The New Organizational Knowledge and Its Systems Foundations

The New Organizational Knowledge for the 21st Century enterprise is imagined by some to reside principally in networked teams of information-sharing human experts. The firm’s human resources are judged in this environment to be its only sustainable competitive advantage. Z speculate that, to the contrary the New Organizational Knowledge will be increasingly more system based compared to person based. It will, however, change in composition. Relative to the past, it will be more core technical compared to administrative, more transactionoriented compared to production-oriented, and more global and industy-specific compared to IocaI andfirmspeci$c. A case illustrates. Z conclude that where sustainable competitive advantage can be achieved, it is likely to be based in technical, production-oriented, Jirmspeczftc business logic, and in the collective competence of the Jirm’s people and systems taken together. Several lessons for systems management follow.