Abstract
In Part I we analyzed the organization as a social field which epistemic and ontological distinctions correlate to a certain extent. According to our analysis, knowledge is not only a cognitive epistemic state or content of individuals but also ontologically manifested in different levels of the organization: knowledge appears as objective representations in files, computer systems, or brains, as inter-subjective meaning, and finally as a relation to the practice of the organization. Hence, organizational knowledge is not only epistemically but also ontologically significant.
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Notes
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This is true even for self-referential claims, because we cannot understand such a claim without saying something like that “it points to itself”, i.e. without (at least syntactically) separating the knowledge claim from what it refers to.
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Although the way in which such knowledge is falsified can be different from falsifying a scientific proposition.
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If there were no gap between implicit knowledge and practice, then Schreyögg and Geiger would be right in proposing that tacit knowledge cannot be falsified (Schreyögg & Geiger, 2002).
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Strictly speaking, we should in almost all cases talk about “knowledge claims” instead of “knowledge”. “Knowledge” in its pure rationalistic sense would mark a “justified and true knowledge claim”, i.e. knowledge which already has been justified. From our social epistemological viewpoint, knowledge is a knowledge claim which had been accepted and verified within a community. Within an organization, knowledge is a knowledge claim which has been applied and integrated to practice.
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Seirafi, K. (2013). The Normative Issue at Organizational Knowledge. In: Organizational Epistemology. Contributions to Management Science. Physica, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-34194-6_8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-34194-6_8
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