The intranet and the management of making and using skills
- 2001
Most knowledge-related initiatives underlying the much-vaunted discourse on knowledge management tend to lionise recursive, using activities (i.e. documenting, sharing and measuring knowledge, etc.) and the expense of making and innovative using activities (such as inventing, innovating and designing).An over-emphasis on recursive use of codified knowledge can stifle entrepreneurial creativity. In discussing the tension between making and using skills, the paper draws on case study material derived from a rapidly expanding firm where the implementation of the intranet is considered as a "creativity killer", an infrastructure that supports recursive using activities. Employees remained faithful to their informal,social networks, referred to as "community of practive", as the principal mode of sharing and developing knowledge. One of the main implication of the study is that firms that mainly rely on activities of making - a characteristic of firms that are in their initial and expanding phases - shoud put premium on a collaborative infrastructure that promotes making activities
Knowledge-based Systems Skills Infrastructure Growth Sweden