Living Knowledge : The Dynamics of Professional Service Work

Rating:
Summary: Knowledge management revisited
Review: This timely and important book is a highly unusual contribution in the field of knowledge management. The authors have identified the implicit dilemma in most knowledge management texts, i.e. while we know that organizational knowledge exists in practice and processes, it is most often treated as information to be gathered, stored and managed. In this book, the contributing authors have taken corrective action, and with good results. They treat knowledge as a property of living and breathing people and the social interaction they engage in.

The book is useful in a number of ways:

- First, the authors have developed a personal and unique viewpoint to knowledge management, which they validate through the extensive use of empirical insights, as experienced by the researchers themselves.

- Second, the authors make use of theories from continental philosophy and literature research in an accessible manner, thus offering introductions to theories and viewpoints novel to management scientists as well as practicing managers.

- Third, the book may also serve as a successful example of making good science out of organization development processes in which a researcher participates as an active change agent. While many management researchers are involved in such projects, we see too few academically satisfactory publications of such work.

I recommend this book to all adventurous practitioners and scholars interested or involved in knowledge management.