国外营销论文06JCspender_1996_SMJ.pdfVIP

Strategic Management Journal, Vol. 17(Winter Special Issue), 45-62 (1996) THE BASIS OF A DYNAMIC MAKINGKNOWLEDGE THEORYOF THE FIRM J.-C. SPENDER School of Management, New York Institute of Technology, Old Westbury, New York, U.S.A. Knowledge is too problematic a concept to make the task of building a dynamic knowledge- based theory of the firm easy. We must also distinguish the theory from the resource-based and evolutionaryviews. The paper begins with a multitypeepistemologywhich admits both the pre- and subconscious modes of human knowing and, reframing the concept of the cognizing individual, the collective knowledge of social groups. While both Nelson and Winter, and Nonaka and Takeuchi, successfully sketch theories of the dynamic interactions of these types of organizationalknowledge,neither indicates how they are to be contained. Callon and Latour suggest knowledge itself is dynamic and contained within actor networks, so moving us from knowledge as a resource toward knowledge as a process. To simplify this approach, we revisit sociotechnical systems theory, adopt three heuristicsfrom the social constructionistliterature, and make a distinction between the systemic and component attributes of the actor network. The result is a very different mode of theorizing, less an objective statementabout the nature of firms out there than a tool to help managers discover their pl