Knowledge Governance: Call for Papers
18 October 2006 at 2:03 am Nicolai Foss 1 comment
| Nicolai Foss |
My co-blogger recently blogged (here) on the newly launched International Journal of Strategic Change Management which has a heavy O&M representation (i.e., Peter, I and former O&M guest blogger Joe Mahoney) on its editorial board . As Peter mentioned, Oliver Williamson has just joined IJSCM as consulting editor.
Joe Mahoney, I and the editor of IJSCM, Patricia Ordonez de Pablos, will edit a special issue of IJSCM on “Knowledge Governance.” (For an attempt to characterize knowledge governance as an emerging field in management, see this paper; forthcoming in a slightly revised version in Organization).
Here is the Call for Papers:
Call for Papers
Special Issue of the Internal Journal of Strategic Change Management (IJSCM)
“Knowledge Governance”
Edited by
Nicolai J. Foss, Copenhagen Business School
Joseph T. Mahoney, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Patricia Ordonez de Pablos, University of Oviedo
“Knowledge” has been a major research focus for more than a decade in a number of fields in management studies. A knowledge-based approach that cuts across traditionally separate disciplines has emerged based on the view that the management of knowledge is increasingly becoming a critical issue for competitive dynamics, international strategy, the accumulation and deployment of resources, the boundaries of firms, and many other issues.
The Strategic Management field has developed a number of approaches emphasizing knowledge (e.g., the knowledge-based view of the firm, and the dynamic capabilities approach); the International Business field is developing a view of the multinational corporation as a knowledge-based entity; network ideas emphasizing connections between knowledge nodes — often based on sociology ideas on network ties — are becoming increasingly influential, and knowledge management has become not only a huge body of research literature, but also a widespread organizational practice.
A common, though by no means uncontroversial, assertion in these research literatures is that knowledge processes can be governed. The concept of “governing knowledge processes” means choosing governance structures (e.g. markets, hybrids, hierarchies) and coordination mechanisms (e.g., contracts, directives, reward schemes, incentives, trust, management styles, organizational culture, etc.), for the purpose of influencing processes of transferring, sharing and creating knowledge.
The relation between governance issues and knowledge processes is an under-researched area, both theoretically and empirically, in comparison with writings concerning the characteristics of knowledge, knowledge taxonomies, how knowledge may be disseminated within and between organizations and the philosophical foundations of knowledge. To date, however, there has been little consideration of research heuristics linking governance and knowledge.
The purpose of this special issue of IJSCM is to advance our understanding of “knowledge governance.” We invite manuscripts on the philosophical and methodological foundations of knowledge governance, theorizing pertaining to knowledge governance, and empirical work. Manuscripts may deal with issues such as:
• What is the proper unit of analysis for knowledge governance? Knowledge transactions? Problems? Capabilities?
• What are the limits to governing knowledge? Are there forms of knowledge (e.g., tacit knowledge) that cannot meaningfully be “governed”?
• How do characteristics of knowledge map into efficient choice of governance structures and coordination mechanisms? What are the causal links?
• What are the disciplines and insights we need to further our understanding of knowledge governance? How far can organizational economics take us? And where do we need insights from organizational sociology and psychology?
Please send your manuscripts to Patricia Ordonez de Pablos (patriop@uniovi.es) -Editor in Chief of the Internal Journal of Strategic Change Managemen- and with cc copy to ijscm@inderscience.com, no later than 1 May 2007. Submitted manuscripts will be reviewed in the same manner as a submission for a regular issue of IJSCM, and contributors will be informed about the status of their manuscript by 1 September 2007. We expect publication to take place in 2008.
Editors:
Prof. Nicolai J. Foss
Center for Strategic Management and Globalization
Copenhagen Business School
Porcelainshaven 24
2000 Frederiksberg
Denmark
njf.smg@cbs.dk
Prof. Joseph T. Mahoney
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Department of Business Administration
College of Business
140C Wohlers Hall 1206 Sixth Street
Champaign, IL 61820
USA
Email: josephm@express.cites.uiuc.edu
Prof. Patricia Ordonez de Pablos
Dept. Business Administration
University of Oviedo
Facultad de Ciencias Economicas
Avd del Cristo, s/n
33.071 Oviedo- Asturias
Spain
Email: patriop@uniovi.es
Entry filed under: - Foss -, Strategic Management, Theory of the Firm.
Organizations and Markets 
1.
JmW | 18 October 2006 at 3:41 am
It seems to me that mergers and reforms aimed at creating bigger organizational units are increasingly – at least in rhetorical terms – motivated by the wish to improve knowledge management. For instance, soon to be reforms within the Danish public sector, which will create bigger muncipalities, universities, police offices and courts, can in general not be justified by the usual reference to economics of scale, because it has not been documented that the existing smaller units are less economically efficient than the existing larger units. Instead it is alluded that the mergers will somehow result in a much better utilisation of knowledge (and thus a higher quality of output).
This may be so. However, if one reads some of the pop management literature on the subject, for instance Thomas W. Malone’s “The Future of Work” (Harvard Business School Press, 2004), one doesn’t exactly get the impression that future excellence of konwledge management is to be found in large bureacratic organizations
I suspect that the the question of how organizational size might affect the quality of knowledge processes falls within the category of relations between governance issues and knowledge that the above mentioned Call for Papers refers to as an “under-researched area, both theoretically and empirically”. Anyone who can point to decent research on this subject? Or do we have to wait until the publishing of the special issue of IJSCM in 2008?