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Knowledge Management, Power and Conflict

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Abstract

There is a pervasive tendency in knowledge management (KM) research and practice to downplay, ignore and/or simplify issues of power and conflict. This chapter draws out perspectives on power in the wider social sciences to allow for a richer and more nuanced understanding of the topic. Four layers of power are discussed in relation to contemporary debates on power and conflict in KM. The argument put forward in this chapter is that KM literature may benefit, in particular, from paying greater attention to the deeper layers of power referred to here as ‘process power’, ‘meaning power’ and ‘systemic power’. An examination of KM through these lenses calls into question consensus-based approaches that may mask underlying tensions between multiple divergent interests and—crucially—preclude questions into how power/knowledge relations shape the ethics, inclusiveness and democracy of organisational knowledge cultures.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. UTS Business School, University of Technology Sydney, Ultimo, NSW, Australia

    Helena Heizmann

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  1. Helena Heizmann
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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Suleman Dawood School of Business, Lahore University of Management Sciences, Lahore, Pakistan

    Jawad Syed

  2. School of Management and Enterprise, Faculty of Business, Education, Law and the Arts, University of Southern Queensland, Toowoomba, Queensland, Australia

    Peter A. Murray

  3. School of Business and Economics, Loughborough University, Loughborough, Leicestershire, United Kingdom

    Donald Hislop

  4. Muscat University, St Helens, Merseyside, United Kingdom

    Yusra Mouzughi

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Heizmann, H. (2018). Knowledge Management, Power and Conflict. In: Syed, J., Murray, P., Hislop, D., Mouzughi, Y. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of Knowledge Management. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-71434-9_8

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