Purpose – To learn to avoid pitfalls there is need to accept and understand failures. This anonymous case study aims to report a major organisational failure due to the absence of effective knowledge management, where both the reasons for, and organisational consequences of, the failure are...

Prevailing views about what constitutes organisational knowledge need to be systematically evaluated at deep epistemological levels. We argue there is a need is to establish a new paradigm comprising of both a theoretical and an ontological foundation for thinking about knowledge epistemologies....

Knowledge-based groups or communities are complex systems that emerge, evolve and mature through stages that display specific features and capabilities of the community or group. Understanding these capabilities and features are fundamental to building sustainable economic, social and learning...

Organizations need to build and use knowledge to remain viable in the face of competition and change. Due to the limits of organization and the bounded rationality of individuals working within the organizations it is impossible to make all of the required knowledge accessible in explicit and...

If knowledge management is to be more than an art, it needs to be based on a sound epistemology and understanding of organizations. We present a paradigm and an ontology of organizational knowledge based on Karl Popper’s 1972 and later works on evolutionary epistemology, Maturana and...

It is difficult for large and geographically dispersed organisations to manage personal knowledge for easy discovery and sharing, especially in the areas of identification, indexing and codification of the knowledge held in people’s heads and the cultural issues of discovery, mutual trust and...

It is difficult for organizations to effectively manage personal knowledge so it can be mobilized, shared, and rewarded to benefit the organization. The difficulties are compounded in large organizations where people with potentially valuable knowledge are unknown to one another and dispersed...

Knowledge-based communities are important but poorly understood systems for helping enterprises maintain their organizational integrity and address organizational imperatives. Based on an autopoietic theory of organization, we examine the emergence and development of knowledge-based communities...

This paper combines ideas from disciplines ranging from physics, epistemology and philosophy of science to military affairs, to sketch a scientific framework for studying organizational learning, knowledge and memory. Threads are woven from this background into a generic analytical framework...