Organising and Coordination in Support of Knowledge Work: Examples from Practice

Abstract

One of the primary tasks of organisations is to find a way to use the knowledge they have at their disposal. From this perspective, organisations have three critical tasks; to manage their employees' personal knowledge, make personal knowledge of employees available for their colleagues, and find how to use the knowledge embedded in artefacts and procedures. Coordination and organising are managerial activities through which organisations orchestrate their employees' work and knowledge and balance reliability and adaptability. Coordination is a horizontal process of orchestration of individual activities and knowledge by rules, guidelines, normative or spontaneous emergent activities of individuals and organising is a vertical process through which organisations make their decisions. This paper aims to discuss how different arrangements of coordination and organising influence work with knowledge. The paper explains the potential, advantages and disadvantages of different arrangements of coordination and organising for work with knowledge and provides examples of organisations that use these arrangements in practice.