Culture, the missing link in value creation and governance in knowledge‐intensive institutions?

• Published date: 01 February 2018
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1002/pa.1702
• Date: 01 February 2018

INTRODUCTION

Culture, the missing link in value creation and governance in

knowledge‐intensive institutions?

This Special Issue focuses on the key characteristics, values, and pro-

cesses of knowledge intensive organisations (KIOs) and how culture‐

sensitive governance is needed to support creativity, entrepreneur-

ship, and innovation. In this special issue, we emphasise leadership

and culture as key factors in KIO success.

The term “knowledge intensive organisation”is in practice an

umbrella descriptor for a range of organisational types including

knowledge intensive services (KIS), knowledge transfer industries,

and knowledge creation bodies. By investigating this variety of knowl-

edge intensive organisations, we illuminate what is necessary for them

to be key facilitators of prosperity and growth. Understanding the dif-

ferent types of KIOs and what drives them is important now and will

be increasingly important in the future (Millar, Chen, & Waller, 2017;

Millar, Lockett, & Mahon, 2016; Millar, Peters, & Millar, 2015).

Due to this diversity, there is a need for politicians and commenta-

tors concerned with public policy issues to differentiate among them.

Unfortunately, these various knowledge bodies are often all treated

as homogenous elements of a single “knowledge economy,”which is

not always helpful when policy decisions are being made.

To note also is that the benefits of knowledge are achieved not

only at the level of the firm or organisation as a whole but also through

specialised departments and functions. The cumulative effect of

knowledge exploitation through firms and other organisations is a sig-

nificant contribution to national wealth and a natural topic for govern-

ment and public affairs.

For government to make the most of its ambitions for a knowl-

edge economy through intervention in the affairs of KIOs, it needs

understanding of their varieties, their structures, their drivers, and

the support requirements in their ecosystems. Such understanding is

critical for society to make the most of the KIOs in its midst. While

public authorities increasingly proclaim their recognition of the impor-

tance of KIOs, the KIOs in turn are realising the need for their value

creation to be visible and understood not only among those they

directly interact with but also in the wider environment of politics

and public opinion. At the same time, the transformative capacity of

knowledge throws up ethical and governance challenges about how

those with knowledge behave in husbanding, commercialising, and

benefitting from it—especially when information asymmetry means it

is they rather than others in society who are the best able to assess

its value and likely impact.

While the creation of a “healthy”infrastructure of effective KIOs is

regularly acknowledged as a policy priority, the plethora of publica-

tions on “knowledge management”contain little that addresses the

leadership, strategy and governance, ethics and values challenges

peculiar to organisations whose fortunes revolve around knowledge

activities. Value creation around services is one obvious criterion that

is of public policy interest, but to date, research on the nature, scope,

and drivers for this in KIOs has not kept pace with research in

manufacturing organisations (Løwendahl, Revang, & Fosstenløkken,

2001). Other approaches to research in this area around knowledge

diffusion, commercialisation, and replication have also not progressed

strongly, and major gaps are observable, even in the public affairs

domain despite the importance many governments ascribe to

supporting such sectors of the economy. Most glaring among these

gaps is the lack of work on the governance issues that arise when

efforts—typically of public bodies—are made to foster the knowledge

economy by intervening to support the founding and growth of KIOs.

This Special Issue stems from a public affairs perspective on the

contribution that can be made by KIOs, and it is our hope that it will

stimulate interest in developing deeper insights into the values, pro-

cesses, functions, support, and governance needs of KIOs such as

universities, other centres of research, and knowledge intensive insti-

tutions, as well as professional service firms. We hope that the results

of examining these KIO success factors in the context of public affairs

will promote the development and management of more sound, ethi-

cal, and effective engagement in this sector.

1|PUBLIC AFFAIRS

An established description and desire of public affairs is its role in

achieving consilience in the approaches of public sector and non‐public

sector actors to specific issues (Millar, Delves, & Harris, 2010). Neither

party dominates the other or achieves all it would wish for, and general

recipes are hard to find, but a common factor is the need to remove

misunderstandings, inaccurate perceptions, which would otherwise

lead to unnecessary friction and stifle attempts at cooperation. Given

the diversity of forms of KIO referred to above, there are many

opportunities for misunderstanding or inappropriate “one size fits all”

approaches to arise.

A variety of research routes exist, which seek to address the

challenge for Public Affairs in creating or supporting value creation. A

natural and recurrent focus has been on contexts where new KIOs

arise, hence on innovation and entrepreneurship and the value they

generate: Googins and Rochlin (2000) and Humphreys and Grayson

(2008) examined public affairs' partnership routes through co‐creation

DOI: 10.1002/pa.1702

J Public Affairs. 2018;18:e1702.

https://doi.org/10.1002/pa.1702

Copyright © 2018 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/pa 1of8