Harnessing Knowledge Dynamics: Principled Organizational Knowing & Learning

Citation

du Preez, M. (2007), "Harnessing Knowledge Dynamics: Principled Organizational Knowing & Learning", The Electronic Library, Vol. 25 No. 1, pp. 118-119. https://doi.org/10.1108/02640470710729209

The management of organizational knowledge has increasingly become an important survival issue for most organizations. To date, most knowledge management professionals believed that “information flows, but that knowledge grows” (p. vi). Mark Nissen changes this view in Harnessing Knowledge Dynamics: Principles Organizational Knowing & Learning – a new innovative and mold‐breaking book. In it, Nissen shows that knowledge can also flow. He also addresses the many operationally practical benefits knowledge that flows has to management, decision‐making, and the execution of business processes.

There are different kinds and levels of knowledge within an organizational setting. Nissen indicates these levels and discusses the critical need for a principled way of managing the distribution of organizational knowledge. He further provides solid principles and techniques that could be used to manage knowledge flows and utilize the strategic capabilities of knowledge management to enhance organizational performance.

The book is divided into two sections. Section one, “Intellectual basis”, centres on emerging knowledge‐flow theories. It unearths some very new and previously untreated issues, such as the tendency of knowledge to remain at rest, the relationship between workflows and knowledge flows, and how knowledge flows lie on the critical part of workflows and, hence, influence organizational performance. Together, the five chapters in this section provide the much‐needed theoretical basis for the practical application in section two.

Five chapters make up section two, “Practical application”. This section tests the principles taught in section one and provide ways of relating to a variety of organizational contexts that could help managers apply these principles to their own organization. This way the book brings together the theory of diagnosing knowledge flows with the practical operational how‐to of linking that to organizational performance and the requisite organizational change for long‐term competitive advantage. It identifies archetypes of knowledge flow patterns that help diagnose and uncover problems, but also directly links that with management interventions.

The book includes a glossary of key terms and an appendix that lists the code of a small, simple, illustrative expert system discussed in Chapter 4 (“Knowledge technology”). It includes the whole file in textual form, which should facilitate an understanding of the components that comprise a simple expert system. The appendix can be used by readers, teachers or students to build their own simple expert systems. The references cited in the book bear proof of thorough research, pointing new researchers to a growing intellectual basis for knowledge management and to an understanding of how knowledge flows. A useful index concludes the volume.

Harnessing Knowledge Dynamics is of great interest to both practicing leaders and managers. It draws on real‐world experiences to provide operational applications of knowledge‐flow principles in practice in that it builds upon theory, but targets practice. This way the book shares knowledge with business leaders and managers previously known to researchers only. It also is of interest to academics teaching knowledge management, information systems, strategy and organization. Each chapter includes a number of exercises which could be used to stimulate critical thought, learning and discussion.