Organisations as epistemic cultures

Management theory and practice nowadays accepts unquestioningly that knowledge is an important resource for the success of an organisation. However, I claim that we still know very little about the processes surrounding the creation of knowledge inside organisations, and what we know is normally a model-like description of a process that does not resemble the chaotic, ambiguous reality experience by organisations. In an effort to fill this gap, I conducted a year -long ethnography inside an incubator, concentrating on three companies. As a first description of my data, I draw attention to three interesting phenomena, which run counter the conventional wisdom painted in the literature. First, organisational members are concerned with codifying know-how much more than know-what. Second, the social relationships inside management teams allow for very different dynamics, depending on the type of knowledge created. Third, companies devote a long time to the initial planning phase, suggesting that business plans may have a role even in high velocity, turbulent environments like the ones surrounding the net bubble. Tentative explanations are provided for the three phenomena, as well as implications and conclusions.