Knowledge Fields: Some Post-9/11 Thoughts about the Knowledge-Based Theory of the Firm

Abstract

We explore a bounded and contoured metaphor for organizational knowledge, a territory with visible mountains of accepted ideas and hidden valleys of dissonant opinion. This ‘knowledge field’, a knowledge-based definition of the organization, is a dynamic synthesis of the inherently limited and fragmented bodies of knowledge that comprise its K-inventory. It is also structured and contoured by the emotions and feelings of those who inhabit the K-field and create it — feelings which arise, following Nussbaum (2001), from the patterns of individual and organizational power and dependency. Reflecting these notions, the KM literature is categorized according to the richness of the assumptions about knowledge. There is the naïve mechanical approach that equates knowledge, information, and data. Here the K-field is flat, frictionless, and without emotional dimensions. Next is the literature that defines knowledge as a corporate asset, scarce, narrowly held, but tradable, a K-field contoured only by transaction costs. Then we see knowledge shaped by the power structures among the actors constructing the K-field. The final section, influenced by New Yorkers’ emotions after the WTC attacks, brings in dependence and the emotional dimensions of the actors’ processes as they integrate the organization’s knowledge inventory into a workable entity.