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2 MANAGING KNOWLEDGE WORK AND INNOVATION

>> INTRODUCTION
Managing knowledge work and knowledge workers is arguably the single most
important challenge being faced by all kinds of organizations. ‘Knowledge
Management’, for example, has been heralded as essential to efforts to improve
competitiveness and innovation. Even since writing the first edition of this book
(published in 2002), a huge number of new tools and techniques, books, arti-
cles and ‘how-to’ guidelines have been produced in the name of Knowledge
Management.
At the same time, many attempts to manage knowledge in organizations have
failed to deliver promised improvements (Scarbrough and Swan, 2001). Some
have focused too narrowly on generically applicable tools/methods to trans-
fer information, without paying sufficient consideration to the social, organi-
zational and cultural context needed to enable and support knowledge work.
Others have forgotten what it is they are actually managing knowledge for – is
the purpose to improve the efficiency of current activities, for example, or to
do things differently and innovate? Yet others have faltered because they have
emphasized particular processes (e.g. sharing knowledge between groups) and
forgotten others (e.g. applying knowledge to new tasks). In this new book,
then, a major feature is to stress all three of these dimensions of knowledge
work: enabling contexts, purposes and processes. The need to align contexts, pur-
poses and processes when managing knowledge work is a theme we shall revisit
throughout the chapters that follow.
Many of the examples and case studies used throughout this book are drawn
from our own research on innovation. This is because innovation is so central
to knowledge work – many of the unique skills and experiences of knowledge
workers would be largely wasted if they were not provided with the opportunity
to put these skills to work in order to do things differently (hopefully better)
and to innovate. Innovation also entails the application of knowledge to new
tasks and situations in order to develop products, processes and services, and is
a prime site for knowledge work.
We start by developing in this introductory chapter a rudimentary under-
standing of the core concepts we are going to be dealing with – knowledge,
organizational knowledge, Knowledge Management and innovation. We are not
going to engage deeply in philosophical debates about the precise nature of
knowledge – this has been done much better elsewhere (Tsoukas, 2003; Tsou-
kas and Vladimirou, 2001). Rather, we outline some of the more well-known
definitions and frameworks that have been developed in organizational theory
and strategy, which help inform our understanding of what it is that firms are
trying to do when they claim to be ‘managing knowledge’. We also look at how
current approaches can be traced back to early ideas about managing work. Such
a historically grounded account helps us to see how and why we have arrived at
this point, what our possible futures may be and how we can avoid some of the
mistakes of years past.

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