**3. The birth of a narrative: Coining and defining knowledge governance**

In recent years, based on the work of Nicolai Foss and others, the concept of knowledge governance is expanding and gaining popularity. The primary underlying premise of knowledge governance is that knowledge creation, retention, and sharing processes can be influenced and directed through the deployment of organizational governance mechanisms and other coordination mechanisms.

In Foss's theoretical works, knowledge governance is a distinctive approach, having many cross-connections with knowledge management (Foss, 2005). In his early works, he refers to only the cross-points of general management, strategic issues and human resource management (Foss, 2007) and defines knowledge governance as follows: "*The 'knowledge governance approach' is characterized as a distinctive, emerging approach that cuts across the fields of knowledge management, organisation studies, strategy, and human resource management. Knowledge governance is taken up with how the deployment of governance mechanisms influences knowledge processes, such as sharing, retaining and creating knowledge. It insists on clear micro (behavioural) foundations, adopts an economizing perspective, and examines the links between knowledge-based units of analysis with diverse characteristics and governance mechanisms with diverse capabilities of handling these transactions.*" But over the next two years, Foss gradually broadened the scope of knowledge governance to connect with the management of intellectual capital, innovation theory, technology strategy, and the international business itself (Foss & Michailova, 2009). In the current vocabulary of Foss, knowledge governance "*refers to choosing structures and mechanisms that can influence the processes of sharing and creating knowledge* (Foss & Michailova, 2009)."
