Knowledge and Organization: Perspectives of Knowledge Market and Knowledge Community

지식과 조직: 지식시장과 지식공동체 관점

As the Knowledge Economy grows bigger, studies and practices of knowledge management flourish in almost every organizations. Yet, the studies of fundamental relationships between knowledge and organization have not been sufficiently developed. It is partly because current knowledge management mainly focus on the technical aspects of the theme. This paper tries to find the possible organizing principles and theoretical foundations of knowledge-intensive organizations through the perspective of knowledge market and knowledge community. Based on the differentiation of "knowledge" and "knowing", the author draws several propositions about knowledge creation and knowledge use. Then, the author relates these propositions to the design and implementation of two theoretical models of organizations, i. e. knowledge market and knowledge community. Major claims are: 1) Knowledge use and knowledge creation process are conceptually separable, so that different conceptual models (market & community) need to be applied. 2) Since knowledge use and creation should be integrated, organizations in the Knowledge Economy should be the efficient knowledge market and, at the same time, knowledge community with care and cooperations. 3) The network of independent small KIFs(knowledge-intensive firms) could be considered as the possible organizational model of the future.