Handbook of Organizational Learning and Knowledge Management, Second Edition

Unanswered Questions

We begin with the relationship between organization strategy and knowledge-base differentiation. As organizations expand into new locations, do the differences in localized knowledge environments contribute to not just physical differentiation of the knowledge-base but also to distinctive development along localized trajectories? Further, following Brown and Duguid’s (2001) development of the ideas of communities of practice it appears likely that the differences between functional perspectives should lead to greater differentiation of knowledge-bases in more complex functionally specialized corporations. If so, the current trends of outsourcing key functions may be leading to unintended consequences on their knowledge-bases. Not only are they losing expertise in the outsourced area (a ‘budgeted for’ effect), they may also be reducing the differentiation in their knowledge-bases which may lead to ‘unbudgeted’ and subtle deleterious effects in their innovation capability. More generally, how organizational boundaries affect the process of developing an integrated knowledge-base has not been investigated. For instance, what are the consequences of M&A among companies with different cognitive maps and how may the combination of elements from the different cognitive maps affect innovation?

Although some of the embeddedness of a knowledge-base is likely to be a function of its content—the nature of technologies and skills it includes—other factors such as organizational ...