A knowledge taxonomy in the context of organizational routines: an study in a public university

Abstract

Knowledge is one of the most important assets in organizations. While there are several studies about knowledge management, there are few texts dedicated to classifying the existing types of knowledge. As such, the concept of knowledge is overlooked in the literature. Hence, this situation poses a dilemma: how could a thing that is not well understood be adequately managed? Drawing on current knowledge taxonomies and the organizational routines concept, we address this gap by outlining a taxonomy of how knowledge is manifested in the execution and structuration of organizational routines. This taxonomy is generated through the grounding process of examining the organizational routines of an academic department in a public university. As the main result, it was identified four basic types of knowledge: stable-reproducible, problem-solving, incremental-shift, and paradigmatic-shift. As main theoretical contribution, this paper introduces a knowledge taxonomy, which is an alternative view in relation to the current taxonomies. As a practical implication, these four types of knowledge presented point out to the necessity of the development of specific knowledge management practices for each type of knowledge.