Abstract
This paper starts and ends with a discussion on whether management should draw conclusions and make decisions on the basis of information alone or also should take into account the intangible aspects of the situation and intuition. The analysis of this question focuses on how and where (productive) knowledge is created. The critical input in the production process is knowledge because knowledge is the basic source of values. All knowledge is attained and possessed by individuals. In contrast, the use of (productive) knowledge to create values is a collective process. This is so because only information, and not knowledge, can be shared and spread among the members of an organization. Thus, information must be transformed into knowledge (possessed by individuals) and back into information again that is shared among members of the organization if values are to be produced.
The aim of this paper is to explore how productive knowledge is created in the collective processes involved in the coordination and cooperation activities that individuals perform in a close working relationship. This coordination is guided by discourses (or conversations). These discourses (conversations) can be both context specific and general. Contextβspecific discourses create a collective identity, that is specific to the context in question, while general discourses may also create particularized identities stemming from contexts removed from the specific context. Discourses can be evaluated βfrom the outsideβ by studying the narrative texts produced by the organization. Such a study is used in the empirical component of this paper. From discourses with texts and histories, the participants create common constructions that boost knowledge sharing among them and the company's customers. If management (and employees) can develop dense working relationships among themselves and their customers on the basis of discourses, contexts, and collaboration activities unique to them, they can rely heavily on information sharing without being exposed to the risk that the company's core capabilities are likely to be copied. Copyright Β© 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.