Organizational Knowledge Acquisition

This article develops a model of organizational knowledge acquisition in terms of modern psychological, sociological, economic and management theories by deconstructing the terms involved: an organization as a collective agent having goals and capabilities to achieve them; knowledge as the hidden state variables imputed to an agent as the basis of its capabilities; and acquisition as the reproduction of dispositions. This form of model enables one to relate the knowledge processes involved to existing models of organizational processes, and to understand such phenomena as knowledge economics and knowledge management. The breadth of the notion of organization encompasses markets, firms and societies; the operational definition of knowledge clarifies its role and the utility of the notion; and the focus on reproduction of dispositions in knowledge acquisition enables the management of knowledge acquisition to be analyzed. ______________________________________________________________________________________