Managing Knowledge: An Essential Reader (2nd edition)

Citation

Burnett, S. (2007), "Managing Knowledge: An Essential Reader (2nd edition)", Library Review, Vol. 56 No. 6, pp. 518-521. https://doi.org/10.1108/00242530710823102

Presented in three parts, Little and Ray's second edition of Managing Knowledge: An Essential Reader offers a collection of contributions not only on knowledge management per se, but on the relationships which exist between knowledge management and other management disciplines such as human resource management. Specifically created to support the Open University's MBA programme, the second edition includes works from the first edition such as Quintas’ chapter entitled “Managing knowledge and innovation across boundaries”, as well as new works including Spender's “An overview: what's new and important about knowledge management? Building new bridges between managers and academics”.

Prior to the first part of the book which addresses a number of concepts which underpin knowledge management, the first chapter “Making sense of managing knowledge” by Ray provides a valuable overview of both the topic of managing knowledge as well as the remaining chapters of the book. As a discipline which is still striving to overcome some fundamental problems associated with defining both what knowledge itself is within an organisational context, and subsequently what is meant by “knowledge management”, Ray does not shy away from addressing problems in relation to the theory and the practice of knowledge management: “KM has become important, not least of all, because important people have taken it seriously and allocated big budgets to projects that attempt to “manage” knowledge. Yet, there are signs that the achievements of such initiatives often fall short of expectations.”

Specifically, Ray highlights a critical issue associated with Nonaka and Takeuchi's (1995) use of the term “tacit knowledge”, based on the work of Polanyi (1966), and this is a recurring theme within the first part of the book. While Ray and others are right to raise this issue, it is addressed almost ad nauseam, and the point that, while Nonaka and Takeuchi may not have built on Polanyi's work appropriately, they did however bring much needed attention to his work, seems to have been overlooked. It seems only fair to bear in mind, while considering the works of Nonaka et al., that the original work which the chapter in this book is largely based on was released in 1995, and that the chapter by Nonaka, Tayama and Konno was produced in 2000.

Nonaka, Tayama and Konno's chapter entitled “SECI, Ba and leadership: a unified model of dynamic knowledge creation” builds on the original work of Nonaka and Takeuchi (1995) and presents the now well‐established if highly debated SECI process, a process by which both tacit and explicit knowledge may convert form. The importance of this process, they argue, is that the creation of knowledge occurs through the interactions between these forms of knowledge.

The three subsequent chapters largely challenge this perspective. Cook and Brown's chapter also builds on the work of Polanyi, however presents a diametrically opposing view to that of Nonaka, Tayama and Konno: “… we argue that explicit and tacit knowledge are two distinct forms of knowledge (i.e. neither is a variant of the other); that each does work the other cannot; and that one form cannot be made out of or changed into the other.” Tsoukas and Vladimirou present an excellent review of the literature relating to knowledge both from an epistemological and managerial perspective. Once again the importance of Polanyi's work is highlighted, and again the views of Nonaka et al. are challenged: “Polanyi's work, for the most part, has not been really engaged with. If it had been it would have been noticed that, since all knowledge has its tacit presuppositions, tacit knowledge is not something that can be converted into explicit knowledge, as Nonaka and Takeuchi (1995) have claimed.”

Tsoukas and Vladimirou do not limit themselves to a purely theoretical examination of knowledge however, and move on to a solid case study examining the knowledge practices within a customer care department within a mobile phone operator. Tsoukas is also responsible for the next chapter which highlights Nonaka and Takeuchi's role in the alleged “institutionalized misunderstanding” of what tacit knowledge actually is: “Nonaka and Takeuchi's interpretation of tacit knowledge as knowledge‐not‐yet‐articulated … is erroneous: it ignores the essential ineffability of tacit knowledge, thus reducing it to what can be articulated.”

“An overview: What's new and important about knowledge management? Building new bridges between managers and academics” by Spender comes almost as a relief. Spender provides a thorough and well‐constructed examination of the diverse perspectives presented on knowledge management which he argues are largely based on differing theories of knowledge. Spender's argument is convincing, rational and well articulated, and he does not only focus on the more theoretical considerations of the nature of knowledge, but also the practical implications of what knowledge represents. Rather than using a case‐based approach, Spender weaves in vignettes which neatly illustrate the nature of knowledge in practical contexts such as music and riding a bicycle.

The second part of the book, eight chapters in all, focuses on the more “practical” considerations of attempting to manage knowledge within an organisational context. This part begins with Leonard and Barton's chapter, rather flippantly entitled “Deep smarts” is a discursive examination of the capacity to act insightfully. While entertaining, it is written in a style arguably more suited to practitioners, and may appear rather condescending to an academic community: “Your best employees’ deepest knowledge can't be transferred onto a series of PowerPoint slides or downloaded into a data repository.”

There are other chapters worthy of note within this part of the book. Story and Barnett's “Knowledge management initiatives: learning from failure” uses a case‐based approach to examine a topic rarely seen in the practitioner‐focused literature. Much of the practice‐based literature on knowledge management highlights successful knowledge management initiatives, and it is rare to see one openly discussed. Interestingly this chapter is a reproduction of a paper which won the Journal of Knowledge Management's “Best Paper of the Year Award”. Andreissen provides a useful and badly needed review of the literature concerning intellectual capital in his chapter “IC valuation and measurement: classifying the state of the art”. Lastly, and almost as an afterthought, Ray and Clegg return to the Western vs Eastern epistemological debate in “Tacit knowing, communication and power: Lessons from Japan?”, and once again return to the work of Polanyi as well as to the perceived contradictions in the work of Nonaka and Takeuchi.

A large part of the relevance of this work is that it attempts to present a range of different perspectives, both practical and theoretical, on knowledge management which can clearly be seen to have changed and evolved since the discipline emerged. In relation to more theoretical considerations, the work largely rests on the perspectives taken by Polanyi and the alleged misappropriation of his work by Nonaka, Takeuchi and others. While pertinent, it is questionable how much of this work should have been devoted to this debate. The more practical considerations addressed in the second part of the book were in several cases highly insightful and valuable works, which disappointingly felt overshadowed by the theoretical debate. While a valuable work as a whole, Managing Knowledge is arguably most valuable as a set of distinct works (most of which) present a variety of perspectives on both knowledge and knowledge management.