The Knowing Organization

"Current thinking in management and organization theory emphasizes three distinct arenas in which the creation and use of information play a strategic role in determining an organization's capacity to grow and adapt."

"The knowing organization possesses information and knowledge that confers a special advantage, allowing it to maneuver with intelligence, creativity, and, occasionally, cunning."

"An organization makes sense of its environment through four sets of interlocking processes: ecological change, enactment, selection, and retention."

"Explicit knowledge is formal knowledge that is easy to transmit between individuals and groups."

"Organizations seek rational behavior in terms of actions that contribute to its goals and objectives."

"Because individuals are limited by their information processing capacities, decision routines and search routines simplify their choice-making processes."

"The outcome of information use is a change in the individual's state of knowledge and capacity to act."

"The output of sense making is a network of shared meanings that provides plausible explanations and assigns significance to ambiguous cues."

"Knowledge creation extends the organization's capabilities by leveraging the expertise of its own members, and by learning from and with others outside the organization."

"The processes of sense making, knowledge creating, and decision making constitute the main information activities of what we will call a knowing organization."

"While the three constructs hold the knowing cycle together, each construct is also characterized by its own contradictions, which contain the seeds for change and learning."