Knowledge Management in Action?

This chapter is structured in two main parts. The first part offers a brief, and selfadmittedly stylized, overview and critique of dominant approaches to knowledge management and its links with innovation. Adopting a view of knowledge as socially constructed, it concludes from this that, where the specific purpose is innovation, then action concerns need to be as critical to knowledge management as cognitive or decision concerns. The second part draws upon a case study example to begin to draw out some key issues from a more action-oriented approach to knowledge management. This suggests, first, that innovation is often, by nature, a highly interactive process requiring knowledge and expertise from different functions and layers across the organization. In such cases cridcai problems concern the integration of knowledge across disparate, sometimes loosely formed, social groups and communities, rather than the accumulation of knowledge within communities. Second that if knowledge integration is to develop, then a more action-oriented perspective on knowledge management and the development of associated tools and technologies may be needed.