Knowledge management routines as micro-foundations of paradox navigation: balancing innovation and efficiency in knowledge-intensive organisations

This study advances Knowledge Management Research & Practice by explaining how organizations manage persistent innovation–efficiency tensions through knowledge management (KM) routines. While prior research highlights paradox and ambidexterity, it under-specifies the knowledge-level mechanisms through which such tensions are enacted. Drawing on 37 interviews with senior executives in global IT services firms and employing a Gioia-based grounded theory approach, we identify three recurring KM routines—governance cadence, modularization with ring-fencing, and workforce mix optimization—that structure how knowledge is created, integrated, codified, protected, and reused. We conceptualize these routines as micro-foundations of paradox navigation, showing how organizations simultaneously enable exploratory learning and efficient knowledge reuse. The study contributes a processual, KM-centric perspective that shifts attention from abstract tensions to observable knowledge practices, reconceptualizing knowledge systems as dynamic and continuously renewed under persistent contradiction.