**2. Background theories and assumptions**

## **2.1 Research motivations, method, and objectives**

In this chapter, the basic concepts presented are derived from our industrial experience and university researches. As an operational manager responsible for the deployment of innovative technologies (including computer-aided design and knowledge-based systems) in a large industrial company—at a time when these technologies had just been developed in universities and laboratories—we developed empirical models with a socio-technical vision of organizations. These models have been used as references to generate the organizational learning process that induced organizational members to appropriate and use these technologies.

Later on, we became associate researcher in the domain of knowledge management, and we highlighted the lack of KM models with a socio-technical perspective. As the project's manager, we practiced a constructivist approach underlying the creation and use of knowledge. The interactions of these dual trajectories are at the root of a useful reflection on the establishment of the concept of "management based on knowledge," transposed from our "managerial and socio-technical" approach of knowledge management.

In addition, this reflection is based on (1) few books posing the fundamentals of knowledge management [1–9], (2) the work of the European Committee for Standardization (CEN) KM working group [10], and (3) the thesis conducted at LAMSADE2 [11–16].

We wish that this chapter should be useful for all stakeholders of the digital transformation processes within organizations.

#### **2.2 Knowledge within organizations considered from two perspectives**

Our research has led us to identify two major approaches to knowledge management in organizations: a technological approach and a managerial and sociological approach. These approaches are significant for the fundamental conceptual distinction of two world visions: the cognitive perspective and the constructivist

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*Toward Management Based on Knowledge DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.86757*

concept of knowledge in organizations.

*2.2.1 Cognitivist perspective (representationism)*

eses concerning knowledge can be identified:

and is given objectively for everyone.

quently little easy to share with others [4].

**2.3 Three fundamental postulates**

two perspectives, enriched by [19], are summarized in **Table 1**.

*2.2.2 Constructivist perspective (anti-representationism)*

manipulation.

perspective, highlighted by [4]. Thereafter, we agree with their analysis and paraphrase, in large part, what they say, which describes two ways of approaching the

The cognitive perspective is the best established and best known. It began in the early 1950s with considerable advances in computer science, systems theory, psychology, and neuroscience. The cognitive sciences provided important insights into the physical structure of the brain and the functioning of cognitive processes. Formal models of the cognitive system as an information processing machine and logical reasoning were developed. Knowledge was envisaged as representations of the world consisting of a number of objects and events, and the key task of the brain (or any other cognitive system) was to represent or model them as accurately as possible. Knowledge was universal; two cognitive systems were to lead to the same representation of the same object or event. For cognitivists, knowledge was explicit, capable of being encoded and stored, and easily communicable to others. Moreover [17], specified that from a cognitive perspective, two major hypoth-

• Knowledge is seen as a representation of a pre-defined world. This implies that reality, whether objects, events, or states, lies outside the subject of knowledge

• Knowledge can be seen as information processing and rule-based symbol

Resting on new contributions of the neurobiology, the cognitive sciences, and the philosophy, the constructivist point of view envisages the cognition as an act of construction or creation rather than an act of representation [4]. The prospect anti-représentationniste of Von Krogh and Johan Roos leans in particular on the model "autopoïèse" created by [18], two Chilean biologists, who suggested that the cognition was a creative act of production of the world. Because knowledge lives in ourselves and is closely linked to our senses and our previous experiences, we are brought to create the unique world to ourselves. So, knowledge is not universal, and the constructivist carries only not much attention to comparisons between different models. The constructivist approach considers that the cognitive system works when knowledge allows effective actions. For certain constructivists knowledge is explicit, but others can be tacit, strongly personal, not easy to express, and conse-

These two perspectives influenced the theories and the practices of the management. However, the interest of the constructivist studies is that they consider as well the tacit aspects that the explicit aspects of knowledge. The main features of these

Our observations and experiments within the industry led us to set forth three postulates about knowledge within organizations: (i) knowledge is not an object, (ii) knowledge is linked to the action, and (iii) organization's knowledge includes

two main categories of knowledge. We define these postulates hereafter.

<sup>2</sup> Laboratoire d'Analyze et Modélisation de Systèmes pour l'Aide à la Décision, Université Paris-Dauphine, PSL Research University, CNRS UMR (7243), LAMSADE 75016, Paris, France.
