Learning to value the Bardic tradition: Culture, communication and organisational knowledge

Recent work on organisational knowledge suggests that, in addition to cultivating the 'knowledge spiral', organisations need to focus on facilitating forms of 'knowing' which are deeply rooted in their own contexts and which reside in the communicative act itself. The implications are that organisations seeking to implement so-called 'knowledge management' systems should invest not so much in constructing knowledge repositories as in building networks of user-driven communicative exchange, using Information and Communications Technologies (ICTs) where appropriate. We use examples from a recent empirical study to illustrate the limits of 'structural' approaches to knowledge, and draw upon insights from the social anthropology literature to question the achievability of building 'knowledge communities' within organisations

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2001
• Where: ECIS
• Authors: Mark Thompson 0002, Geoff Walsham
• Keywords: ECIS 2001, ECIS 2004, Knowledge Management, Organisation, Organisational Knowledge