Managing Knowledge in Organizations: An Integrative Framework and Review of Emerging Themes

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].. INFORMS is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Management Science. which knowledge management occurs are represented on the other dimension. These properties , which affect knowledge management outcomes, can be organized according to whether they are properties of a unit (e.g., individual, group, organization) involved in knowledge management, properties of relationships between units or properties of the knowledge itself. The framework is used to identify where research findings about knowledge management converge and where gaps in our understanding exist. The article discusses mechanisms of knowledge management and how those mechanisms affect a unit's ability to create, retain and transfer knowledge. Emerging themes in the literature on knowledge management are identified. Directions for future research are suggested. Introduction Research on the topics of organizational learning and knowledge management has enjoyed an extended and prosperous history. The importance of these concepts for understanding the coordination of organizational activity can be traced back to the early writings of such influential thinkers as Adam Smith, who described the pin-making example as an illustration of how specialization promoted experience-based learning (Smith 1776/1937); Alfred Marshall, who argued that good ideas are quickly picked up and discussed by others in regional agglomerations (Marshall 1920); and Max Weber, who described the ability of bureaucracies to learn from experience (Weber 1922/1978). It was the Carnegie school, best exemplified by the work March 1963), that transformed these rudimentary and largely anecdotal observations into a formal theory of organizational learning and knowledge management, however. Four decades later, the field is characterized by a wealth of empirical evidence and a wide array of theoretical perspectives. The highly differentiated nature of organizational learning and knowledge management is a hallmark of the field and is evident in the multitude of disciplinary perspectives brought to bear on the topic. As we noted in the introduction to this special issue, research on organizational learning and knowledge management spans the disciplines of economics, information systems, organizational behavior and Managing Knowledge in Organizations theory, psychology, strategic management, and sociology. This diversity has contributed to the rapid advance of the field by cultivating the simultaneous development …