There is an increasing body of work in organization behavior, organization theory, strategic management, information systems, technology and innovation management, marketing, and in the fundamental disciplines of economics, psychology, and sociology that makes knowledge a central construct in theory and research. Common to most of these contributions is the intent to demonstrate the power of knowledge for explaining and predicting behavior, at the level of societies and economies (Stehr, 1994); industries (Arthur, 1997); firms and institutions (e.g. Nelson and Winter, 1982; Cohen and Levinthal, 1990; Grant, 1996; Spender, 1996; Kogut and Zander, 1992; Sabherwal and Sabherwal, 2005); networks (Dyer and Nobeoka, 2000); groups (Osterloh and Frey, 2000); and individuals (e.g. Cziksezentmihalyi, 1988). On the one hand, the knowledge construct has evolved since the cognitive revolution in the 1950s, and now bridges the chasm between cognition and action (von Krogh, Roos, and Slocum, 1994; Varela, Thompson, and Rosch, 1991). Knowledge gives rise to an array of behavioral patterns, decisions, and task solutions, observable in competent behavior. On the other hand, knowledge integrates individual and collective levels of analysis; what used to be a construct reserved for individual-level analysis, is now used by many scholars to explain and predict how individuals and groups mutually influence their thinking and acting (Nonaka and von Krogh, 2009).
For the purpose of this chapter, three important features of knowledge will be considered. The first is justified true beliefs. Individuals justify the truthfulness of their observations of the world, which depend on a unique viewpoint, personal sensibility, and individual experience (Nonaka and Takeuchi, 1995). When we have knowledge, we make sense of a situation by holding justified beliefs and committing to them.1 Second, knowledge enables action. Our beliefs and our commitment to them enable our actions in a situation, for example formulating a problem or resolving a task (Stehr, 1992; 1994; Nonaka and von Krogh, 2009). Third, knowledge is both explicit and tacit (Nonaka, 1994). Some knowledge can be put on paper, formulated in sentences, or captured in drawings. Engineers, for example, convey knowledge of a product design through drawings and specifications, making what they know explicit. Yet, other kinds of knowledge are tied to the senses, movement skills, physical experiences, rules of thumb, and intuition (Merleau-Ponty, 1995). Such tacit knowledge can be costly to describe to others. Putting together the pieces of a high-precision luxury watch, for instance, or interpreting a complex seismic readout of an oil reservoir, demands knowledge that cannot be found in a procedure or easily conveyed to an apprentice. While the idea of tacit knowledge makes intuitive sense for most people, managers often have a hard time coming to grips with it on a practical level. Recognizing the value of tacit knowledge, that is, figuring out how to use it to enhance task performance, has become the key challenge for knowledge management practice in many organizations (Choo, 1998; Schulze and Hoegl, 2006).
Because of the merging of collective and individual cognition and action, and the power of explaining and predicting, scholars of organizational learning and knowledge management addressed the need for a more coherent body of research on how cognition and action could be tied to organizational performance. The central quest for knowledge management research became performance enhancement through various activities, enabling conditions, and information and communication technology tools that took into account the serendipitous and ambiguous nature of knowledge (Kluge, Stein, and Licht, 2001; Serenko et al., 2010). The research opportunities along these dimensions are still vast, but in order to progress fruitfully, we need to pay more attention to one of the core questions that bridges the chasm between individual and collective levels: why, and under what circumstances, do people share knowledge in organizations? While we understand how knowledge sharing occurs—for example, by organizational units transferring best practices (Szulanski, 1996)—recent research suggests this problem has yet to be fully understood (Gaechter, von Krogh, and Haefliger, 2010).
In this chapter, light will be shed on the issue of knowledge sharing through a collective action framework, and two possible solutions to the sharing problem will be identified: the use of agency and the nurturing of a communal resource.2 Whether or not a community is a resource for knowledge sharing depends on the interests of its affiliates. Generally, we do not assume that people in organizations have stable and shared interests (March, 1962). However, if there is some evolutionary stability of contributing to and benefiting from the community, over time, people may explore opportunities for joint learning in accordance with their interests. In this chapter some conditions enabling this stability will be discussed.