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6 MANAGING KNOWLEDGE WORK AND INNOVATION

means looking at the varied ways in which actors in particular social situations
understand and make sense of where they are and what they are doing. This
working definition borrows from Tsoukas and Vladimirou (2001), who theo-
rize knowledge as ‘the individual ability to draw distinctions within a collec-
tive domain of action, based on an appreciation of context or theory or both’
(p. 979). Our working definition is broad enough to encompass the individual
cognitive aspects of knowledge as well as its social nature. It also suggests that it
is important for us to consider the roles of material artefacts in managing knowl-
edge work – technologies, tools, computers, physical spaces, clocks, schedules
and the like – because the ability to discriminate is mediated by them (Barley,
1986; Black, Carlile and Repenning, 2004; Orlikowski, 2007; Orlikowski and
Yates, 2002; Schultze and Orlikowski, 2004). For example, knowledge of what
is useful, or not, in cooking is mediated by the experiences you have, the tools
you are using and the people and cultures that you interact with.
Following along this vein, organizational knowledge can be understood as
‘a learned set of norms, shared understandings and practices that integrates actors
and artefacts to produce valued outcomes within a specific social and organiza-
tional context’ (Scarbrough, 2008b). Studying ‘organizational knowledge’ is about
understanding the means by which groups of actors develop more or less shared
beliefs, behaviours and routines that help shape the organization’s capabilities.
Organizational knowledge can be reflected in what people say, in what they do,
or in the technologies, routines and systems that they use. For example, Hewlett
Packard’s organizational knowledge is reflected through stated corporate objec-
tives, such as ‘everyone has something to contribute: It’s not about title, level or
tenure’ (assuming this is believed!), their relatively flat organizational structure and
their employment selection systems and routines that favour diversity in staff.
These debates about the nature of knowledge are not purely academic. The
point is that our underlying assumptions about what knowledge is, and whether
it is something people have (possess) or do (practice), have a profound influence
on the tactics, strategies and analytical tools that we use when attempting to
more effectively manage knowledge work. The term ‘Knowledge Management’
is one that has come to be used to refer to explicit strategies, tools and practices
applied by management that seek to make knowledge a resource for the organi-
zation. As a field of study Knowledge Management is concerned with the devel-
opment of concepts that illuminate or enhance the application of these practices.
If your assumptions are that knowledge is possessed, then the major challenge of
Knowledge Management is to free knowledge from the individual and make it
widely available as an organizational resource, for example, by capturing it in an
IT system or by writing it down in guidelines and recipes. If your assumption,
on the other hand, is that knowledge is about what people do (and say) then
the challenge of Knowledge Management is to provide an enabling context that
allows people to do (and say) things differently and, hopefully, better. Therefore,
it is important when considering major tools, theories and frameworks for man-
aging knowledge work to be aware also of the assumptions that drive them and
the practical issues they lead us to focus on. We turn to this next when we look
at three different perspectives on knowledge – structural perspectives, which

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