This paper attempts a greater precision and clarity of understanding concerning the nature and economic significance of knowledge and its variegated forms by presenting "the skeptical economist's guide to 'tacit knowledge."' It critically reconsiders the ways in which the concepts of tacitness...

The process by which knowledge or information evolves and spreads through the economy evolves changing its nature between tacit and codified forms. The process of codification includes three aspects: model building, language creation and the writing of messages. Recent technical changes in...

The focus of this paper is on how humans reproduce their knowledge and understanding, their know-what and their know-how, in forms outside of themselves through inscription. The paper develops the analysis of inscription technologies in two phases. The first involves an examination of specific...

A systems analysis perspective is adopted to examine the critical properties of the Free/Libre/Open Source Software (FLOSS) mode of innovation, as reflected on the SourceForge platform (<italic>SF.net</italic>). This approach re-scales March's (<xref ref-type="bibr" rid="B58">1991</xref>) framework and applies it to characterize the “innovation...

This essay exposes the limitations of the 'logical origins' approach that has found favour among economists who seek to understand the workings of institutions in the past present. It pursues a different approach, applying functionalism in historical context to explain the emergence of the...