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4 MANAGING KNOWLEDGE WORK AND INNOVATION

is ‘possessed’ by individuals. Being able to make sense of the words and sen-
tences on this page is about knowledge. What an individual infers from informa-
tion is related to their cognitive capacity and interpretive schema, or ‘frames of
reference’, which they have acquired through life. It is reasonable, therefore, to
suggest that different people, with different past experiences, may infer different
things from the same information.
The ‘knowledge as possession’ view is implicit in much of what is written about
managing knowledge work within contemporary organizations. For example,
below we outline the very widely quoted work of Nonaka (1994), which talks
about how ‘tacit knowledge’ (the knowledge that individuals have based on
their personal experience that is hard to express or articulate) can be converted
into explicit knowledge (knowledge that can be ‘spelled out’ or written down),
which can then be communicated to others in the organization who will then
also ‘know’ without having to have had the same experiences. So, according to
this view, knowledge is something I possess and, like any of my possessions (say
a football), I can then pass on this knowledge (or football) to others.
This ‘knowledge as possession’ view has, however, been roundly attacked
by proponents of the ‘epistemology of practice’ (Brown and Duguid, 2001;
Gherardi, 2001; Lave and Wenger, 1991; Nicolini, Gherardi and Yanow, 2003;
Orlikowski, 2002). These writers start from the premise that ‘knowledge’ is
constructed and negotiated through social interaction. Knowledge is, therefore,
intrinsic to the localized social situations and practices (practices of saying things
as well as doing things) that people actually perform, and not something that can
stand outside those practices. Their studies show that social groups as diverse as
construction engineers, photocopier technicians, radiologists, tailors, ship build-
ers and alcoholics do not learn to do things by converting tacit knowledge into
explicit knowledge which is transferred from one person to another but, rather,
by sharing and creating all kinds of norms, stories, representations, tools and sym-
bols which enable the experience of individuals to be related to the knowledge
of the wider community. Knowledge is, in effect, ‘enacted’ through the practices
of different groups and inextricably bound up with the way these groups work
together and develop shared identities and shared beliefs. For example, chefs
have access to recipes that hold explicit written information on what ingredi-
ents to use and how to put them together. However, as any good chef will tell
you, they do not learn from this, as much as from the actual practice of being
an apprentice with a Master Chef within a particular kitchen and social setting
that reinforces certain kinds of norms, values and practices. It is this practice that
allows them to interpret and apply the recipes effectively and innovatively.
By taking these criticisms on board we can begin to see that the often used
saying that knowledge is a person’s ‘justified true belief’ – which dates back to
Plato and underpins theories such as Nonaka’s – is actually quite problematic
(Gourlay, 2006). This is because there are likely to be many possible ‘truths’
and, so, ‘truth’ (or what counts as truth) results as much from the negotia-
tions amongst social actors (and the tools at their disposal) as it does from any
personally held justifications. What finally comes to be accepted as ‘true’ is often

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