History and Past Activities
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History and Past Activities |
Emilio Luque
Dept. of Sociology II
UNED
Madrid
e-mail: eluque@poli.uned.es
Re-formatting the knowledge economy
First, the paper locates the knowledge management "practical discourses" within an emerging political economy, in the process of being constructed, as a transition to a different stage of capitalism. This task is carried out through an analysis of the OECD — as a key synchronising actor — activities and texts in the field.
Then it looks into the tacit/explicit characterisation of knowledge as a political problem, since the underpinnings of citizenship in the new régime are related to the acquisition and deployment of human capital in a project-based economy. The tacitness/explicitness of knowledge is (at least in part) the result of management practices, legal arrangements and technological mediations that seek to impinge on its appropiability. This section is based on a survey of the "new economy" performative ideology developed predominantly by consultancy firms.
Knowledge management devices and processes re-draw the boundaries that "format" the economy. Communities of practice, knowledge surveys and databases, knowledge-sharing incentives, all are geared towards the alignment of areas of social, communicative activity with management goals. Efforts at visualising knowledge flows and processes of distributed cognition as central to competitiveness seem at odds, on the other hand, with the increasing shareholders' command of the firm. This is based upon a "residual claimant" (juridically enforced) theory of property; but the emergence of knowledge as commodity clashes precisely into this theory. A teamwork-based theory of property is thus set out and its consequences towards the constitution of the emerging knowledge economy explored.
Sociology of Science and Technology NETwork - last update: April 2006