THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN ORGANIZATION’S KNOWING AND ORGANIZATION’S KNOWLEDGE: THE BOUNDARIES OF RECOGNITION AND FORMALIZATION

Abstract

Under the conditions of contemporary competition the organizations rival not only on the level of organizational knowledge. the competitive advantage more often is acquired by the organizations that are able to employ the whole organization’s knowing, including both collective knowledge and individual knowledge that may be explicit, tacit and implicit which earlier were not known or perceived as important. We may claim that the turbulent environment makes an organization difficult to exactly foresee and appreciate everything. Nonaka and Takeuchi (1995) analysed the formation of explicit (articulated) and tacit, individual and collective knowledge/knowing in organization and proposed the model of organizational knowing. This model describes the knowledge creation in organization as a permanent, never-ending process. Nonaka (2001) argues that the essential activity in organizational knowledge creation is the constant exchange of explicit and tacit knowledge among the different organizational levels.

The majority of researchers (Hellund, 1994; Nonaka & Takeuchi, 1995; Tsoukas, 1996; Spender, 1996a, 1996b, 1998, 2000; Gamble & Blackwell, 2001 ir kt.) analyse the organizational knowledge and organizational knowing. Stankevičiūtė (2002) was the first to discuss the concept of organization‘s knowing as a dynamic, holistic. Jucevičienė (2007) even more expanded the meaning of organizational knowing.

Organizational knowing reflects the functional approach to knowledge by emphasizing knowledge importance for an organization to achieve the goals set or to perform a certain activity. This functional approach to knowledge that recognizes the existence of explicit, tacit and implicit knowledge in organization especially emphases the first type of knowledge, i.e. explicit knowledge that is embedded in the forms of different regulations, technologies, etc.

Meanwhile, the organization’s knowing is a broader concept that represents the holistic approach to knowledge in its entirety prevailing in organization. If organizational knowing is limited by the knowing that is perceived by organization as important, so, the organization’s knowing embraces the whole knowing of all individuals, who make an organization, all groups in organization and all knowing of organizational level (which is implied but not articulated), - explicit, implicit and tacit (Jucevičienė, 2007). Organization‘s knowing reflects the organization’s cognitive potential, i.e. all the organization as “alive” organism knows in explicit, tacit and implicit way.

All these concepts, however, are rather fresh. The researchers search for their deeper understanding and aim to clarify the peculiarities and the potential of the conceptual differences in organizational knowing and organization’s knowing.

What are the differences between organization’s knowledge and organization’s knowing? Is it possible to formalize organization’s knowing? These questions, however, still lack the attention of the researchers.

The aim of our article is to reveal the relationship between organization’s knowing and organization’s knowledge as well as to define the boundaries of their recognition and formalization. The methods applied are the analysis of scientific literature.

The main conceptual position is that the formation of organization’s knowledge is most successful in the organization that is able to act as the community of practice (Wenger, 2001); knowledge in organization is created and applied during the interaction between the explicit and tacit knowledge (Nonaka & Takeuchi, 1995).

The article consists of two parts. The first part deals with the analysis of organization’s knowing and organization’s knowledge concepts and the question of what is the relationship between these two concepts. The boundaries of possible formalization and recognition of organization’s knowing are theoretically substantiated in the second part of the paper.