Conceptual Framework: Perception and interpretation of organizational knowledge

Abstract

Organizational knowledge is one of the strategic concerns of organizations, already recognized as an important influence on the effectiveness of competitiveness and organizational performance. It is known that for this good performance, organizations have always been dependent on the adoption of organizational practices and processes to manage or maintain their knowledge. In the context of the current organizational changes, the knowledge of the people that make up the business arrangement are substantial to achieve the competitive objectives. Other investigations of the contemporary organizational environment already confirm that for the success of organizational change initiatives it is necessary the development and knowledge of the teams, in the form of key elements by the effective implementation of the strategies and projects of change in the organization (Joffe & MacKenzie Davey, 2012). It is also recognized that in the process of development of these teams, the tacit and / or manifest knowledge of the people that compose it is what promotes the changes, and thus they become of strategic importance, deserving the attention of a specific management process. (Nonaka, 1994; Nonaka & Takeuchi, 1995). This knowledge also influences the decision-making process in the strategic, intermediary and operational space of organizations (Raisch & Birkinshaw, 2008), confirming the need for a rationalization of knowledge, overlapping theoretical discourse and concentrating on the practice of knowledge interpretation . This confirms the already recognized strategic relevance of knowledge management for competitiveness in organizations. However, for its full realization, it is necessary to understand the proposed analysis and utilization methods to identify the influences of knowledge in the organizational processes, both in the organizational scope and in the academic field. In this way, when deepening in the steps of the process of managing and perceiving organizational knowledge, one realizes that the elaboration of models or diagrams that facilitate the perception of the process and the information variables is one of the most important stages. This fact was observed in activity of advisory professional scope and in the investigative academic scope.
With this context, this communication aims to reflect on the evolution of the management, interpretation and perception of knowledge through the so-called conceptual models or conceptual framework for knowledge management. These are theoretical construction diagrams, but they are used to represent and model the information of a phenomenon in the field of organizational knowledge (Ichijo & Nonaka, 2007), and are applied in business processes or in scientific research. This paper seeks to identify these so-called conceptual models in practical cases of business organizations already registered in the literature (Holsapple & Joshi, 2008) and in cases related to the use of conceptual models in the scientific investigation of management phenomena, with the conceptual models of moderators, antecedents and out-come´s (Gibson & Birkinshaw, 2004; Raisch & Birkinshaw, 2008). As for the structure of this communication, the concepts of knowledge management were first developed, then the evolution of the conceptual models was demonstrated, and finally the presentation of a theoretical frame of reference of the applications of conceptual models for their application in the business advisory area and application in scientific research projects. The relevance of this communication stems from the success of the initiatives of knowledge management, strategy management and management research, demonstrating the implications and particularities concerning the parameters of importance, timeliness and feasibility.