"Knowledge and knowledge creation : creation within and in-between organisations : a case study of the knowledge-activating forum Club Intelect, Madrid"

Abstract

This thesis deals with the concept of knowledge and knowledge-creation within and in-between organisations and investigates to what extent the knowledge-activating forum Club Intelect serves as a useful role in the creation and diffusion of knowledge within and in-between organisations. The thesis is divided into two parts where the first part consists of the theoretical and analytical framework and the second part consists of the case study of Club Intelect. In the first part, the thesis distinguishes between data, information and knowledge. Data is perceived as static, while knowledge and information are regarded as far more dynamic and reflexively interacting. This thesis argues that recent theoretical contributions on how to distinguish between data, information and knowledge, advocate the view of knowledge as context dependent. The notion that some knowledge is context dependent is based on an assumption that knowledge often contains a significant tacit component in addition to an explicit component. This thesis views knowledge as evolving on the continuum between the tacit and the explicit, as well as operating on the continuum between the individual and the collective. The concept of innovation includes in this thesis creations of processes as well as products that is set in widely commercial use. According to Antonelli (1999) and the OECD (1998), the standard neo-classical tradition tends to view knowledge as largely explicit and universally accessible, and hence not of unique value to any company or organisation. Likewise, the neo-classical economic approach sees the development of knowledge as a process that takes place outside the production and sales functions of an organisation and enters as input only. According to Antonelli (1999) and OECD (1998), recent contributions in economics argue that knowledge is largely tacit, context specific, difficult to access and thus not a free good. According to this view, knowledge is a resource to an organisation and its innovative capacity and seen as a resource in an interactive process of innovation, rather than merely input to the production and sales functions of an organisation. This thesis takes the approach of the knowledge-based view of organisations, as it argues that knowledge is of a company's competitive advantage. Thus, the thesis argues that there is a rationale for creating and diffusing knowledge within and among organisations.