Data, meaning and practice: how the knowledge-based view can clarify technology's relationship with organisations

Theorists of technology, firms and organisations are now treating knowledge and skills as strategically significant. This is the good news. The bad news is that what we know about what knowledge and skills are insufficient. Our knowledge is also insufficient on how to create, acquire, identify, possess or transfer and manage knowledge and skills. Drawing on radical constructivism, we suggest a novel knowledge typology reflecting: a realist/interpretive distinction; an intellectual/practical distinction; a rationality/creativity distinction. The resulting model relates technologies to organisations, illuminating their interaction and the essential learning processes as organisations adopt technologies developed by others.