Student
UvA-net ID
Emiel van Kampen
10643966
Title
The Knowing Organization: How organisations use
and make decisions.
Choo, Chun Wei
1996
International journal of information management
16
5
329-340
Author
Year of publication
Journal
Volume
Issue
Pages
Source
http://www.sciencedirect.com.proxy.uba.uva.nl:2048/science/article/pii
/0268401296000205
Keywords
Knowledge, learning, organizations, change,
innovation,
Abstract
Organizations use information in three different areas to establish reliable
strategic choices. In the current dynamic and uncertain world making these
reliable strategic decisions determines the organizations capacity to adapt and
grow. The fundament of making proper strategic decisions is realized within
sense making and knowledge creation. In this research the aspects of making
sense of the changes in the environment, creating new knowledge for innovation
and finally make decisions for organizational strategy and actions are connected
as complimentary processes. The model that can be used to identify how to make
sense of information extracted from the organizations environments is the first
building block towards a knowing organization that is able to adapt and change.
The second building block helps to understand and identify how to convert tacit
knowledge into explicit knowledge. Since tacit knowledge is in the minds of
individuals, it has to be converted into knowledge that can be valuable for the
organization. The converting can be done by socialization, externalization,
combination and internalization. The created knowledge is used as input for the
rational decision making process were organizations determine their goals and
actions in order to react on their environment. The decision making process
incorporates the information gathered and created in the two previous
processes. During this decision making, the information is processed to create
scenario’s of the organization in it’s environment and will balance the different
scenario’s with criteria like feasibility, pros and cons. This results in actions that
changes the environment and creates new experiences that can be converted in a
new cycle. If an organization is able to establish these processes as a whole, it
can be called a “knowing organization”. These organizations can effectively
make use of information to constantly innovate and learn from their
environment and the members of the organization.
Discussion
It seems that knowing organizations are operating in a small cycle that covers
only the left part of the adaptive cycle model. When organization are exploring
their environment and converting knowledge into useful information, they are
acting in an entrepreneurial way. Based on the created information and
knowledge, decisions are made to incorporate those into routines and the
organizational actions. This tends to the equilibrium phase where an
organization is stable. According to the research of Choo, an organization can
avoid the crisis phase by executing the “knowledge organization” processes and
incorporating them in their workflows of gathering information and knowledge.
In that case the organization will constantly learn and innovate what will result
in a vicious cycle of adapting internal and external information in order to make
this explicit for the organization. When the information is made explicit the
organization is able to make better strategic decisions and stabilize the
environment and the organization itself. From an abstract view this seems to be
the perfect cycle for an organization, but due to the time the article was written I
believe that this theory only applies to very old markets. In the current markets
as ICT, disruptive start-ups and products challenge all traditional companies and
are basically all players in a market in a constant crisis. This situation requires
not only a very adaptive way of determining strategy but also a very forwardlooking view on the environment and the capabilities of the organization.