If Managing Knowledge is the Solution, then What's the Problem?

Abstract

Strategic theories of organizing are grounded in the notion that organizations should configure their internal resources and capabilities to address competitive opportunities and threats. The knowledge-based view suggests that knowledge may be the most enduring and strategic resource. This chapter presents a taxonomy for describing resources, capabilities and competitive environments in terms of four distinct yet related knowledge processing requirements or “problems”: complexity, uncertainty, equivocality and ambiguity. Each suggests a particular knowledge processing capability. The taxonomy is used to develop finer-grained distinctions regarding knowledge-based theories of the firm and the resource-based concept of inimitability.