Knowledge, narrations and connoisseurship: revisiting the foundations of knowledge management

Byline: Georg Schreyogg, Daniel Geiger This paper attempts to revise the bases of the knowledge discussion in the field of knowledge management. The point of departure is the striking discrepancy between the great importance attributed to knowledge (knowledge economy, knowledge resources, knowledge-intensive firms, etc.) on the one hand and the largely vague and all-embracing conceptualisations of knowledge on the other hand. It is suggested that the concept of knowledge be reformulated in a much more selective and reflective way to provide an adequate template for the academic field of knowledge management. Concepts from the communicative theory of action, discourse analysis and constructivism are integrated to provide a model of the antecedents, processes and implications of a selective notion of knowledge.