Knowledge Management and Professional Work

Current theories of knowledge management postulate a cycle of knowledge creation, refinement, and implementation that hinges on the transformation of tacit, or practical, into explicit, or discursive, knowledge. Using field research in Denmark and Japan as illustration, the authors argue for a richer view of knowledge than simply the conversion of individual knowledge into a form susceptible to transmission. Knowledge, they show, is relative to what Lave and Wenger call communities of practice. The key to understanding the generation and sharing of knowledge, the authors argue, is the role of text as both knowledge representation (product) and the means by which communities sustain organization (process). The modern organization, because it is characterized by diverse local practices, and by the increasing salience of professional work, is thus a complex mosaic of situated knowledge, grounded in process. The authors consider the implication of this diversity for managerial practice in a knowledge-based society.