MANAGERIAL AUTHORITY WHEN KNOWLEDGE IS DISTRIBUTED: A KNOWLEDGE GOVERNANCE PERSPECTIVE

It has often been argued that governing work activities by means of authority in a social system in which knowledge is only present in distributed is inefficient. However, this chapter shows that this argument is not in general correct, and builds on the flawed inference that because a holder of authority is ignorant about some of the knowledge held by employees, he or she cannot rationally direct them.