Monica Kennedy

Knowledge Management and Effective University Governance

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to describe the relationship between governance and knowledge management in an Australian university, paying attention to the ways in which the notions of knowledge, constructions of the role of governing councils and shared understandings about performance in committee roles, might impact on the universitys future success. Design/methodology/approach – Earls taxonomy of knowledge is extended to reflect more recent literature and used as the framework of analysis for a qualitative case study which is based on observations and interview data garnered from key governance committees. Findings – The paper illustrates that effective governance and strategic success are dependent on appropriate knowledge manipulation activities. The authors conclude that in the case example, the types of knowledge targeted are narrow and committee members are focused on processes that do not effectively enable the creation or transfer of knowledge. Research limitations/implications – This is a single case study and further research would be required in order to confirm the exploratory findings. Practical implications – An important shift in improving effective knowledge strategies in the organisation will involve the reconceptualisation of the role of knowledge in the university. Originality/value – This paper makes two major contributions to the literature; the extension of Earls typology to reflect current knowledge management literature, and the identification of a lack of knowledge management as a major weakness in university governance. The paper begins to unravel the practical issues that constrain strategic decision making.

Knowledge management: the missing link in DMO crisis management?

Despite some recognition of the role of destination marketing organisations (DMOs) in crisis management, limited attention has focused on the role of DMOs in crisis events, and in particular their role in managing knowledge across diverse stakeholder groups and domains. This theoretical paper attempts to address this deficiency by synthesising knowledge management and tourism crisis management literature, to outline the potential role of DMOs in managing knowledge across boundaries during crises. Carliles [(2004). Transferring, translating, and transforming: An integrative framework for managing knowledge across boundaries. Organization Science, 15(5), 555–568] work on boundary spanning is used to consider potential organisational and management issues for DMOs dealing with crisis events and how they should be managed. This paper argues that because of the role and nature of DMOs, they should play an important role as knowledge spanners/brokers to transfer, translate and transform knowledge to stakeholders. The paper concludes with future research avenues related to knowledge management, DMOs and crises.

Divergent Approaches to Knowledge and Innovation in the Public Sector

This review of the knowledge management literature reveals differences between mainstream and public sector literatures. This is demonstrated in the predominant representation of managerialist perspectives of knowledge in organizations in the public sector literature and the relative lack of reference to contemporary practice-based perspectives. It is argued that the resulting gap has implications for public sector innovation and effectiveness. The review underlines the paucity of public sector case studies that present organizational practices as emergent, self-organizing sites of knowledge in action.

Corporate Social Responsibility and Individual Resistance: Learning as the Missing Link in Implementation

This article uses organisational learning literature to explore how employees’ orientations to corporate social responsibility, mental models and assessments of organisations’ espoused and enacted values, impact upon the success of corporate social responsibility programmes and actions. Work by Aguilera et al. (2007) is used to consider the potential dissonance between individual and organisational motives for corporate social responsibility. This theoretical article discusses the role of motives and learning within change. It contemplates both the role of motives held within mental models as a crucial factor in the successful adoption of effective corporate social responsibility practices and the function of learning practices in the support of corporate social responsibility change. Its contribution is in its focus at the level of the individual employee and in its challenge to assumptions about the relationship between individual and organisational motives for corporate social responsibility implementation. It is argued that effective implementation of corporate social responsibility requires organisations to consider both the role of learning and unlearning. Furthermore, organisations need to provide active support for the development of mental models about corporate social responsibility to prevent the development of dissonance between individual and organisational dispositions towards it.

Practice-Based Learning in Higher Education: Jostling Cultures

The collection of papers that comprise this edited monograph addresses issues confronting universities’ attempts to integrate practice-based learning in higher education curriculum. It is through accounts and analyses of activities that the kinds and extents of this jostling of cultures within and amongst the academy, industry, government and professional bodies and other educational providers become evident. The contributions, in different ways, engage theory in practices (Price et al.2009) through appraisals of a range of issues in the recognition and implementation of practice based learning initiatives. The contributions explore the epistemologies, structures, politics, histories and rituals that both support and constrain opportunity and success in students’ experiences, and illuminating the issues, practices and factors that shape the processes and outcome of educational efforts to integrate experiences in both practice and educational settings, each of which has their own distinct cultures, practice within their communities (Gherardi 2009).

A Comparative Analysis of Conceptions of Knowledge and Learning in General and Public Sector Literature 2000–2009

In this article we analyze the ways in which concepts of “knowledge” and “learning” are represented in public sector management literature and compare these with contemporary concepts in the broader knowledge management and organizational learning disciplines. Gaps and differences between the two sets of literature are discussed and clarified. How differences emerge and are displayed is discussed, and implications for the variation on practice and organizational effectiveness in the public sector are presented. The articles contribution is in its illustration of the gap between representations of knowledge and learning in public sector literature and the disciplinary literature in knowledge management and organizational learning.

'Sometimes, to Change the People, You've Got to Change the People': When Learning is Not Enough

This paper discusses organisational learning and change management in a major change in an Australian University. The qualitative data highlight the issues faced in the management of change, particularly in the institutionalised resistance of organisational members. Analysis suggests that the development and consolidation of shared genres of doubt about organisational information and leadership intentions accommodated entrenched resistance. In discussion, this paper revisits previous literature in change management and organisational learning that highlights the impact of the misalignment between learning and organisational imperatives. Discussion of the findings illustrates the ways in which organisational genres of doubt have the ability to undermine strategic intent in change. The findings may be used to inform change leaders about the factors that can contribute to change failure. It may also be used to alert managers to the complex relationship between change management prescriptions and organisational members’ learning and subsequent behaviour in times of change.

Introduction to the Special Symposium on Knowledge Management and Public Administration: Good Bedfellows or Potential Sparring Partners

There has been a dramatic rise in the discussions around knowledge management and innovation within the public management arena in the last six years. Advocates of the fields of research argue that they enable agility, novelty, and value creation in policy development, policy implementation, and service delivery. However, there is an argument that attention to knowledge and innovation is often overly linear and simplistic and that, if more complex or practice-based approaches were made, the potential public administration outcomes would be quite different. Gherardi (2009a) argues that practice is more than just “routine” or “what people really do,” rather it is located in the significant pattern of how conduct or activity takes place: “Theories of practice assume an ecological model in which agency is distributed between humans and non-humans and in which the relationality between the social world and materiality can be subjected to inquiry” (Gherardi, 2009a, p. 115). In other words, it is the interplay between items that convey knowledge (such as objects, reports, money, or texts) and the individuals who create and transfer a practice that will reveal knowledge. While there are differences in terms of defining what is meant by practice-based study (Geiger, 2009; Burford et al., 2011) there is agreement that it is concerns something that has become socially recognisable or legitimised by being stabilised and institutionalised (Gherardi, 2009a); thus practices provide agreed ways of doing things. This stabilisation does not ossify the practice,

Knowledge Claims and Values in Higher Education

The integration of practice-based learning experiences in higher education is somewhat problematic—traditional ideas about what knowledge is, where is resides, how it is justified and its relative certainty and simplicity are at odds with the notions of practice-based knowledge. Practice-based knowledge is recognised to be personal, contested, contingent and reliant upon individual meaning making while university traditions have built on the assumption that knowledge exists as discrete facts developed distributed and institutionalised in good research by expert authorities.

Review Section: Extended Review Producing Management Knowledge: Research as Practice JAN LÖWSTEDT and TORBJÖRN STJERNBERG (eds). London: Routledge, 2006. 281 pp. £24.99 (pbk). ISBN—13 978—0415384391

In Producing Management Knowledge the editors Löwstedt and Stjernberg have gathered together a wide range of perspectives that are coherent with a central conviction— that context, interaction, learning and knowledge production are entwined in the practice of management and of management research. The editors and contributing authors also clearly demonstrate the fuzzy boundaries between those who create, mediate and use management knowledge. Research is described in this text on research methods not just as a creative process in which researcher and practitioner needs, emotions, power relations and values are recognized, but also as a learning process in which researcher and research participant become enlightened through the iteration of the worlds of theory and of practice (Sims, p. 44). Löwstedt and Stjernberg’s introduction highlights the relationship between the contributors and emphasizes the importance of this research relationship to the cohesiveness of the book. The contributors are colleagues and a community of scholars and authors who have in common a focus on research which involves researcher and practitioner in interaction. This ‘community of inquiry’ (p. 217) comprises ‘Small groups of people who do joint research projects, share practices and interact intensively’. What emerges from their interaction is what Löwstedt and Stjernberg call an ‘interlinked social knowledge system’ (p. 10) which provides a spectrum of coherent yet varying and sometimes contrasting perspectives on the practice of research and of management. The book’s early chapters include reflections by authoritative researchers in management, Michael Earl and David Sims. These chapters are each distinctive in their approach to researching organization, and yet, the resonance between the two is striking and thought-provoking. Earl’s lively description of three issue-driven research projects introduces his use of triangulation and its value as an iterative device. While his discussion is apologetic of its ‘academic’ stance, this contribution has a clear management focus. Earl recognizes that issue-driven research can be seen as atheoretical and addresses this concern through work that focuses on grounded theory development rather than the collection of ‘proof ’. In this chapter Earl effectively blends practitioner and academic perspectives where research ‘iterates between worlds of theory and practice’ (Sims, p. 44).