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Managing Knowledge Integration Across Boundaries

Stefano Brusoni author Christian Berggren author Andrew Van de Ven author Fredrik Tell editor

Format:Hardback

Publisher:Oxford University Press

Published:15th Dec '16

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Managing Knowledge Integration Across Boundaries cover

Knowledge integration - the purposeful combination of specialized and complementary knowledge to achieve specific tasks - is becoming increasingly important for organizations facing rapidly changing institutional environments, globalized markets, and fast-paced technological developments. The need for knowledge integration is driven by knowledge specialization and its geographic and organizational distribution in the global economy. The increasing complexity and relevance of the knowledge integration problem is apparent in emerging new fields of research, such as open innovation, or the merging of existing ones, e.g. organizational learning and strategy. In global competition, the successful management of knowledge integration underpins firms' ability to innovate, generate profit, grow and, ultimately, survive. This book provides conceptual contributions as well as empirical studies that examine knowledge integration essentially as a 'boundary' problem. Knowledge integration becomes a problem when boundaries between knowledge fields, and the institutions that preside over those fields, are not clear, or become fluid and contestable. This fluidity, and the competitive pressures this fluidity generates, are persistent and permanent features of the world we live in. This book puts forward a consistent set of ideas, methods and tools useful to interpret, analyze and act upon the processes of knowledge integration across boundaries.

While it is popular to say that we live in an increasingly 'boundary-less' world, in reality, people in organizations face numerous boundaries in their everyday workgeographic, functional, divisional, cultural, intellectual, etc. This book offers both theoretical and practical insights into how people can manage across or through these boundaries in order to integrate knowledge. * Sarah Kaplan, Professor of Strategic Management Rotman School, University of Toronto *
In the age of open innovation, it is clearer than ever that no firm is an 'island'. However, that important truth does not negate another fundamental property that boundarieswhether between firms, work groups, or national bordershave consequences for the flow of knowledge. This volume by Tell, Berggren, Brusoni, and Van de Ven provide a conceptually sophisticated and empirically rich account of these tensions and challenges. * Daniel Levinthal, Reginald H. Jones Professor of Corporate Strategy, Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania *
Knowledge may be power, but fragmented knowledge can be disempowering. Finding ways to integrate increasingly specialized, distributed and incomplete knowledge across boundaries is one of the most pressing issues in late modern societieshardly any social or economic problem is effectively addressed unless diverse streams of knowledge are systematically shared and integrated. This is the best book I have seen on this important topic. There is much to admire in it: the diversity of perspectives, the empirical richness, and the theoretical robustness are all evident. It breaks new ground in how we understand knowledge integration. * Haridimos Tsoukas, The Columbia Ship Management Professor of Strategic Management, University of Cyprus and Distinguished Research Environment Professor of Organization Studies, University of Warwick *

ISBN: 9780198785972

Dimensions: 240mm x 174mm x 23mm

Weight: 620g

326 pages