Architectures of Knowledge: Firms, Capabilities, and Communities
Author(s): Ash Amin (Author), Patrick Cohendet
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Publication Date: 25 Mar. 2004
Edition: Illustrated
Language: English
Print length: 196 pages
ISBN-10: 0199253331
ISBN-13: 9780199253333
Book Description
In Architectures of Knowledge, Ash Amin and Patrick Cohendet argue that the time is right for research to explore the relationship between two other dimensions of knowledge in order to explain the innovative performance of firms: between knowledge that is 'possessed' and knowledge that is 'practiced' generally within communities of like-minded employees in a firm. The impetus behind this argument is both conceptual and empirical. Conceptually, there is a need to explore the interaction of knowledge that firms possess in the form of established competencies of stored memory, with the knowing that occurs in distributed communities through the conscious and unconscious acts of social interaction. Empirically, the impetus comes from the challenge faced by firms to the hierarchically defined architecture that bring together specialized units of (possessed) knowledge and the distributed and always unstable architecture of knowledge that draws on the continuously changing capacity of interpretation among actors. In this book, these questions of the dynamics of innovating/learning through practices of knowing, and the management of the interface between transactional and knowledge imperatives, are approached in a cross-disciplinary and empirically grounded manner. The book is the synthesis of an innovative encounter between a socio-spatial theorist and an economist. The book results from the delicate interplay between two very different epistemologies and consequent positions, but which progressively converged towards what is hoped to be a novel vision. The book begins by explaining why knowledge is becoming more of a core element of the value-generating process in the economy, then juxtaposes the economic and cognitive theorization's of knowledge in firms with pragmatic and socially grounded theorization's and a critical exploration of the neglected dimension of the spatiality of knowledge formation in firms. The book
Editorial Reviews
Review
This slim and well-produced book shows we must now move far beyond narrow discussions of managing communities of practice and learning organizations and consider the broader implications for a changing socio-economy increasingly driven by knowledge. ― Prometheus, Vol. 23, No. 1, March 2005
Book Description
Demonstrates that a recognition of the importance of the role of knowledge in economies may lead to a new conception of the firm and public policy
About the Author
Ash Amin is Professor of Geography at Durham University. He has held Fellowships and Visiting Professorships at the Universities of Naples, Venice, Bologna, Copenhagen, Rotterdam and Uppsala. He is a founding co-editor of the Review of International Political Economy and co-editor of Cities. He was Member of the Steering Committee of the European Association for Evolutionary Political Economy (EAEPE) from its foundation in 1989 to 1999. He was member of the Economic and Social Research Council's Research Priorities Board from 1997 to 2001. He is an academician of the Academy of the Learned Societies in the Social Sciences. His research interests lie in the fields of urban and regional development, the geography of the post-mass production economy, spatialities of globalisation, governance alternatives to market and hierarchy, urban democracy and the multicultural city, the geography of the social economy, and the cultural economy.
Patrick Cohendet is Professor of Economics at University Louis Pasteur of Strasbourg, France. He has held Fellowships and Visiting Professorships at the Universities of UVA (Charlottesville, Virginia, USA), Toyo (Tokyo, Japan), and HEC-Montréal (Canada). He is one of the co-founders and members of BETA (Bureau d'économie théorique et appliquée), a research group in economics and management of the University Louis Pasteur of Strasbourg. He is member of the commitee of national research (CNRS) in economics and management. He was Member of CADAS (comité d'applications de l'académie des sciences ) from 1989 to 1999. His research interests lie in the fields of economics of innovation, economics of knowledge, theory of the firm, theory of decision, industrial organization and research policy.
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