Knowledge, IT and Value Creation: A Critical Realist Perspective

This book investigates the relationship between, Information Technology (IT), knowledge and value creation from a variety of perspectives that can be summarized under three main approaches: (1) The Governance Approach, (2) The Complexity Approach, and (3) The Relational Approach. The Governance Approach recognizes the role played by the informal aspect of the organization but asserts that deploying governance mechanisms such as organization structure, job design, reward systems, can be manipulated by management and should be seen as critical antecedents of knowledge processes. The Complexity Approach calls for a high level of abstraction, predicts how general patterns of change will unfold, and rests on the idea that order emerges through the interactions of agents. The third approach, The Relational Approach shifts the focus from IT as 'an information repository' to a tool that can dynamically reshape people's social relationships as they engage in knowledge sharing. The approaches adopted reflect an epistemological and methodological progress from 'positivism' towards 'critical realism'.