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This paper assesses the role of collaborative knowledge building in the co-creation of artifacts in the knowledge management field.

Fifty-eight papers published in six knowledge management-related journals were analyzed. The framework for analysis included 13 codes. Studies were analyzed using qualitative and quantitative methods.

Findings showed that several factors influenced the co-creation of artifacts in collaborative knowledge building. At the micro level, individual motivation, capabilities and reflexivity seemed to play a central role in co-creation processes. At the meso level, teamwork and shared understanding were identified as two key major factors. At the macro level, structural, behavioral and cognitive factors were identified; they included organizational rules and workplace setting, organizational culture and learning and memory. Managerial agency, characteristics of artifacts and knowledge brokers and boundary spanners also seemed to have an influence at the inter-organizational levels of analysis.

This study has limitations related to scope of contribution, covered time span (17 years) and restrictions in journal subscriptions.

The study will help managers understand the intricacies of collaborative knowledge building practices to increase organizational overall effectiveness and performance.

This study is a first attempt to systematically assess the role of collaborative knowledge building in the co-creation of artifacts, and therefore, it represents a primary reference in the knowledge management field. It proposes some initial propositions that can guide future empirical studies.

The purpose of this study is to investigate how organizational knowledge interacts with artifacts and what determinants, driving processes and outcomes govern these interactions in organizational contexts.

A case study is used and data collected is from a US engineering and consulting company.

Findings suggested three major driving processes specifically initiating, challenging and improving and several related determinants and outcomes that governed the interaction between organizational knowledge and artifacts over time.

This study has limitations related to the nature and dimension of the case selected.

This study provides a means to explain how organizations hold existing knowledge and what determinants, driving processes and outcomes govern the interactions between knowledge and artifacts to assist managerial practices and improve performance.

This paper contributes to the current debate on organizational knowledge and provides some empirical evidence of how knowledge interacts with artifacts in organizational contexts.

The purpose of the research described in this paper is to provide empirical evidence pointing to IT artifacts' contribution to organizational mindfulness.

To accomplish the specified aim, the authors studied how a leading company in the cork industry uses a platform to support the innovation process's ideation phase. This case study took two and a half years, and the research information was collected in documents, meetings, observations and interviews.

The study provides empirical evidence pointing to the funneling of collective attention induced by the studied platform. The use of an innovation platform was engaging the collective attention to the incremental innovation of processes to the detriment of products' disruptive innovation.

The authors’ findings contribute to developing an IS mindfulness theory and designing sociotechnical arrangements that expand organizational mindfulness. The analysis of the gathered research information resulted in a first explanation for the impact of using IT artifacts on organizational mindfulness. The resulting framework emerged as a first step in the effort to develop an IS mindfulness theory, paving the way for developing a methodological approach to support CIOs in addressing the challenges of the digital age.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the current glocal (global and local) environment to answer the following research questions: How does the glocal environment influence software exporting industries in India? How is the evolving “sticky” knowledge from individuals and teams assimilated into organizational knowledge repositories? What management practices have been learnt and applied for advancement of knowledge portfolios in the offshore software business market?

An interpretivist research design is used to gain insights into organizational learning processes adopted by offshore software vendors for assimilating evolving knowledge into knowledge repositories.

This paper describes the influence of the current glocal environment on software exporting industries in India and presents a model for organizational learning to assimilate knowledge and build effective representations of emerging knowledge artifacts. The authors employ the concept of meta‐learning (or “learning about learning”) to analyze the recursive nature of organizational learning processes.

The proposed model of meta‐learning explains how software organizations build on individual and team competencies to build core competencies. The model helps us to understand how organizations advance their learning processes and upgrade their knowledge repositories.

The paper offers new perspectives on how organizations reflexively monitor their knowledge processes to advance their knowledge portfolios. It identifies adhocratic and bureaucratic management processes for assimilating the evolving “sticky” knowledge from individuals into organizational knowledge repositories. This paper contributes to the growing body of literature that emphasizes ongoing learning from individual to collective level in the knowledge industry sector.

The purpose of this research is to deepen understanding of the materiality in organizational identity (OI) by describing how physical objects support, instantiate and communicate OI over time.

The research design uses an in-depth case study of Codorníu wineries taking a symbolic interactionism methodological lens. The study examines a set of physical objects preserved from the company's foundation in 1551 to the present day and their associated identity meanings.

This study uncovered how the company used multiple objects to symbolically represent its identity. Some of these objects were primal artifacts used to legitimize organizational identity since the firm's foundation; others were interpreted as identity markers that worked to instantiate identity and to provide it with greater persistence, while others were created ad hoc to communicate organizational identity to external audiences. Some physical objects were used to differentiate the organization and its products from competitors, while others were used to maintain a temporary and spatial link with the organization's founding origins.

This study describes practical implications on the use of identity materiality to build legitimacy, employee identification, differentiation from competitors and reputation.

The analysis of the meanings associated with material objects shows that identity tangibility has not hindered organizational adaptation and change. Some identity objects gained relevance, while others were reinterpreted or abandoned according to their symbolic value in order to embody organizational identity at a given time. Four trajectories were identified that describe the evolution of physical objects in representing an organization's identity over time.

Organizations and their members operate in increasingly complex, dynamic and even disruptive environments, with risk and uncertainty being major challenges. To that effect, data, information, knowledge, and respective competences are increasingly instrumental in enabling and sustaining organizational intelligence that translates into resilience in the shorter and sustainable excellence in the longer term. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to explore the role of the artifacts and routines in a sustainable organizational excellence context.

An extensive literature review was used to develop the context of the paper, focusing on big data and organizational intelligence for enterprise excellence and resilience. In addition, a thematic literature review method was used to study the role and impacts of routines and artifacts in organizational change, policies, structure and performance.

Although many traditional management practices retain their validity, knowledge management must give a clearer view of the existing connection between firm-level competitive advantage in open economies flows and difficult-to-use knowledge assets. The proposed framework studies knowledge exploration and knowledge exploitation as organizational phenomena opposed and mutually incompatible.

The paper presents a first attempt to study the linkages of organizational routines and artifacts as a cycle wherein knowledge acquisition and learning competencies form and enhance a firm’s organizational intelligence, leading to robust competitiveness and sustainable entrepreneurship.

The purpose of this study is twofold. First, the authors aim to investigate the applicability of the five (EO) dimensions of autonomy, innovativeness, risk taking, proactiveness, and competitive aggressiveness to a medium‐sized firm. Second, the research seeks to explore firm processes leading to the development of entrepreneurial orientation (EO) in a medium‐sized domestic US firm. Thus, it endeavours to examine the applicability of EO dimensions as well as the processes by which EO arose in the focal company.

The authors use a multi‐method approach entailing analysis of archival data as well as semi‐structured interviews of executives to examine the applicability of EO dimensions as well as the processes associated with the development of EO to a medium sized firm competing in a Midwestern US market. Such an in‐depth analysis of one firm provides rich data, enabling the exploration of EO using qualitative methods.

While the medium‐sized domestic US business had high levels of autonomy and proactiveness, it exhibited moderate levels of innovativeness and risk‐taking, and only a low level of competitive aggressiveness. Furthermore, the analysis suggests that organizational artifacts facilitate the development of EO and support organizational culture. Specifically, the organizational artifacts of having an ESOP, a flat hierarchy, inter‐unit coordination, and customer communication facilitated EO, and reinforced the organizational culture aspects of empowerment, openness, teamwork, quality services, customer satisfaction, and adaptability.

This study is among the first to examine all five EO dimensions as well as to use qualitative methods to do so. It also illustrates how EO applies to medium‐sized firms, and identifies processes by which these dimensions develop.

The purpose of this paper is to assess the role of artifacts in the knowledge management field in the past 18 years (1997-2015) and to identify directions for future research.

The authors conducted a systematic literature review of 101 articles published in seven journals retrieved from EBSCO and Google Scholar online research databases. The framework for analysis included 13 codes, i.e. author(s), title, year of publication, typology, theoretical lens, categorizations, methods for empirical work, relevancy, level of analysis, keywords, findings, research themes and future research directions. Codes were analyzed using qualitative and quantitative methods.

The findings lacked cumulativeness and consistency in the current knowledge management debate. Empirical works outnumbered conceptual contributions by two to one, and the majority of papers focused at the organizational level of analysis. Knowledge management systems, knowledge sharing and digital archives were the major research themes connected to artifacts, together with other closely aligned concepts such as learning and online learning, knowledge transfer and knowledge creation.

This study has temporal and contextual limitations related to covered time span (18 years) and journals’ subscription restrictions.

This paper is a first attempt to systematically review the role of artifacts in knowledge management research and therefore it represents a primary reference in the knowledge management field. It provides directions to future theoretical and empirical studies and suggestions to managerial practices.

This paper sets out to explore the impact of aesthetics on employee satisfaction and motivation.

The paper is based on organisational aesthetics and organisational culture theory and interviews with employees at Norwegian telecommunications company Telenor – a significant investor in art, design and architecture.

There are potential connections between artifacts (as an expression of organisational culture) and employee satisfaction, identity, mood, creativity and motivation. Aesthetics seems to be particularly important to employees working with the business segment because of the face‐to‐face interaction between employees and customers. It appears that the “visual Telenor” influences employees' identification with the organisation.

When organisations invest in art, design and architecture, they need to be active in engaging employees with its meaning and relevance. If employees are not engaged, the aesthetic environment will not stimulate creativity or influence job satisfaction and motivation.

The findings of this paper have enabled the creation of a matrix with four different categories defined by the degree of financial investments in art, design and architecture and the extent of investments in activities engaging employees. A conceptual model is proposed that identifies possible connections between aesthetics and employee performance.

The objective of this paper is to provide insight beyond the internal dynamic of organizational change and explore how organizations contribute, at the symbolic and aesthetic level, to the experiential stabilization of spatio‐temporal change within society more generally. As such, the paper seeks to contribute to critical debates surrounding the relationships between organization and society, particularly in terms of understanding change as an outcome of organizational activity within the broader socio‐cultural environment.

Concerned as it is with the critical interpretation of visual image and composition, the paper adopts a broadly structural‐hermeneutic framework directed at the semiotic analysis of a sample of organizational artifacts; in this instance, a sample of company documents chosen by virtue of their communicative intent and rich symbolic and aesthetic content.

It is argued in the paper that several recurring or generic constellations of meaning can be identified across the documents; vitality, ephemerality, subordination and authenticity, each of which represents an attempt to mediate the experiential tensions that emerge both from the dynamic and spatio‐temporal instabilities generated by the socio‐economic relations of modernity and the mode of organization which predominates within it.

Generated from an intensive sample, employing a subjectivist mode of analysis the paper does not seek to offer an exhaustive or unduly generaliseable overview of the content of organizational documentation. Rather, it aims to present a plausible account, given the broader socio‐cultural context within which they are generated, of a range of recurring themes or genres which indicate a significant relationship between organizational visual culture and the wider stabilisation of socio‐psychological relations within modernity.

This paper provides an interesting insight into the internal dynamic of organizational change.