David Rooney

Handbook on the knowledge economy

The central motivation for assembling the contributions in this Handbook on the Knowledge Economy derives from the observation that many in government and business seem to have taken up the challenge of putting in place whatever is needed for a knowledge-based economy or a knowledge-based organization but very few appear to be inclined to explain what knowledge is or how it works socially, organizationally or economically. While there are good reasons for this situation, not knowing what knowledge is or how it works in any detail is problematic for those who are charged with managing or facilitating it. Policymakers would not consider constructing monetary policy without the input of some detailed knowledge of economics. Managers would not implement an information system without detailed input from knowledgeable information systems experts. Similarly, good knowledge of knowledge should be seen as essential for knowledge management and knowledge- related policy.

Mapping a 40-Year History With Leximancer: Themes and Concepts in the Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology

This article presents a study using Leximancer (a text-mining tool for visualizing the structure of concepts and themes in text) to track the history of the Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology’s (JCCP’s) research articles. We included 1,416 articles mapped by decade. Results reveal a strong overall orientation toward experimental psychology, with an early emphasis on child development. In more recent years, there has been a strong emphasis on the features of culture including values, orientation, and acculturation, with the journal now situated more centrally in social psychology and personality. JCCP is the most broad-based journal in cross-cultural psychology, and its development over 40 years clearly represents changes in the field.

A new role for place identity in managing organizational change

In an extension of organizational identity research, we draw on place identity theory (PIT) to argue that employees’ identification with their place of work influences their perceptions of large-scale organizational change. To determine how different types of employees respond to threats to their sense of place identity, we conducted 34 interviews with senior and middle managers, supervisory and nonsupervisory staff, and external stakeholders at a public hospital undergoing change. Groups of employees at lower levels of the organizational hierarchy experienced a stronger sense of place and belongingness and greater disruption to their place identity than those at higher levels. We discuss how place identity operates as a component of social identity as well as the responses managers can make to ways in which employees with different place identifications deal with change.

Wisdom in Organizations: Whence and Whither

We trace the genealogy of wisdom to show that its status in epistemological and management discourse has gradually declined since the Scientific Revolution. As the status of wisdom has declined, so the status of rational science has grown. We argue that the effects on the practice of management of the decline of wisdom may impede management practice by clouding judgment, degrading decision making and compromising ethical standards. We show that wisdom combines transcendent intellection and rational process with ethics to provide a balanced and integrated way of knowing, deciding and acting for managers in a complex and uncertain business environment. Finally, we discuss the role and value of wisdom across a range of business functions including knowledge management, strategic management, leadership and international business.

Wisdom and management in the knowledge economy

Today there are more technology, technologists, knowledge and experts than at any time in human history; but from a global perspective, it is difficult to argue that this accumulation of knowledge and technology has put the world in an unambiguously better position than it was in the past. Business is not getting any easier to do and major corporate collapses based on poor decisions, poor conduct, and poor judgement continue to occur. In public administration too, basic institutions and services (education, health, transport) seem to be continually undergoing “crises” of inadequate delivery and excessive pressure. Wisdom and Management in the Knowledge Economy explains why unwise managerial practice can happen in a world characterized by an excess of information and knowledge. Drawing on Aristotle’s idea of practical wisdom, the book develops a theory of social practice wisdom that addresses important social psychological and sociological dynamics that underpin wise management and organizations. As well as providing a detailed theory of social practice wisdom, this book considers practical issues in organizational communication, behavior, culture, change and knowledge as well as in HRM, leadership, ethics, strategy, international business, business education, and wisdom research. By introducing the notion of social practice wisdom, aspects of social structure, organizational culture, and organizational communication needed for wisdom to flourish are for the first time rendered visible in a way that opens new possibilities for wiser management, wiser organizations, and wisdom research.

Should the Knowledge‐based Economy be a Savant or a Sage? Wisdom and Socially Intelligent Innovation

Abstract Discourse about knowledge‐based economies rarely moves beyond the commercialization of science and engineering, and is locked in the discursive limits of functionalism. We argue that these discourses limit the scope of what knowledge‐based economies might achieve because they are uninformed by an adequate conception of knowledge. In particular, knowledge management and knowledge‐based economy discourse has not included the axiological dimension of knowledge that leads to wisdom. Taking an axiological perspective, we can discuss policy frameworks aimed at producing the social structures needed to bring fully formed and fully functioning knowledge societies into being. We argue that while the dominant discourse of industrial modernity remains rationalist, functionalist, utilitarian and technocratic, knowledge‐based economies will resemble a savant rather than a sage. A wisdom‐based renaissance of humanistic epistemology is needed to avoid increasing social dysfunction and a lack of wisdom in complex technological societies.

The future role of government in knowledge‐based economies

In this article, we draw together aspects of contemporary theories of knowledge (particularly organisational knowledge) and complexity theory to demonstrate how appropriate conceptual rigor enables both the role of government and the directions of policy development in knowledge-based economies to be identified. Specifically we ask, what is the role of government in helping shape the knowledge society of the future? We argue that knowledge policy regimes must go beyond the modes of policy analysis currently used in innovation, information and technology policy because they are based in an industrial rather than post-industrial analytical framework. We also argue that if we are to develop knowledge-based economies, more encompassing images of the future than currently obtain in policy discourse are required. We therefore seek to stimulate and provoke an array of lines of thought about government and policy for such economies. Our objective is to focus on ideas more than argument and persuasion.

History of Ideas in Management Communication Quarterly

For a quarter of a century, Management Communication Quarterly (MCQ) has published research about communication in the context of work. This article charts the intellectual history of MCQ to trace its epistemic, theoretical, and identity changes. The authors consider how the journal’s published research has changed, why it has changed, and what its future direction should be. The article also considers MCQ as a place for a community of scholars and the journal’s identity as a member of that community. In providing this empirical study of MCQ’s history, it is hoped that organizational communication scholars can consider further questions about their research, their journals, and their communities within the research tradition.

Shadowing Experiences and the Extension of Communities of Practice: A Case Study of Women Education Managers

Recent developments in workplace learning have focused on relational and social network views of learning that introduce practitioners to the norms, values and assumptions of the workplace as well as the learning processes through which knowledge is acquired. This article reports on a qualitative study of a mentoring programme designed to assist women education managers gain promotion by broadening their networks and stimulating insights into the senior management positions for which they were being prepared. The findings are that members reflexively assess and reassess goals and values to demystify knowledge and resolved cognitive dissonance in these processes. Moreover, this article shows that women participants learn from the networks, and that the networks learn from the participant in a reciprocal and informal way. The article concludes that organizational learning programmes must focus on enabling such networks to flourish.

The Knowing Nation: A Framework for Public Policy in a Post-industrial Knowledge Economy

As the global economy becomes more knowledge intensive and the wealth of nations more dependent on their knowledge assets being harnessed, it is essential for policy makers to have frameworks for the development and utilisation of national knowledge assets. This article argues that a policy framework can be developed through which policy initiatives in a range of policy areas can be filtered in order to meet the challenges of the knowledge economy. We have developed an approach that has previously been applied to managing intellectual capital in firms and adapted it to the public policy arena. In doing so we question policy orthodoxies such as the assumption that free trade automatically facilitates international knowledge flows, that participation in a global knowledge economy necessarily challenges national sovereignty, and that online delivery of education is necessarily a progressive strategy.