Managing Organizational Knowledge and Competence Post- Merger: Practice, Context and Layers

The aim of this paper is to explore the meaning of ‘knowledge’ and ‘management’. It does so, through discussing the case study of a collaborative action-research project which worked with a post-merger organization. The paper takes a practice perspective (Brown and Diguid, 2001) and takes the reader through the post-merger attempts to manage the knowledge and capabilities constituting the new organization. The paper proposes looking at post-merger organizational processes, such as integration, as a ‘web-spinning’ process. It is suggested that paying attention to context and ‘layers of relevance’ (Schuetz, 1944) may enrich the ‘knowledge management’ literature.