities.

This book shows how the cost of losing human knowledge in a technology-intensive world seriously affects organizational success. It explains what leaders must do to retain critical know-how as millions of aging baby boomers begin retiring from the workforce in the next decade. This aging workforce will produce an unprecedented skills shortage in many sectors. Particularly at risk is the tacit or experiential knowledge needed to maintain high levels of performance in today's complex technological, scientific, and management fields. The book shows how this threatened loss of intellectual capital or “brain drain” can be addressed with increased attention to workforce planning, knowledge management, and knowledge retention initiatives. It provides a framework and action plan to help managers tackle the interdependent challenges of increased retirements, more competitive recruiting, and greater turnover among mid-career employees created by changing workforce demographics.

Drawing on a three‐year, in‐depth, ‘fly‐on‐the‐wall’ study of client‐management consultant interactions, knowledge flow in management consultancy projects is shown to be mediated by multiple and shifting boundaries or ‘insider‐outsider’ relationships. This challenges dominant assumptions about management consultancy as being either a source of new ideas and processes or simply the legitimation of client knowledge. Rather, different actors, roles, and types of knowledge are involved in an interactive and dynamic process where various boundaries are constructed, reinforced, negotiated, and transformed. The chapters selectively explore these dynamics, revealing the importance of boundary complexity; the role of humour and challenge in often tense relationships; and the importance of shared knowledge domains such as sector knowledge. They are based upon a model of client–consultant relationships developed from theories of knowledge and social boundaries. A wide range of consultancy contexts are covered, including: a US‐based strategy firm and a multinational client; the public and private sectors; a sole practitioner consultant; and IT implementation in financial services. These have a wider significance in terms of our understanding of project working, innovation/change, inter-organizational relations and professional and business services.