Views upon knowledge and its implications for studying learning in organizational networks

Academic research activities within organizational studies are increasingly focusing on studying networks in order to understand processes of knowledge and learning that lead to professional knowledge development in and between organizations. In the last decade infrastructures within organizations that enable learning are regarded as learning communities in which the emphasis is put on social processes of learning and the situated context in which it takes place. Those enabling infrastructures are often conceptualized as networks through which knowledge development; knowledge transfer and change take place (Capra, 2002; Cross, Parker, Prusak, & Borgatti, 2001; Jackson & Temperly, 2006). When studying these networks a direct relation is made to the construct of knowledge. In studies of organizational development and human resource development very different paradigms, definitions and categories of knowledge are operationalized. Different viewpoints of knowledge, often originating from various backgrounds, are used to study knowledge processes and learning inorganizational networks. This article provides an overview of relevant literature dealing with a variety of concepts of knowledge. Based on this overview we argue that for successful studying knowledge processes and learning in organizational networks a synthesis of different theories is necessary: a perspective in which knowledge is described as being inherently connected to the network in which it is created and fostered.