B418 Lecture 3

1. Jashapara, Knowledge Management: An Integrated Approach, 2nd Edition, © Pearson Education Limited 2011
Slide 2.1
Analysis 1: Evidence and the Nature of
Knowledge in the Digital Age
Topic: The Nature of Knowing
Topic Number: 3

2. Jashapara, Knowledge Management: An Integrated Approach, 2nd Edition, © Pearson Education Limited 2011
Slide 2.2
WHAT IS KNOWLEDGE?
LEARNING OBJECTIVES
• To describe the underlying philosophical traditions
in western philosophy and their debates on the
notion of knowledge
• To explain different philosophical paradigms in our
understanding of knowledge
• To assess positivist, constructivist, postmodernist
and realist perspectives in knowledge
management
• To identify current typologies of knowledge within
knowledge management

3. Jashapara, Knowledge Management: An Integrated Approach, 2nd Edition, © Pearson Education Limited 2011
Slide 2.3
Question you should think about during
this session
• What is ‘knowledge’?
• How does ‘knowledge’ differ from data or
information?

4. Jashapara, Knowledge Management: An Integrated Approach, 2nd Edition, © Pearson Education Limited 2011
Slide 2.4
THINKERS ON KNOWLEDGE ACROSS HISTORY
Figure 2.1 Idealist and empiricist perspectives on knowledge

5. Jashapara, Knowledge Management: An Integrated Approach, 2nd Edition, © Pearson Education Limited 2011
Slide 2.5
PLATO (427–347 BC) – THEAETETUS
• Socratic questionning
• Knowledge is perception
• Knowledge is true judgement
• Knowledge is true judgement together with an
account

6. Slide 2.6
ARISTOTLE (384–322 BC) – THE METAPHYSICS
• Start with ‘appearances’ – ordinary beliefs and
language
• Work through puzzles (contradictions and find
central beliefs)
• Come back to ‘appearances’ with better
understanding
Jashapara, Knowledge Management: An Integrated Approach, 2nd Edition, © Pearson Education Limited 2011

7. Slide 2.7
DESCATES (1596–1650) – MEDITATIONS
• ‘Cartesian doubt’ –sceptic
• Lay aside things on common-sense grounds that
are doubtful
• Doubt you are awake or perceiving anything at
any moment
• Imagine malicious demon trying to deceive you
• ‘Cogito ergo sum’
Jashapara, Knowledge Management: An Integrated Approach, 2nd Edition, © Pearson Education Limited 2011

8. Jashapara, Knowledge Management: An Integrated Approach, 2nd Edition, © Pearson Education Limited 2011
Slide 2.8
IDEALISM & EMPIRICISM
• Idealists: Kant (bounded by ‘possible
experience’), Hegel (dialectic), Husserl
(Phenomenology), Heidegger (being), Satre
(consciousness as ‘nothing’)
• Empiricist: Locke (knowledge comes from
senses), Hume (truths of reason and fact),
Peirce (abductive, deductive and inductive)

9. Jashapara, Knowledge Management: An Integrated Approach, 2nd Edition, © Pearson Education Limited 2011
Slide 2.9
DAVID HUME (1711–1776)
• Agreed that one could make ‘inductive inferences’
such as A causes B (e.g. night follows day)
• But past experience could not justify future
behaviour – no grounds to prove ‘principle of
uniformity’ in nature
• Knocked bottom out of science
• Divided propositions into ‘truths of reason’ (from
theory or a priori) and ‘truths of fact’ (from
practice or a posteriori)

10. Jashapara, Knowledge Management: An Integrated Approach, 2nd Edition, © Pearson Education Limited 2011
Slide 2.10
KANT (1724–1804)
& HEGEL (1770–1831)
• Kant – saw knowledge as bounded by ‘possible
experience’. Provided third proposition to Hume
‘Form of Sensibility’ that was synthetic and a priori
(space and time are inescapable modes of
experience)
• Hegel – saw goal of knowledge as greater
development of mind towards freedom.
Considered all concepts historically as part of
‘dialectic process’

11. Jashapara, Knowledge Management: An Integrated Approach, 2nd Edition, © Pearson Education Limited 2011
Slide 2.11
AMERICAN PRAGMATISTS
• Peirce (1839–1914) – development of knowledge
follows three phases of inquiry: ‘abductive’
(presenting theories for consideration), ‘deductive’
(preparing theories for test) and ‘inductive’ (assessing
test results)
• James (1842–1910) – pragmatic theory of truth to be
in accord with underlying evidence
• Dewey (1859–1952) – knowledge closely bound with
activity. Keen on learning by doing

12. Slide 2.12
PHENOMENOLOGY & EXISTENTIALISM
• Husserl (1859–1938) – knowledge based on our
conscious awareness. Established movement
known as phenomenology
• Heidegger (1889–1976) – concerned with the
‘question of being’. Human existence or ‘Dasein’
linked to public norms
• Sartre (1905–1980) – sees consciousness as
nothingness and not subject to rules of causality
Jashapara, Knowledge Management: An Integrated Approach, 2nd Edition, © Pearson Education Limited 2011

13. Jashapara, Knowledge Management: An Integrated Approach, 2nd Edition, © Pearson Education Limited 2011
Slide 2.13
DATA, INFORMATION & KNOWLEDGE

14. Jashapara, Knowledge Management: An Integrated Approach, 2nd Edition, © Pearson Education Limited 2011
Slide 2.14
WISDOM & PROVERBS
• Children have more need of models than of
critics (French)
• You can’t see the whole sky through a bamboo
tube (Japanese)
• There is plenty of sound in an empty barrel
(Russian)
• Trust in Allah, but tie your camel (Muslim)
• Wonder is the beginning of wisdom (Greek)

15. Jashapara, Knowledge Management: An Integrated Approach, 2nd Edition, © Pearson Education Limited 2011
Slide 2.15
Questions to think about
• Which philosophical position would you adopt
to best understand knowledge in
organisations?
• Which philosopher has the greatest influence
on your thinking?

16. Jashapara, Knowledge Management: An Integrated Approach, 2nd Edition, © Pearson Education Limited 2011
Slide 2.16
Ryle & Polanyi
• Ryle: Distinction
between ‘knowing how’
and ‘knowing that’
• Polanyi: Develops Ryle’s
distinction as existing
along a continuum
• ‘the fact that we can
know more than we can
tell’
Figure 2.2 Philosophy of Gilbert Ryle and Michael Polanyi

17. Jashapara, Knowledge Management: An Integrated Approach, 2nd Edition, © Pearson Education Limited 2011
Slide 2.17
PARADIGMS & EPISTEMOLOGIES
Figure 2.4 Burrell and Morgan’s four paradigms and different epistemologies
(adapted from Burrell and Morgan 1979)

18. Jashapara, Knowledge Management: An Integrated Approach, 2nd Edition, © Pearson Education Limited 2011
Slide 2.18
Questions to think about
• Please explain why there is almost negligible
management research from a ‘radical
humanist’ or ‘radical structuralist’ perspective
• Why is management research dominated by a
functionalist perspective?
• What are the dangers of a functionalist
perspective?

19. Jashapara, Knowledge Management: An Integrated Approach, 2nd Edition, © Pearson Education Limited 2011
Slide 2.19
REALIST THEORY OF EXPLANATION
Figure 2.7 Realist theory of explanation

20. Jashapara, Knowledge Management: An Integrated Approach, 2nd Edition, © Pearson Education Limited 2011
Slide 2.20
TYPOLOGIES OF KNOWLEDGE
KNOWING
HOW
CONTINUUM KNOWING
THAT
Kogut &
Zander (1992)
Know-how Information
Nonaka (1994) Tacit Explicit
Blackler (1995) Embrained Embodied Encultured Embedded Encoded
Spender
Individual/Implicit
Social
(1996, 1998)
Social/Implicit
Knowledge
Individual/Explicit
Social/Explicit
Brown &
Duguid (1998)
Know-how Know-that
Davenport &
Prusak (1998)
Experience Insight Values Data Information
Cook & Brown
(1999)
Knowing (Tacit) Discourse Knowledge
(Explicit)
Pfeffer (1999) Knowing-Doing Knowledge
Hassard &
Processual –
Cultural
Being in the
Kelemen
Knowing the
Practices
world
(2002)
world
Newell et al.
(2002)
Processual
Perspective
Structural
Perspective
Orlikowski
(2002)
Knowing Knowledge

21. Jashapara, Knowledge Management: An Integrated Approach, 2nd Edition, © Pearson Education Limited 2011
Slide 2.21
STRUCTURE OF KNOWLEDGE

22. Jashapara, Knowledge Management: An Integrated Approach, 2nd Edition, © Pearson Education Limited 2011
Slide 2.22
TAXANOMIC PERSPECTIVE
• Treats knowledge as a commodity
• Nonaka with his knowledge conversion
processes
• Is tacit and explicit knowledge mutually
constituted?
• Can our awareness of knowledge change over
time?

23. Jashapara, Knowledge Management: An Integrated Approach, 2nd Edition, © Pearson Education Limited 2011
Slide 2.23
PROCESS-BASED PERSPECTIVE
• Draws on social constructivism
• Emphasis on ‘knowing as a social and
organisational activity’
• Knowing is a form of sensemaking where
individuals develop meanings of the world
• Only reality is one of ideas and constituted by
our perceptions

24. Jashapara, Knowledge Management: An Integrated Approach, 2nd Edition, © Pearson Education Limited 2011
Slide 2.24
PROCESS-BASED PERSPECTIVE
(CONTINUED)
• Knowing is dynamic and subject to change
• Knowing is uncertain as intersubjectivity and
interpretations may change
• Knowing is context dependent and inseparable
from social context
• Isolates mental activity as distinctive feature
of self

25. Jashapara, Knowledge Management: An Integrated Approach, 2nd Edition, © Pearson Education Limited 2011
Slide 2.25
POSTMODERNISM
• Postmodernists emphasise diversity of world,
plurality of perspectives and difficulty of
obtaining reliable knowledge
• ‘Incommensurability’ – cannot understand
radically different discourses while retaining
own beliefs
• Can protect favoured discourses from criticism

26. Jashapara, Knowledge Management: An Integrated Approach, 2nd Edition, © Pearson Education Limited 2011
Slide 2.26
FEMINISM
• ‘Situated’ knowledge concerning power in what
constitutes knowledge
• Bears social context of sex, race and gender of
authors
• Argues certain positions more advantageous
than others
• Problematic as can assume research by white
males is distorted but not black females

27. Jashapara, Knowledge Management: An Integrated Approach, 2nd Edition, © Pearson Education Limited 2011
Slide 2.27
PRACTICE-BASED PERSPECTIVE
• Action is more primary than thought
• Knowing is inseparable from practice and
‘embedded’ in human activity
• Knowing is something we do rather than
possess
• Knowing and practice are mutually constituted

28. Jashapara, Knowledge Management: An Integrated Approach, 2nd Edition, © Pearson Education Limited 2011
Slide 2.28
PRACTICE-BASED PERSPECTIVE
(CONTINUED)
• Orlikowski (2007) argues that social and
material are ‘constitutively entangled’
• Uses metaphor of a ‘scaffold’ to describe how
ICT scaffolds and influences social activities
• Language conveys meaning but can be
‘ambiguous’ as knowledge depends on context
and social activity

29. Jashapara, Knowledge Management: An Integrated Approach, 2nd Edition, © Pearson Education Limited 2011
Slide 2.29
REALIST CONCEPTION
Figure 2.8 Realist conception of organisational knowledge (Jashapara 2007)

30. Slide 2.30
Reading and preparatory work to be done
Read:
• Jashapara, A. (2011) “ Knowledge Management:
An Integrated Approach” Pearson Education,
Chapter 2
Work to be done before the seminar:
• Carry out all the reading above
• Answer the questions on the handout
• Bring your work to the seminar
30
Jashapara, Knowledge Management: An Integrated Approach, 2nd Edition, © Pearson Education Limited 2011

31. Jashapara, Knowledge Management: An Integrated Approach, 2nd Edition, © Pearson Education Limited 2011
Slide 2.31
Essential work for next week
• Please consult the OLE for details of:
– Essential readings*
– Seminar/workshop preparation work*
– Recommended further readings
– Any additional learning
* Essential readings and preparation work must always be completed in time
for the next session
31

32. Jashapara, Knowledge Management: An Integrated Approach, 2nd Edition, © Pearson Education Limited 2011
Slide 2.32
End of presentation
© Pearson College 2013