Complex Knowledge: Studies in Organizational Epistemology

In this book Haridimos Tsoukas, one of the most imaginative organization theorists of our time, examines the nature of knowledge in organizations, and how individuals and scholars approach the concept of knowledge.Tsoukas firstly looks at organizational knowledge and its embeddedness in social contexts and forms of life. He shows that knowledge is not just a collection of free floating representations of the world to be used at will, but an activity constitutive of the world. On the one hand the organization as an institutionalized system does produce regularities that can can be captured via propositional forms of knowledge. On the other, the organization as practice, as a lifeworld, or as an open-ended system produce stories, values, and shared traditions which can only be captured by narrative forms of knowledge. Secondly, Tsoukas looks at the issue of how individuals deal with the notion of complexity in organizations: Our inability to reduce the behaviour of complex organizations to their constituent parts. Drawing on concepts such as discourse, narrativity, and reflexivity, he adopts a hermeneutical approach to the issue.Finally Tsoukas examines the concept of meta-knowledge, and how we know what we know. Arguing that the underlying representationalist epistemology of much of mainstream management causes many problems, he advocates adopting a more discursive approach. He describes what such an epistemology might be, and illustrates it with examples from organization studies and strategic management.An ideal introduction to the thinking of a leading organizational theorist, this book will be essential reading for academics, researchers, and students of Knowledge Management, Organization Studies, Management Studies, Business Strategy, and Applied Epistemology.

Table of Contents:
Introduction Part I: Explorations into Organizational Knowledge 1: The Firm as a Distributed Knowledge System 2: Forms of Knowledge and Forms of Life in Organized Contexts 3: (with E. Valdimirou): What is Organizational Knowledge? 4: The Tyranny of Light: The Temptations and the Paradoxes of the Information Society 5: Where Does New Organizational Knowledge Come From? Part II: Coping with Organizational Complexity 6: (with D. Papoulias): Understanding Social Reforms: A Conceptual Analysis 7: Chaos, Compelxity, and Organiztion Theory 8: (with Mary Jo Hatch): Complex Thinking, Complex Practice: The Case for a Narrative Approach to Organizational Complexity 9: Reading Organizations: Uncertainty, Complexity, Narrativity Part III: Meta-Knowledge: The Epistemology of Management Research 10: Refining Common Sense: Types of Knowledge in Management Studies 11: The Word and the World: A Critique of Representationalism in Management Research 12: What is Good Theory? Arguments for a Discursive Organization Science 13: (with Christian Knudsen): The Conduct of Strategy Research

About the Author :
Haridimos Tsoukas is the George D. Mavros Research Professor of Organization and Management at ALBA in Greece, and Professor of Organization Studies, University of Warwick, UK. Previous positions held include Lecturer at Warwick Business School (1990-5), and Associate Professor at the University of Cyprus.

Review :
Complex Knowledge is a thought-provoking, insightful, and deeply engaging exploration of the nature of knowledge in and about organizations. Not only does it offer a compelling critique of contemporary ways of understanding organizational knowledge, but it articulates a powerful alternative vocabulary grounded in such notions as situated practice, enactment, mutual constitution, improvisation, temporality, and creativity. Most importantly, it forces us - as researchers and practitioners - to take seriously the inherent reflexivity of our ongoing actions in the world. Complex Knowledge shows just how important and rich is the emerging insight that organizations are systems of knowledge. Hari Tsoukas's deep, accessible probing of ways in which organizations construct, process, and justify their knowledge is a defining moment in organizational scholarship. It vaults the idea of organizational knowing to the top of the stack of explanations that work. An extraordinary mind is at work in this marvellous volume! Providing a comprehensive collection of Prof. Tsoukas' work, this book is an eye-opener for anyone who studies knowledge in organizations. Prof. Tsoukas demonstrates with clarity and brilliance, that knowledge is a complex construct that gives rise to new ways of understanding the very phenomenon of organizing. Highly recommended! The long conceptual journey undertaken in the organizational sciences from a simple robotized view of man - a cog in a machine - to something more intelligent, more complex, and altogether more human, has been a long one. The studies described in Hari Tsoukas' exciting new book shows us that we may at last be nearing the end of the journey. The new world of organizations is one of complexity and change rather than one of order and stability - one that pays homage to Heraclitus rather than to Parmenides. In this dynamic and evolving setting knowledge is at a premium as never before. But what kind of knowledge? Tsoukas' exploration of this question leads him to link issues organizational epistemology to the new theories of complexity. Tsoukas' book will be essential reading for those wishing to understand where the new science of organizations is heading for in the twenty-first century.