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204 MANAGING KNOWLEDGE WORK AND INNOVATION

it is this very ‘interpretive flexibility’ that makes some objects more powerful
than others in overcoming boundaries (Bijker et al., 1987). Objects that have
the ability to both reveal different perspectives and be seen as ‘desirable’ across
groups with very different political interests may play a more powerful role in
generating commitment to a shared course of action.
In practical terms, then, objects such as design drawings, flowcharts and work
plans – objects that both reveal differences between people and specify interde-
pendencies (Garrety and Badham, 2000) – may be more useful in encouraging
knowledge integration than ‘fixed’ objects such as PowerPoint presentations.
However, in using objects for managing knowledge for networked innovation,
we also need to be aware that such objects can also become sites for significant
conflict. The ‘revolt’ against Unipath by pharmacies left out of the exclusive
Unipath/Boots-the-Chemist network (see above) is a useful reminder of how
the ‘creating and reshaping boundary objects is an exercise of power that can be
collaborative or unilateral’ (Boland and Tenkasi, 1995, p. 362).

Power and politics
The literature on power in management and organization studies is far too exten-
sive to be given adequate treatment here. However, in studies of innovation,
there has been a tendency to view power in narrow, and often quite negative,
terms as the ability of one party to coerce another by controlling resources that
the latter needs (e.g. finance, information, staff). This is probably because many
such studies have focused on innovation within firms where those higher in the
hierarchy often (though not always) have more control over required resources.
However, when we look at networked innovation, required resources (includ-
ing knowledge and information) are distributed across organizations and the
ability to exercise such hierarchical power is often very limited. In developing
their brachytherapy product, for example, the Medico team needed clinicians to
help them to design and test the product but they had very limited hierarchical
power. Nor were they likely to be persuasive through direct marketing tech-
niques since their commercial objectives were viewed with, at best, suspicion by
medical professionals.
Rather than thinking of power like the classic ‘Sword of Damocles’, a more
useful approach is to see it in more neutral terms simply as a way of getting
things done. Power, then, is defined as ‘a force that effects outcomes, while
politics is power in action’ (Hardy, 1996, p. S3). This wider view of power
opens our eyes to alternative kinds of power that can be brought to bear in
managing knowledge for innovation. Hardy (drawing from earlier work by
Lukes, 1974) provides a useful summary of three kinds of power that can be
used strategically to mobilize change across, as well as within, organizations.
They are the following:

• resource power – the power to bring about desired behaviours through the
deployment of key resources on which others depend.

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