Negotiating Knowledge in the Knowledge Economy: Workplace educators and the politics of codification

The focus of this paper is on the part that workplace educators play in determining "what counts" as knowledge in the global "knowledge" economy. The starting point is Fairclough's (1996) notion of the "discourse technologist", the expert outsider whose role is to research the discursive practice of institutions, design discourse practices in line with the institutional aims and strategies, and train people in their use. This is an important role in an economy that relies increasingly on relentless innovation; one in which the rapid generation and transmission of knowledge across global webs of production is critical. While information technologies make the almost instantaneous transmission of "data" possible around the globe, at least in theory, "knowledge" remains a local and highly contextualised achievement, one which relies on the complex interplay of persistent and transient local and global discourses. A critical dimension of the work of many workplace educators is the standardisation of discursive practice across institutions on a global scale, redesigning local practice to comply with the discursive practices of remote institutions. Within the context of the contemporary workplace the task of the workplace educator/discourse technologist is especially significant because of the part that certain discursive practices have assumed in legitimating certain local working knowledges and working identities in global contexts. In this paper I use a transcript of workplace interactions and other workplace texts to explore the part that workplace educators play in the politics of the codification of knowledge.