Middle Managers’ Searching for Knowledge: Repository or Interpersonal Logic?
Document Type Conference Paper
Tippmann, Sharkey-Scott, Mangematin (2010), Middle Managers’ Searching for Knowledge: Repository or Interpersonal Logic?, Paper presented at the EGOS Colloquium, Lisbon, Portugal – July 2010
Abstract
Drawing on the organizational memory and strategy for managing knowledge literatures to develop a theoretical framework, we empirically examined the organizational memory contexts – interpersonal and repository logic - that set the broader conditions for middle managers’ knowledge searching. Contrary to most studies which examine knowledge storage processes, with the help of multiple case studies, we examined middle managers’ actual activities. Our findings reveal that in the interpersonal logic middle managers more actively engage in knowledge circulation and knowledge co-creation processes. In the repository logic instead, middle managers’ potential seemed to become confined because of cognitive inertia, leading to a tendency to search for ready-made solutions, and to use own experience in a siloed problem-solving effort that may have limited suitability to dealing with novel challenges.