---------- Forwarded Message ---------- Subject: Call for Papers: OKLC 2002 Date: Thu, 14 Jun 2001 18:16:11 +0300 From: "Haridimos Tsoukas" OKLC2002@alba.edu.gr To: neumann@nestroy.wi-inf.uni-essen.de

Dear Dr. Neumann

The Third European Conference on Organizational Knowledge, Learning and Capabilities (OKLC 2002) will take place in Athens, Greece in April 2002, organized by ALBA (The Athens Laboratory of Business Administration). We are proud to announce the distinguished personalities who have confirmed will present keynote addresses: Professors Chris Argyris, John Seely Brown, Soumitra Dutta, Howard Thomas and Georg von Krogh. In order to maximize the value of the debate, participation is limited to 120 people. I have the pleasure of inviting you to submit a contribution and participate to this conference. Below you can find the call for papers.

For more information please visit http://www.alba.edu.gr/OKLC-2002.

Sincerely,

Haridimos Tsoukas Professor of Organization Theory and Behavior ALBA & University of Strathclyde

The Third European Conference on Organizational Knowledge, Learning, and Capabilities - OKLC 2002

An international conference hosted by ALBA (The Athens Laboratory of Business Administration), Athens, Greece

5-6 April 2002, Astir Palace, Athens

Keynote Speakers Professor Chris Argyris, James Bryant Conant Professor, Graduate Schools of Business Administration and Education, Harvard University Dr John Seely Brown, Chief Scientist, Xerox Corporation; Chief Innovation Officer, 12 Entrepreneuring; co-author, The Social Life of Information Professor Soumitra Dutta, The Roland Berger Chair of e-Business and Information Technology; Dean of Technology and e-Learning; Director, eLab@INSEAD; INSEAD and Visiting Professor, ALBA. Professor Howard Thomas, Professor of Management; Dean, Warwick Business School, University of Warwick Professor Georg von Krogh, Professor of Management; Director of The Institute of Management, University of St.Gallen

Conference Ïrganizers: Haridimos Tsoukas, Professor of Organization Theory and Behavior, ALBA & University of Strathclyde (htsoukas@alba.edu.gr) and Nikos Mylonopoulos, Assistant Professor of Information Systems, ALBA (nmylonop@alba.edu.gr)

Advisory Committee: Elena Antonacopoulou (eantonacopoulou@man.mbs.ac.uk), Chris Carter (University of Leicester, cjgcarter@yahoo.co.uk), Jannis Kallinikos (Athens University of Economics and Business & London School of Economics, jka@aueb.gr), Gregory Mentzas (National Technical University of Athens, gregory@planetey.com), Angeliki Poulymenakou (Athens University of Economics and Business, akp@aueb.gr), Andreu Rafael (IESE, andreu@iese.edu), Maxine Robertson (Warwick Business School, irobmr@rapier.wbs.warwick.ac.uk), Harry Scarbrough (University of Leicester, h.scarbrough@ntlworld.com), Jill Shepherd (University of Strathclyde, jill@gsb.strath.ac.uk), Sandra Sieber (IESE, sieber@iese.edu), Jacky Swan (Warwick Business School, irobjs@wbs.warwick.ac.uk).

Call for Papers

Continuing from and building on the success of the two international conferences on Knowledge Management, organized by the University of Warwick (2000) and the University of Leicester (2001), this conference is moving for the first time outside the UK and is taking a more explicitly European focus. At the same time, the conference theme is broadened to include, apart from a focus on Organizational Knowledge & Knowledge Management, the themes of Organizational Learning and Organizational Capabilities.

The widening of the conference topic reflects the increasing emphasis that has been given in the last ten years on seeing organizations as knowledge systems: from a knowledge-based perspective, organizations are viewed as bundles of knowledge assets the effective management of which affords a firm competitive advantage. Although knowledge has always been an organizational asset, it is only relatively recently that this has been widely recognized. There are several reasons why this has happened, including the increasing digitization of social and economic life, the widespread use of information and communication technologies, a more literate workforce, the increasing dependence of advanced economies on services, the expansion of a professional and technical class, and several other factors, all of which have made economic activities and transactions depend on specialized, or theoretical, knowledge.

As Daniel Bell insightfully foresaw nearly thirty years ago in his book The Coming of Post-Industrial Society, "what is distinctive about the post-industrial society is the change in the character of knowledge itself. What has become decisive for the organization of decisions and the direction of change is the centrality of theoretical knowledge the primacy of theory over empiricism and the codification of knowledge into abstract systems of symbols that, as in any axiomatic system, can be used to illuminate many different and varied areas of experience". Since Bell wrote his prophetic book in the early 1970s, further research has shown that even the most theoretical forms of knowledge essentially depend for their application on types of cognition and social skills that are inherently non-codifiable. Theoretical knowledge and social context are inextricably linked.

Viewing organizations as knowledge systems has turned out to be a very fruitful avenue for research. If an organization is a collection of knowledge assets then the updating and management of those assets is of great importance. Hence the current emphasis on attempts to understand knowledge creation, transmission, storage and retrieval as well as to improve our understanding of how organizational memory and learning function. Since knowledge is so important, the manner in which organizations remember what they know and learn from their (as well as from others’) experience is important, both theoretically and practically. Moreover, since knowledge assets are so central to the functioning of firms, the ways in which companies develop and sustain certain knowledge-based capabilities in order to gain competitive advantage is a suitable focus of research.

One of the most exciting aspects of the knowledge-based view of organizations has been its transdisciplinarity: it has provided the means for integrating insights from a variety of disciplines and fields, such as information systems management, strategic management, organization theory, marketing, entrepreneurship, accounting, and strands of sociology, psychology, economics, and philosophy. In this conference we seek papers (conceptual, empirical, or both) from scholars from all the preceding fields and disciplines that will address one, or combinations of, the following questions (the list is not meant to be exhaustive):

(1) How are organizational knowledge and its management to be conceptualized and researched? (2) How is organizational knowledge used, renewed, stored, retrieved, transmitted, and shared? How is it measured? (3) What types of organizational knowledge are related to different types of innovation systems and business systems? (4) What information technology applications and systems support effective knowledge management in organizations? Similarly, what organization designs facilitate knowledge management? (5) What are the mechanisms that enable (or disable) organizational learning, with what consequences? (6) How do organizational learning and knowledge management contribute to organizational innovation and change? (7) How do organizations remember what they know, and how is organizational memory strengthened (or weakened), updated, and used in particular contexts? (8) How does social capital in organizations preserve knowledge, in what form, for what use? (9) What are the best strategies for managing organizational knowledge? (10) How is knowledge management related to business strategy and organizational performance? (11) What evidence is there that firms’ competitive advantage stems from difficult-to-replicate knowledge assets? (12) What processes do organizations use to synthesize and acquire knowledge resources, generate new applications from those resources, and develop dynamic capabilities and value-creating strategies?

Conference Organization The conference is hosted by ALBA (Athens Laboratory of Business Administration), 2A Athinas Avenue & Areos Street, 16671 Vouliagmeni, Greece (tel: +30-1-8964531, fax: +30-1-8964737, www.alba.edu.gr), the leading independent Business School in Greece. The conference venue will be Astir Palace, a luxurious hotel, located by the beach, in a very pretty area just outside Athens (www.astir.gr).

Contributions and Participation Academic Track The natural home for conventional academic papers. Scholars from all areas of management and business studies are invited to submit papers that address one or more (or versions) of the preceding questions. Leading international publishers have expressed an interest in publishing a selection of academic papers from the conference.

Practitioner Track As well as inviting conventional academic papers, we are keen to include experience-based papers. In this track, participants will have the chance to present papers that may be more descriptive in style, prescriptive in tone and business-policy oriented. In the same track certain leading practitioners will be invited to share their experiences.

Submissions Authors should send a 500 word abstract as e-mail attachment at OKLC2002@alba.edu.gr by 15 October 2001. All abstracts must be submitted as Word documents and must contain on the first page a title, authors names, postal addresses, telephone numbers, e-mail addresses, and an indication of the track (i.e. academic or practitioner track) their authors would like to join. Abstracts will be blindly reviewed. Notification of acceptance will be sent by 15 November 2001. Papers must be submitted by 1 March 2002 in order to be included in the conference proceedings. There is a limit of 120 participants.

Estimated Cost To enable potential participants to budget for the conference, it is estimated that the total cost for taking part in the conference will be in the region of 700 Euro, inclusive of: the conference fee, a three-night accommodation in the conference hotel, breakfast, all conference-related meals, and the conference proceedings. Please note that this is only an estimate, not the final figure. Potential participants are advised to book flights as early as possible.

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