Publication
Slow Knowledge
Publisher:
IGI Global
Date:
2013
DOI:
10.4018/978-1-4666-1969-2.CH014
Abstract: Breathless announcements of the latest information access devices occupy whole sections of our daily news, itself increasingly accessed online and on-the-go. This reinforces to the manager or educator the conventional wisdom that strategies for developing organisational capabilities inherently involve ever-quicker access and sharing of information—a belief reflected widely in organisational learning and strategy literatures. However, Knowledge Management’s role in translating learning into performance-enhancing capabilities remains opaque “macro” evaluations are too abstract, leading to recent calls for empirical or “micro” studies. Furthermore, while rare breakthroughs attract headlines and research, customers and clients are mostly won or lost in the more mundane interactions of daily work. The evolution of organisational capabilities and how they rely on the medium of knowledge practices can be unpacked using the construct of an organisation’s “absorptive capacity,” a construct essentially unknown to KM. That construct can be improved by incorporating “tempo” as a crucial design and governance element. Analysing KM practices as supporting absorptive capacity is a new idea that provides both the manager and the educator with implementable recommendations. A detailed case study identifies the four key factors of capability development via KM, highlighting that “slow knowledge”—gearing knowledge processes to the appropriate absorptive capacity framework—can yield more effective organisational outcomes.