Knowledge and Innovation

What is it about?

Knowledge management is a constantly expanding field. Like any research area, it is shot through with complex questions. This is certainly the case with regard to boundaries, as they constitute both a bounding line that has to be crossed if the knowledge required for innovation is to be diffused and a form of protection for scientific and technological organisations and institutions. The studies published in this special issue clearly illustrate this complexity, as they are concerned with processes, such as learning, the dynamic of expertise, the joint creation of knowledge, the resource-based view, brokering activities, HRM (Human Resources Management) processes and the dynamics of scientific disciplines. The objects under investigation are very diverse; they include project teams, luxury hotels, urban projects, hospitals, clusters, the aeronautics industry and agricultural systems. These studies draw on approaches that have become established over time. There is a history behind the succession of approaches in the field of knowledge management (Snowden, 2002), so it may be useful to put these various pieces of research into context. The central question of this special issue is that of boundaries: between projects, between organisations, between types of knowledge, between scientific disciplines and, of course, between actors. This examination of boundaries leads to a state– of-the-art review that begins with the question of knowledge transfer. Van Wijk et al. (2008) consider the antecedents of the transfer considering three major topics: knowledge, organizational and network characteristics. We take a different approach using a historical approach to the concepts. Following Tsoukas (1996, 2009), we propose to criticize the dominant approach of the transfer. In addition, we want to show and comment the change from the concept of knowledge transfer to the concept of boundary. In a constructivist way (Le Moigne, 1994, Glasersfeld, 1995) and with Holford (2015), we propose the concept of boundary construction to underline the role of interactions “actors-objects-actors”. We start by noting the importance of the studies that laid the foundations of the knowledge dynamics within organisations. Thus, the variety of economic contexts and modalities of transfer is evoked; social capital and networks constituted key reference points for the analysis of knowledge transfer. Gradually, it became clear that what had emerged from an investigation of these various modalities of transfer was the importance of the quality of the relations between actors. In this sense, knowledge management is akin to much of organisation and communication theory. Nevertheless, certain gaps were identified in the theory, as it did not seem so easy to carry out transfers. This led in turn to attempts to identify the boundaries that were causing difficulties and that had to be crossed. This led, next, to an examination of the role of boundaries. What status could boundaries have when knowledge was expanding enormously within communities, and in particular, when communities were operating autonomously outside organisations? The same question arose when new actors appeared to establish methods of extracting knowledge and to assist the experts. Finally, we come face-to-face with knowledge management systems that have tended to redefine the forms that boundaries take.

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Photo by Jan Canty on Unsplash

Photo by Jan Canty on Unsplash