Abstract:
Much of the Knowledge Management (KM) literature assumes that all relevant
knowledge can be represented as information and 'managed'. But the meaning of information
is always context-specific and open to subsequent reinierpretation. Moving over time or between
contexts affords scope for new meanings to emerge. Making sense of information signals
(speech, body language, tone-of-voice or whatever)-and the absence of such signals involves
dimensions of individual and collective tacit knowledge that are frequently
misrepresented or ignored in mainstream KM. By relating power and knowledge to 'rules of the
game', it is possible to consider how the contexts in which information is rendered meaningful
are bounded, as well as crucially related in the stretch between macro-level processes and micro-level
practices. In the knowledge debate, Japan stands as a counterfactual to Anglo-Saxon
expectations about formal rules, liberal individualism and market-rational entrepreneurship.
While seminal accounts of knowledge creation in Japanese companies impelled the West
towards KM, there has been no corresponding KM-boom in Japan. Our interpretation of the
processes by which Japanese and Anglo-Saxon practices are situated suggests that KM is
limited by the separation of knowledge from power and information from meaning.
