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214 MANAGING KNOWLEDGE WORK AND INNOVATION

up-stream and down-stream science (integrative capabilities – Owen-Smith et al.,
2002). These differences seem to derive from highly institutionalized practices
surrounding, for example career mobility, perceptions and values, and can have a
significant influence on innovation processes within organizations at the micro-
level (Swan et al., 2007a). This suggests that approaches to managing knowledge
work may not be equally possible or applicable across national contexts.
These institutional influences remind us of a further important dimension
of power – named ‘the power of the system’ (Hardy, 1996). This is the power
that derives from deeply embedded, and historically taken-for-granted, ways of
working within particular organizational, institutional and historical contexts
(e.g. from the organization of professions, work occupations, educational and
regulatory systems). Whilst system power is not so amenable to direct forms of
management (except, perhaps, by changing policy or regulatory contexts), it
is important to recognize that it can pose significant constraints on the ability
of individuals to deploy other forms of power in order to produce, or resist,
change (Foucault, 1980). Medico managers’ deployment of power, for example,
was limited by the power of the system imbued upon medical professionals and
reinforced by professional standards. It is crucial to remember that the past poses
a major constraint on the ability for organizations to learn in the present, so that
the ‘zone of manoeuvre’ open to an organization at any point in time is limited
(Clark, 2000).

>> CONCLUSIONS
The examination of knowledge and innovation presented in this chapter empha-
sizes the message conveyed throughout this book that a single ‘best practice’
approach to managing knowledge work is deeply problematic. Approaches
to managing knowledge need to be linked to particular purposes (in this case
innovation activities and episodes), knowledge processes (e.g. sharing and inte-
grating), and enabling (and disabling) contexts (organizational, political, insti-
tutional). The tendency to neglect these linkages reflects a still quite deeply
entrenched assumption that there is a relatively straightforward and positive
relationship between knowledge, innovation and performance outcomes. It is
highly questionable, however, how far this is generally the case. The nature of
the alignment between purposes, processes and contexts will be summarized in
the final concluding chapter, next.
This chapter has also highlighted the need to see innovation as a highly itera-
tive, politically contested and context-dependent, process of knowing – one that
involves not only developing new ideas, products, processes and technologies,
but also changing existing and future practices. Such a view sees networks and
power as crucial drivers of innovation. Indeed, we have argued that, as knowl-
edge becomes more widely distributed, and innovation processes become more
knowledge intensive (e.g. with the growth of service innovation), networked
forms of innovation become yet more central. The practice perspective outlined
in this chapter, and earlier in this book, highlights, further, the stickiness of

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