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INTRODUCTION 11

Knowledge-Routinized Communication-Intensive
Organisations: Organisations:
Knowledge embedded in Encultured knowledge and
technologies, rules and procedures. collective understanding.
Emphasis on
collective Hierarchical division of labour and Communication and collaboration
endeavour control. Low skill requirements. the key processes. Empowerment
through integration.
Example: ‘Machine Bureaucracy’ Example: ‘Adhocracy’ such as a
such as a McDonalds. large management consultancy
Expert-Dependent Organisations: Symbolic-Analyst-Dependent
Embodied competencies of key Organisations:
members. Embrained skills of key members.
Performance of individual specialist Entrepreneurial problem solving.
Emphasis on
contributions experts is crucial. Status and power Status and power from creative
of individuals from professional reputation & achievements.
qualifications.
Example: ‘Professional Bureaucracy’ Example: ‘Knowledge-intensive-firm’
such as a hospital. such as a science-based, high tech
firm.
Focus on familiar problems Focus on novel problems

Figure 1.4 Organizations and types of knowledge (after Blackler, 1995)

Embrained knowledge is knowledge that is dependent on conceptual skills and cogni-
tive abilities. Embodied knowledge is action oriented and is only partly explicit. Encul-
tured knowledge refers to the process of achieving shared understanding, through
the development of an organizational culture. Embedded knowledge is knowledge
that resides in systemic routines. It can be analyzed by considering the relationships
between technologies, roles, procedures and emergent routines. Finally, encoded
knowledge is information conveyed by signs and symbols either in manual or elec-
tronically transmitted form.
(Blackler, 1995, pp. 1024–1025)
Blackler’s framework, like Spender’s, suggests that different types of knowledge
exist at either the individual (embodied and embrained knowledge) or at the col-
lective level (encultured and embedded). However, each of these knowledge types
can be more or less explicit, so giving rise to the fifth kind of knowledge, encoded
knowledge. For example, in an organization like McDonalds, culture (encultured
knowledge) may be articulated in the form of formal statements and symbols
(e.g. the Big ‘M’ that indicates the McDonalds brand around the world) or may
be tacitly known by everyone in the firm and reflected in their behaviours.
What Blackler tried to illustrate, which distinguishes this framework from the
others considered above, is that different types of knowledge dominate in different
types of organizations. For example, he suggested that a bureaucratic organiza-
tion making highly standardized products, like McDonalds, will rely predominantly
on knowledge embedded in organizational routines and rules. More dynamic and

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