Explorations in Information Space: Knowledge, Actors, and Firms

Abstract

Humankind has always lived in a knowledge society. Yet, although we have been discussing the problem of valid knowledge since Plato and probably before, it was only in the second half of the 20th century that such knowledge came to be seen as an economic resource in its own right rather than as a support for the exploitation of other, more physical economic resources such as land, labour power, energy, etc. In recent years, a new specialization, knowledge management, has evolved to address some of the issues associated with the production and distribution of knowledge. It builds on the idea that organizations do not make good use of their knowledge resources and waste much of these. Knowledge management, however, still lacks a founding theory focused on the nature of knowledge and knowledge flows. The problem is that we cannot have a credible theory of how to manage knowledge in the firm without first developing a knowledge-based theory of the firm. The purpose of this book is to provide some theoretical perspective on the nature of organizationally relevant knowledge and to indicate the kind of research that might generate empirically testable hypotheses and further the development of a knowledge-based theory of the firm. Our theorizing builds on a conceptual framework-the Information-Space or I-Space-by means of which we explore how knowledge first emerges, and then gets articulated, diffused, and absorbed by a population of agents. © Max H. Boisot, Ian C. MacMillan, and Kyeong Seok Han 2007. All rights reserved.