Loss of organizational knowledge

Purpose – This paper seeks to explore the loss of organizational knowledge during organizational change processes from a knowledge perspective.Design/methodology/approach – Recent developments in the fields of organizational change and organizational knowledge are reviewed, then the relation of organizational knowledge to discourse and power is drawn out. Using critical discourse analysis, dominant and marginalized discourses are foregrounded, different types of organizational knowledge loss distinguished, and their effects in a human services organization identified.Findings – The analysis shows how the linguistic and discursive practices of financial management are marginalizing and displacing practitioners' organizational knowledge. An illustration is given of how situated and heuristic organizational knowledge is vulnerable to marginalization, and hence loss, as organizations seek to codify knowledge into generalizable abstractions. It is concluded that these losses of organizational knowledge are the...

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