Stories of knowledge management: Exploring coherence in a community of practice.

摘要

The purpose of this case study is to explore the epistemological foundations of knowledge management (KM). The research seeks to provide insight into how members of a professional management community know what they know. Digital video interviews of twenty-eight elite participants comprise the data. This study explores knowledge management in a search for coherence through two modes of analysis. The first mode draws from Thomas Kuhn's conception of a disciplinary matrix and constructs a paradigmatic taxonomy for knowledge management. The second mode investigates KM as a community of practice and builds a narrative typology to organize the variety of cultural stories. Through semiotic analysis, thematic results are categorized from the interviews. The main themes in KM are derived and interpreted in both paradigmatic and narrative contexts. This study also develops a digital storytelling methodology as a research posture that offers greater transparency and credibility for qualitative studies. One claim of this study is that digital storytelling can reveal connotations of narrative that may aid scholars in their research, and provide practitioners with way to utilize knowledge media. The results of the study offer an approach for structuring themes and eliciting knowledge along two epistemologies. It is argued that a rich understanding of a management phenomenon is formed more coherently through the complementary approach presented. The contributions of this study help to build understanding in social learning, narrative theory, and paradigmatic inquiry. The main conclusions of this study are: (1) that paradigms and communities of practice are analogous concepts (2) that a management discipline is akin to a literary genre and, (3) that thematic concepts in sociolinguistic units bear a "family resemblance" that may be lost through reductionist methods. The results of this study provide researchers and managers with several interesting directions of inquiry and application.