Research Utilisation & Knowledge Mobilisation: A Scoping Review of the Literature

Organizational knowledge is much talked about but little understood. In this paper we set out to conceptualize organizational knowledge and explore its implications for knowledge management. We take on board Polanyi’s insight concerning the personal character of knowledge and fuse it with Wittgenstein’s insight that all knowledge is, in a fundamental way, collective. We do this in order to show, on the one hand, how individuals appropriate knowledge and expand their knowledge repertoires, and, on the other hand, how knowledge, in organized contexts, becomes organizational. Our claim is that knowledge is the individual capability to draw distinctions, within a domain of action, based on an appreciation of context or theory, or both. Organizational knowledge is the capability members of an organization have developed to draw distinctions in the process of carrying out their work, in particular concrete contexts, by enacting sets of generalizations whose application depends on historically evolved collective understandings. Following our theoretical exploration of organizational knowledge, we report the findings of a case study carried out at a call centre in Panafon, in Greece. Finally, we explore the implications of our argument by focusing on the links between knowledge and action on the one hand, and the management of organizational knowledge on the other. We argue that practical mastery needs to be supplemented by a quasi-theoretical understanding of what individuals are doing when they exercise that mastery, and this is what knowledge management should be aiming at. Knowledge management, we suggest, is the dynamic process of turning an unreflective practice into a reflective one by elucidating the rules guiding the activities of the practice, by helping give a particular shape to collective understandings, and by facilitating the emergence of heuristic knowledge. Tsoukas & Vladimirou (2001)’s theoretical overview of the literature makes an important connection between knowledge and organization. People learn in communities of practice, communities of practice have shared rules and, through their application, the organisation becomes a set of rules, leading to an abstract notion of ‘organisation-as-theory’. The collective sense of meaning confers norms, so that organisation-as-theory becomes organisation-as-network in which organisation is conceived as “a densely connected network of communication through which shared understandings are achieved” (p 981). In the study of the Customer Care Department at Panafon, help-desk operators used intuition and uncodified learned knowledge to answer customer queries. Tsoukas and Vladimirou observed that individuals do not understand generalised rules or codified knowledge until they are able to test them against personal experience; they “comprehend the general by relating it to the particular they are confronted with”. The consequence for organisations is that, to manage this aspect of organisational knowledge, “a SDO project (08/1801/220)  Queen's Printer and Controller of HMSO 2010 68 company must strive to sustain a spirit of community at work, to encourage employees to improvise and undertake initiatives of their own, as well as actively maintain a sense of corporate mission” (p991). 5.5. 2 Interesting paper – methodological debate Box 16 Abstract from Tranfield, Denyer & Smart (2003) Abstract: Undertaking a review of the literature is an important part of any research project. The researcher both maps and assesses the relevant intellectual territory in order to specify a research question which will further develop the knowledge base. However, traditional ‘narrative’ reviews frequently lack thoroughness, and in many cases are not undertaken as genuine pieces of investigatory science. Consequently they can lack a means for making sense of what the collection of studies is saying. These reviews can be biased by the researcher and often lack rigour. Furthermore, the use of reviews of the available evidence to provide insights and guidance for intervention into operational needs of practitioners and policymakers has largely been of secondary importance. For practitioners, making sense of a mass of often-contradictory evidence has become progressively harder. The quality of evidence underpinning decision-making and action has been questioned, for inadequate or incomplete evidence seriously impedes policy formulation and implementation. In exploring ways in which evidence-informed management reviews might be achieved, the authors evaluate the process of systematic review used in the medical sciences. Over the last fifteen years, medical science has attempted to improve the review process by synthesizing research in a systematic, transparent, and reproducible manner with the twin aims of enhancing the knowledge base and informing policymaking and practice. This paper evaluates the extent to which the process of systematic review can be applied to the management field in order to produce a reliable knowledge stock and enhanced practice by developing context-sensitive research. The paper highlights the challenges in developing an appropriate methodology. Undertaking a review of the literature is an important part of any research project. The researcher both maps and assesses the relevant intellectual territory in order to specify a research question which will further develop the knowledge base. However, traditional ‘narrative’ reviews frequently lack thoroughness, and in many cases are not undertaken as genuine pieces of investigatory science. Consequently they can lack a means for making sense of what the collection of studies is saying. These reviews can be biased by the researcher and often lack rigour. Furthermore, the use of reviews of the available evidence to provide insights and guidance for intervention into operational needs of practitioners and policymakers has largely been of secondary importance. For practitioners, making sense of a mass of often-contradictory evidence has become progressively harder. The quality of evidence underpinning decision-making and action has been questioned, for inadequate or incomplete evidence seriously impedes policy formulation and implementation. In exploring ways in which evidence-informed management reviews might be achieved, the authors evaluate the process of systematic review used in the medical sciences. Over the last fifteen years, medical science has attempted to improve the review process by synthesizing research in a systematic, transparent, and reproducible manner with the twin aims of enhancing the knowledge base and informing policymaking and practice. This paper evaluates the extent to which the process of systematic review can be applied to the management field in order to produce a reliable knowledge stock and enhanced practice by developing context-sensitive research. The paper highlights the challenges in developing an appropriate methodology. Tranfield, Denyer & Smart (2003), dealing with health-related subject matter but published in generic management literature, polarise the approaches of narrative and systematic methods of acquiring knowledge in the form of literature reviews. They argue that narrative reviews lack rigour and that the systematic approach applied in biomedical sciences offers a more comprehensive and therefore valid methodology. The question ‘how do we know what we know? ’ becomes a methodological question. The debate between hard and soft dimensions of management knowledge was stimulated by Tranfield & Starkey (1998) who argued that a hierarchy of management evidence was possible, in spite of ambiguous and diffuse notions of context, stakeholder perspectives, contestability and challenges to authority. In spite of the explicit distinctions between medical and management knowledge bases, Tranfield et al conclude that systematic reviews are the underpinning of ‘pragmatic’ research, aiming to be both relevant and rigorous (Hodgkinson et al, 2001). They put a marker in the sand against SDO project (08/1801/220)  Queen's Printer and Controller of HMSO 2010 69 which any evidence review can test itself. In effect, Evidence Based (or Informed or Aware) Management is exhorted to learn from Evidence Based Medicine. Box 17 Differences between medical research and management research Source: Tranfield, Denyer & Smart, 2003) SDO project (08/1801/220)  Queen's Printer and Controller of HMSO 2010 70 6. Information systems & technology (Phase 1 management literature) IS/IT solutions to knowledge management are practical, perhaps too much so. IS/IT is a way of codifiying knowledge. In recent years, the focus of interest has been moving away from technical challenges towards the human factor in making systems work. The papers assigned to this domain of Information Systems and Information Technology (IS/IT) tend to be of two types: either highly empirical, surveying or testing out technical solutions, or they take a philosophical overview of knowledge and consider how IS/IT might best accommodate these perspectives. IS/IT is the traditional domain of knowledge management and EasterbySmith et al (2000) notes that 70% of publications on knowledge management up to the year 2000 had been written by information technology specialists focusing on technical details such as database design. He noted that the debate was changing towards an interest in the humandimension, since social factors were impairing IS/IT implementation. Among the journals dedicated to IS/IT, e.g. ‘Journal of the American Society for Information, Science and Technology’ ‘Administrative Science Quarterly’ and ‘Journal of Information Science’ and ‘Information Systems Journal’, the papers cover the gamut of subject domains in our scoping review. This section deals with papers that focus on the role of IS/IT itself. 6.1 What trends are emerging? There is a trajectory of questions starting with ‘what knowledge? ’ at the beginning of the review pe