The Third European Conference on Organizational Knowledge,
Learning, and Capabilities - OKLC 2002
An international conference hosted by ALBA (The Athens
Laboratory of Business Administration), Athens, Greece
5-6 April 2002, Astir Palace, Athens
Keynote Speakers
Professor Chris Argyris, James Bryant Conant Professor, Graduate
Schools
of Business Administration and Education, Harvard University
Dr John Seely Brown, Chief Scientist, Xerox Corporation; Chief
Innovation Officer, 12 Entrepreneuring; co-author, The Social Life
of Information
Professor Soumitra Dutta, The Roland Berger Chair of e-Business
and Information Technology; Dean of Technology and e-Learning;
Director, eLab@INSEAD; INSEAD and Visiting Professor, ALBA.
Professor Howard Thomas, Professor of Management; Dean,
Warwick Business School, University of Warwick
Professor Georg von Krogh, Professor of Management; Director of
The Institute of Management, University of St.Gallen
Conference Organizers:
Haridimos Tsoukas, Professor of Organization Theory and Behavior,
ALBA & University of Strathclyde (
htsoukas@alba.edu.gr)
and
Nikos Mylonopoulos, Assistant Professor of Information Systems,
ALBA (
nmylonop@alba.edu.gr)
Advisory Committee:
Elena Antonacopoulou (
eantonacopoulou@man.mbs.ac.uk), Chris
Carter (University of Leicester,
cjgcarter@yahoo.co.uk), Jannis
Kallinikos (Athens University of Economics and Business &
London School of Economics,
jka@aueb.gr), Gregory Mentzas
(National Technical University of Athens,
gregory@planetey.com),
Angeliki Poulymenakou (Athens University of Economics and
Business,
akp@aueb.gr), Andreu Rafael (IESE,
andreu@iese.edu),
Maxine Robertson (Warwick Business School,
irobmr@rapier.wbs.warwick.ac.uk), Harry Scarbrough (University of
Leicester,
h.scarbrough@ntlworld.com), Jill Shepherd (University of
Strathclyde,
jill@gsb.strath.ac.uk), Sandra Sieber (IESE,
sieber@iese.edu), Jacky Swan (Warwick Business School,
irobjs@wbs.warwick.ac.uk).
Call for Papers
Continuing from and building on the success of the two international
conferences on Knowledge Management, organized by the
University of Warwick (2000) and the University of Leicester (2001),
this conference is moving for the first time outside the UK and is
taking a more explicitly European focus. At the same time, the
conference theme is broadened to include, apart from a focus on
Organizational Knowledge & Knowledge Management, the themes
of Organizational Learning and Organizational Capabilities.
The widening of the conference topic reflects the increasing
emphasis that has been given in the last ten years on seeing
organizations as knowledge systems: from a knowledge-based
perspective, organizations are viewed as bundles of knowledge
assets the effective management of which affords a firm competitive
advantage. Although knowledge has always been an organizational
asset, it is only relatively recently that this has been widely
recognized. There are several reasons why this has happened,
including the increasing digitization of social and economic life, the
widespread use of information and communication technologies, a
more literate workforce, the increasing dependence of advanced
economies on services, the expansion of a professional and
technical class, and several other factors, all of which have made
economic activities and transactions depend on specialized, or
theoretical, knowledge.
As Daniel Bell insightfully foresaw nearly thirty years ago in his
book The Coming of Post-Industrial Society, "what is distinctive
about the post-industrial society is the change in the character of
knowledge itself. What has become decisive for the organization of
decisions and the direction of change is the centrality of theoretical
knowledge the primacy of theory over empiricism and the
codification of knowledge into abstract systems of symbols that,
as in any axiomatic system, can be used to illuminate many
different and varied areas of experience". Since Bell wrote his
prophetic book in the early 1970s, further research has shown
that even the most theoretical forms of knowledge essentially
depend for their application on types of cognition and social skills
that are inherently non-codifiable. Theoretical knowledge and social
context are inextricably linked.
Viewing organizations as knowledge systems has turned out to be
a very fruitful avenue for research. If an organization is a collection of
knowledge assets then the updating and management of those
assets is of great importance. Hence the current emphasis on
attempts to understand knowledge creation, transmission, storage
and retrieval as well as to improve our understanding of how
organizational memory and learning function. Since knowledge is
so important, the manner in which organizations remember what
they know and learn from their (as well as from others) experience
is important, both theoretically and practically.
Moreover, since knowledge assets are so central to the functioning
of firms, the ways in which companies develop and sustain certain
knowledge-based capabilities in order to gain competitive
advantage is a suitable focus of research.
One of the most exciting aspects of the knowledge-based view of
organizations has been its transdisciplinarity: it has provided the
means for integrating insights from a variety of disciplines and
fields, such as information systems management, strategic
management, organization theory, marketing, entrepreneurship,
accounting, and strands of sociology, psychology, economics, and
philosophy. In this conference we seek papers (conceptual,
empirical, or both) from scholars from all the preceding fields and
disciplines that will address one, or combinations of, the following
questions (the list is not meant to be exhaustive):
(1) How are organizational knowledge and its management to be
conceptualized and researched?
(2) How is organizational knowledge used, renewed, stored,
retrieved,
transmitted, and shared? How is it measured?
(3) What types of organizational knowledge are related to different
types of innovation systems and business systems?
(4) What information technology applications and systems support
effective knowledge management in organizations? Similarly, what
organization designs facilitate knowledge management?
(5) What are the mechanisms that enable (or disable) organizational
learning, with what consequences?
(6) How do organizational learning and knowledge management
contribute to organizational innovation and change?
(7) How do organizations remember what they know, and how is
organizational memory strengthened (or weakened), updated, and
used in particular contexts?
(8) How does social capital in organizations preserve knowledge, in
what form, for what use?
(9) What are the best strategies for managing organizational
knowledge?
(10) How is knowledge management related to business strategy
and organizational performance?
(11) What evidence is there that firms competitive advantage
stems from difficult-to-replicate knowledge assets?
(12) What processes do organizations use to synthesize and
acquire knowledge resources, generate new applications from
those resources, and develop dynamic capabilities and value-
creating strategies?
Conference Organization
The conference is hosted by ALBA (Athens Laboratory of Business
Administration), 2A Athinas Avenue & Areos Street, 16671
Vouliagmeni, Greece (tel: +30-1-8964531, fax: +30-1-8964737,
www.alba.edu.gr), the leading independent Business School in
Greece. The conference venue will be Astir Palace, a luxurious
hotel, located by the beach, in a very pretty area just outside
Athens (www.astir.gr).
Contributions and Participation
Academic Track The natural home for conventional academic
papers. Scholars from all areas of management and business
studies are invited to submit papers that address one or more (or
versions) of the preceding questions. Leading international
publishers have expressed an interest in publishing a
selection of academic papers from the conference.
Practitioner Track
As well as inviting conventional academic papers, we are keen to
include experience-based papers. In this track, participants will
have the chance to present papers that may be more descriptive in
style, prescriptive in tone and business-policy oriented. In the
same track certain leading practitioners will be invited to share their
experiences.
Submissions
Authors should send a 500 word abstract as e-mail attachment at
OKLC2002@alba.edu.gr by 15 October 2001. All abstracts must
be submitted as Word documents and must contain on the first
page a title, authors names, postal addresses, telephone numbers,
e-mail addresses, and an indication of the track (i.e. academic or
practitioner track) their authors would like to join. Abstracts will be
blindly reviewed.
Notification of acceptance will be sent by 15 November 2001.
Papers must be submitted by 1 March 2002 in order to be included
in the conference proceedings. There is a limit of 120 participants.
Estimated Cost
To enable potential participants to budget for the conference, it is
estimated that the total cost for taking part in the conference will
be in the region of 700 Euro, inclusive of: the conference fee, a
three-night accommodation in the conference hotel, breakfast, all
conference-related meals, and the conference proceedings. Please
note that this is only an estimate, not the final figure. Potential
participants are advised to book flights as early as possible.
*******************************************
* Dr Elena Antonacopoulou
* OB Group
* Manchester Business School
* University of Manchester
* Booth Street West
* Manchester
* M15 6PB
* UK
* Tel: (+44) 161 275 6333
* Direct line: (+44) 161 275 6365
* Fax: (+44) 161 275 6598/6489
* E-mail:
EAntonacopoulou@man.mbs.ac.uk
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