Begins with a critical review of the literature on knowledge management, arguing that its focus on IT to create a network structure may limit its potential for encouraging knowledge sharing across social communities. Two cases of interactive innovation are contrasted. One focused almost entirely on using IT (intranet) for knowledge sharing, resulting in a plethora of independent intranets which reinforced existing organizational and social boundaries with electronic``fences''. In the other, while IT was used to provide a network to encourage sharing, there was also recognition of the importance of face-to-face interaction for sharing tacit knowledge. The emphasis was on encouraging active networking among dispersed communities, rather than relying on IT networks. Argues for a community-based model of knowledge management for interactive innovation and contrasts this with the cognitive-based view that underpins many IT-led knowledge management initiatives.

This paper contributes to the development of the knowledge management and human resource management literatures through developing the linkages between them. Increasingly it is being acknowledged that the success of knowledge management initiatives is fundamentally predicated on having workers who are prepared to share their knowledge. It is suggested that HRM concepts and frameworks could be utilized to improve our understanding of what shapes the willingness (or reluctance) of workers to share their knowledge. Specifically the paper considers how the motivation of workers to share their knowledge may be shaped by their level of organizational commitment. Guest and Conway's model of the psychological contract is modified to link commitment with knowledge-sharing attitudes and behaviours. Finally, it is suggested that, if commitment is linked to knowledge-sharing attitudes, then the apparently low commitment levels reported by a number of surveys may mean this represents a key problem for knowledge management initiatives.

In a contemporary business environment where change is often regarded as continuous, the ability of people or organizations to be able to successfully adapt and respond to change is key. Change often involves not only the learning of new behaviours, ideas, or practices but also giving up or abandoning some established ones. Despite both these elements generally being important to change, academic focus on processes of abandoning or giving up established knowledge and practices, that is, unlearning, is lacking. This conceptual article draws on a range of literature to suggest that the process of individual unlearning may have particular features. The review defines the concept of unlearning, differentiates between two different types of individual unlearning, and suggests that each type of individual unlearning may have its own distinctive features and dynamics. This article builds from this insight through developing a typology, which distinguishes between four types of individual unlearning. It concludes with an agenda for future empirical research to examine and validate the concepts presented.

The paper examines the spatial implications of multi-location work considering how the spaces such workers travel through and work in shape the type of tasks they conduct, how they act to create a workspace in such locations and the implications that this type of working has for how the workplace is conceptualised.

This paper critiques the perspective that information technology can play a central role in knowledge-sharing processes. Fundamentally, it suggests that the nature of knowledge itself makes it extremely difficult and that quite specific conditions are required for information technology-based knowledge sharing to occur successfully. The paper proceeds by criticizing the objectivist philosophy of knowledge, which typically underpins the literature advocating information technology-based knowledge management. The centre point of this critique involves questioning one of the foundational assumptions of the objectivist perspective, namely the dichotomy made between tacit and explicit knowledge. Instead, a ‘practice‘-based philosophy of knowledge is proposed that suggests that all knowledge has both tacit and explicit components, is to some extent embodied in human brains and bodies and is embedded in organizational routines, practices and contexts. These characteristics therefore suggest that the role of information technology systems in the sharing of knowledge is likely to be somewhat limited.