Investigating the Contradictions in Knowledge Management

Numerous contradictions are apparent in the knowledge management literature. For instance, tacit knowledge is regarded as an organization’s primary source of competitive advantage. Knowledge management and organizational learning theories instruct organizations how to make this tacit unarticulatable knowledge, which is typically embedded in individuals, explicit and part of the organization’s knowledge repository. However, once this tacit knowledge is explicit, it is vulnerable to replication, implying a loss of a firm’s competitive advantage. Does this mean that the attempt to manage knowledge could destroy an organization’s knowledge advantage? In order to explore this and other contradictions, this paper reviews some of the knowledge management literature in the areas of strategy, management, and information systems. Applying Burrell and Morgan’s (1979) paradigms of social and organizational inquiry, this paper categorizes the research in knowledge management according to its assumptions about knowledge and the nature of social order. This paper suggests that the contradictions are associated with each paradigm’s enabling and constraining qualities.