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INTRODUCTION 5

driven by those who happen to hold positions of power or authority and whose
justifications carry more weight (such as the Master Chef). In Western medicine,
for example, clinicians’ claims about what treatments work, backed by scientific
data, usually override competing knowledge claims coming from less powerful
groups about alternative therapies. Yet, this was not the case centuries ago and is
still not the case in some other societal contexts (Abbott, 1988). Furthermore, if
the ‘truthfulness’ of something can only be judged in relation to personal belief
(Nonaka, 1994), then someone could be provided with full justification for
something and still choose not to believe it. Hence we can see that knowledge –
or claims to knowledge – are social as well as individual and depend heavily on
the organizational and cultural context in which such claims are made.
Some proponents of this alternative ‘knowledge as practice’ view prefer to
use the term ‘knowing’ rather than knowledge, precisely to underline this inter-
weaving of what people know with what they do and who and where they are.
The term ‘knowing’ (as a verb rather than a noun) draws our attention to the
active, processual and social nature of knowledge (Suchman, 1987). This social
and context-dependent nature of knowledge (sometimes described as ‘socially
situated’) needs to be addressed when attempting to manage knowledge within
organizations – a theme that will be revisited throughout this book.
Cook and Brown (1999) have attempted, somewhat controversially, to
reconcile these different epistemologies of possession and practice, by arguing
that it is possible to see processes of knowing and forms of knowledge as equally
important and complementary:
Individuals and groups clearly make use of knowledge, both explicit and tacit, in what
they do; but not everything they know how to do, we argue, is explicable solely in terms
of the knowledge they possess. We believe that individual and group action requires us to
speak about both knowledge used in action and knowing as part of the action.
(p. 382)

Moreover, they are inextricably linked, with knowledge being seen by Cook and
Brown as a tool for knowing:
Organizations are better understood . . . if knowledge and knowing are seen as mutually
enabling (not competing). We hold that knowledge is a tool for knowing, that knowing
is an aspect of our interaction with the social and physical world, and the interplay of
knowledge and knowing can generate new knowledge and new ways of knowing.
(p. 381)

Working definition of knowledge

The definitional issues will probably never be resolved – indeed, some would
argue that if ‘knowledge’ is naturally contested then why should they be?
However, it is useful for us to be clear about our own working definitions (or
knowledge claims) when we talk about managing knowledge work. Drawing
from the discussion above, then, we define knowledge simply as ‘the ability to
discriminate within and across contexts’ (Swan, 2008). Studying ‘knowledge’

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