Managing five paradoxes of knowledge exchange in networked organizations: new priorities for HRM?

• Author: Christopher Mabey,Shasha Zhao
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/1748-8583.12106
• Published date: 01 January 2017
• Date: 01 January 2017

Managing five paradoxes of knowledge exchange

in networked organizations: new priorities for

HRM?

Christopher Mabey and Shasha Zhao, Middlesex UniversityBusiness School, The

Burroughs, London NW4 4BT, UK

Human Resource Management Journal, Vol 27,no 1, 2017, pages 39–57

The life-bloodof most organizationsis knowledge. Too often,the very mechanisms set up to facilitateknowledge

flow militateagainst it. This is becausethey are instituted in a top-downway, they are cumbersometo manage

and the bridgesof trust fail to getbuilt. In their thirst forinnovation, the tendencyis for firms to set up elaborate

transmissionchannels and governancesystems. As a result,staff are drowned in a deluge ofmundane intranet

messages and bewildered by matrix structures, while off-the-wall ideas and mould-breaking insights are

routinely missed. Added to this is the challenge of operating across professional, cultural, regional and

linguistic boundaries, where ways of sharing knowledge differ markedly, even within the same project team.

Drawing upon extensive research with scientists in theATLAS collaboration (a high-energy particle physics

experiment comprising 3,500 scientists from 38 countries), we explore five paradoxes associated with

knowledge exchange in global networks. Each paradox leads to a proposition which takes the theory and

practice ofknowledge management in a freshdirection. We concludeby outlining a number of HRM priorities

for international knowledge-intensive organizations.

Contact: Professor Chris Mabey, Middlesex University Business School, The Burroughs, London

NW4 4BT, UK. Email: c.mabey@mdx.ac.uk

Keywords: knowledge management;paradoxes; international networks; R&D; HRM

INTRODUCTION

Exploiting maximum benefit from multi-agency and multi-national knowledge

networksremains a high priority of privatefirms and public agencies alike. The ATLAS

collaboration is working at the pioneering cusp of experimental particle physics; it

relies upon thehighly sophisticated LargeHadron Collider equipment andteams of physicists,

technologists andsupport staff operating in 175 nationalInstitutes in 38 countries, but mainly

at the hub of activities in CERN near Geneva.While the ATLAS collaborationis in some ways a

unique knowledge-intensive enterprise, it offers some fascinating insights on effective

knowledge exchange across non-hierarchical global networks. Between 2010 and 2013 a

research team observed many formal and informal gatherings of the ATLAS collaboration

and conducted 76 interviews with scientists in Europe and China. Preliminary analysis

revealed that the sharing of precious know-how operates as an embedded (barely visible),

path-dependent and patterned process (see Appendix). Here,for the first time, we stand back

and reflect on the entire case and from thisreview we observe five intriguingparadoxes which

challenge conventional ways of managing knowledge in the advanced knowledge economy.

This is an open access articleunder the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs

License, which permits use and distribution in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, the

use is non-commercial and no modifications or adaptationsare made.

HUMAN RESOURCEMANAGEMENT JOURNAL, VOL27, NO 1, 2017 39

© 2016 The Authors.Human Resource ManagementJournal Published by JohnWiley & Sons Ltd.

Pleasecite this article in pressas: Mabey, C. and Zhao, S. (2017)‘Managing five paradoxesof knowledge exchangein networked organizations:new

prioritiesfor HRM?’.HumanResource ManagementJournal 27:1,39–57

doi: 10.1111/1748-8583.12106

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This paper contributes to theory and practice in two ways. First, by analysing knowledge

exchange in a globalR&D community, webegin to address a gap in current theorizing, where

much of the workis still conceptual and/or tendsto focus on MNCs (Tallman and Chacar,2011;

Choi and Johanson, 2012; Ferner et al., 2012; Kasper et al., 2013) or consultancies (Donnelly,

2008; Alvesson, 2011; Kinnie and Swart, 2012; Swart and Kinnie, 2013). This also addresses a

call by Champalovet al. (2002) for more studies of scientific,inter-organizationalcollaborations

as objects of enquiryand provides fresh understandingof the way HRM can promote effective

knowledge exchangein networked organizations, a disaggregated organizationalform which

is increasingly favoured across all sectors (Felin et al., 2009). Second, we take issue with an

undifferentiated view of strategic knowledge, which regards it as inherently commodifiable

and then assumes that, withwell-chosen governance and HR mechanisms, disseminationwill

be swift and unhindered. Our analysis demonstrates several counter-intuitive features of

knowledge exchangewhich challenge this current theorization of KM. The paper isstructured

in the followingmanner. In the next sectionwe summarize a number of core dimensionsarising

from the knowledgemanagement (KM) literature,before noting some keyKM ‘realities’which

have so far been neglected. We then explore this gap in KM theoryby discussing the nature of

five paradoxes which surfaced in the study of knowledge exchange among ATLAS scientists.

For each of these paradoxes we offer a theoretical proposition which highlights the counter-

intuitive aspects of knowledge exchange. We hope this discussion contributes to KM theory

and in the concluding section we outline a number of HRM priorities for those organizations

whose success depends on the judicious surfacing and sharing of innovative knowledge.

WHAT DOES THE CURRENT LITERATURE ONKNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT TELL US?

The field of knowledgemanagement is extensive. By way of providinga conceptual context for

this paper, someof the key theoretical considerations are briefly summarized below, together

with contributions fromthe field of HRM.

Knowledge is a strategically important

The knowledge-based view of the firm (KBV) maintains that knowledge resources have the

distinctive properties of heterogeneity and immobility, so utilization of knowledge becomes a

way of creating a sustainable competitive advantage (Kogut and Zander, 1996; King and

Zeithaml, 2003). In other words, KBV concerns two stages of operations: firstly, the increase

in the stock of useful knowledge and secondly, the extension of its application. By doing so,

knowledge becomes the essence of modern economic growth, particularly as modern

organizations are likely to operate in the knowledge-intensive industries instead of labour-

intensive (Ensign, 1999). Consequently, it is a priority of HR professionals to implement

bundles of HRM practices that successfully attract, motivate and retain knowledge workers

(Horwitz et al., 2003) and create conditions that encourage individuals’knowledge to be

utilized at the collective level (Sparrow, 2006).

Tacit knowledgehas a particular premium

In contrastto explicit knowledge whichis expressed in words, data,numbers, and codified into

symbolic formssuch as documents and databases,tacit knowledge is personal, context-specific

and hard to formalize and to articulate, often invisible to outsiders of a particular

organizational context (Davis et al., 2005). Because tacit knowledge is more intuitive, elusive

and emergent over time, it remains embedded within the fluid social structures of networks

and organizations,so the HRM challenge of nurturingand utilising such mercurialknowledge

40 HUMANRESOURCE MANAGEMENT JOURNAL,VOL 27, NO 1, 2017

© 2016 The Authors.Human Resource ManagementJournal Published by JohnWiley & Sons Ltd.

Five paradoxesof knowledge exchange