Management Control and the Dynamics of Knowledge Sharing In Knowledge Intensive Organizations

The purpose of this paper is to analyze how the concepts of technocratic control, socio-ideological control and control via structural holes may give insights to the management of internal communication in knowl- edge intensive organizations. It sheds light on the group dynamics of knowledge creation, sharing and utilization. The types of control are considered by their effects on communication within epistemic communities. In the con- text of this discussion, organizations are seen as goal oriented social systems. The decentralization development has implications to management policy, as decentralized decision making reduces the management's capability to control and direct the actions of the subordinates in a traditional manner. The role of management might be transforming from supervision to mentoring, which is also noted in the knowledge management discourse. From the view point of knowledge management, classical technocratic control mechanisms may have to be rethought, since they could stiffen activities and reduce innovative capabilities and motivation in creative knowledge work. Yet, some control aspect is essential to management, which by definition concentrates on exercising power and controlling actions. The conceptual analysis of this paper elucidates the role of knowledge management in developing human communication networks and it is based on a literature research utilizing the viewpoint of nonlinear dynamic systems, as knowledge sharing is considered to be a group dynamic feature dealing with the complex relationships between the parts of a system and how these relationships build up the overall dynamics.