Knowledge and Households

This chapter seeks to draw a parallel between organizations and households in the areas of knowledge and value creation. We introduce comparisons between firms and households because factors such as the nature of competition, collaboration, community and sharing within households provide examples of effective knowledge and value creation and exchange carried out within an ‘organization’-structured social unit. Our objective is to underpin the view that understanding of organizations can be improved by drawing out the analogy with households, where knowledge and value are created informally and holistically. Not just production can create value in the organization: value creation is also evident in the consumption decisions as they are made in households.