Preface for the Third Edition - Read

74 B. Concepts and Theories
speak of knowledge with its connotations of abstraction, progress, permanency and
mentalism, but of the processes of knowing and doing which take place in a
(socially-distributed) activity system 116 . These systems provide a new unit for the
analysis of the dynamic relationships among individuals, their communities and the
conception(s) they have of their activities. Blackler suggests not to study the concepts
of knowledge, individuals, organization or factors that mediate between them
in isolation, but to focus on the dynamics of knowing with the help of the sociallydistributed
activity system. Knowing in this perspective is a phenomenon which is
mediated: manifest in systems of language, technology, collaboration and control,
situated: located in time and space and specific to particular contexts,
provisional: constructed and constantly developing,
pragmatic: purposive and object-oriented,
contested: interrelated with the concept of power in organizations which are
observable in hierarchies of domination and subordination, leadership etc.
(Blackler 1995, 1040ff).
To sum up, the concept of knowing rather than knowledge and the concept of
socially-distributed activity systems rather than isolated entities (individuals,
knowledge, organization and ICT systems) suggest that the crucial aspects of KM
might be missed if we concentrate on separable entities too much. As a consequence,
KM instruments supported by KMS have to consider the context in terms
of the agents and communities which they are applied in (see also part D).
Multi-faceted knowledge. Design and implementation of KMS differ from design
and implementation of more traditional application systems. The term knowledge
as used here comprises among others valuations, opinions or forecasts, whereas
more traditional application systems more or less exclusively focus on hard data.
Also, the design of KMS has to consider the multiple electronically available
sources of data such as documents, files, messages, contributions in newsgroups,
multimedia elements or links to these sources which all might contain useful
knowledge once structured, linked and contextualized. Thus, KMS can be combined
with an organization’s already existing information systems.
Role of knowledge in different types of organizations. Classifications of knowledge
can be used to postulate different requirements or perspectives for KM initiatives
and supporting ICT. For example, Blackler uses his classification of knowledge
(see Table B-3) to distinguish four types of organizations which also require
the support of different ICT (Blackler 1995, 1026ff). Table B-4 shows the four
types of organizations distinguished.
The distinction uses the organizational level from which the primary contributions
to the fulfilment of organizational goals is expected (individual versus collec-
116. Blackler 1995, Spender 1996a, see section 6.6.2 - “Activity modeling” on page 250 for
an account of the modeling of socially-distributed activity systems.