Knowledge in Four Deformation Dimensions

Abstract

This paper sketches a complexity conceptualization of knowledge. Building from evolutionary theories, it defi nes knowledge as rules that reduce environmental uncertainty through connections between ideas and facts. Knowledge is conceived as a structure validated through action, a process contextualized in individual experience and a system embedded in social and cultural experience. It exhibits four characteristics of a complex system: it is sensitive to initial conditions, exhibits multiple feedback loops, is non-linear and is recursively symmetrical. Knowledge's four interdependent deformation dimensions are identified (personal, common, tacit and explicit) and their interactions are discussed. This conceptualization of knowledge as a complex system contributes to the knowledge-based theory of the firm by providing some micro-foundations to organizational knowledge, and it opens the opportunity to re-think theories of communities of practice, entrepreneurship and firm creation, the role of managers, and knowledge management.