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The paper investigates knowledge creation in nascent technical industries, a somewhat neglected empirical setting concerning knowledge creation. Frameworks on organizational learning and knowledge creation assume that knowledge creation depends on language creation and neglect the benefits involved by allowing elements of new product and process ideas to mature in a tacit form, whereas cognitive neuroscience data suggest that technical knowledge creation is largely nonlinguistic. The four case studies point to excessive reliance on group discussion, a need for more trial and error and that field tests and prototypes generate new learnings that save time and lowers subsequent risks. Technical knowledge creation in nascent high‐tech industries requires opportunities to work with and further develop knowledge in its tacit form. The paper refines frameworks on organizational learning and knowledge creation to better reflect the characteristics of technical knowledge creation. The paper adds prototypes as a necessary, but currently missing outcome option from interpreting processes in the 4I framework.

Many studies tacitly view social knowledge use as a transaction between knowledge producers (social scientists) and decision makers (bureaucratic managers, judges), thus framing analysis within an implicit bipolar model of use. Although rarely explicit, such models do entail choices at different levels; they entail (1) methodological choices, (2) conceptual choices regarding how one will view social science's role in public decision making, and (3) choices among broader social philosophies. The choices at each level involve scientific as well as ethical judgments. This article explores an approach to evaluating such judgments. Suggestions for a broader definition of applied social science as praxis emerge from the analysis.

While consumers are recognized as valuing market goods and services for the activities they can construct from them in the frameworks of several disciplines, consequences of the characteristics of goods and services they use in these activities have not been well studied. In this book, knowledge-yielding and conventional goods and services are contrasted as factors in the construction of activities that consumers engage in when they are not in the workplace. Consumers are seen as deciding on non-work activities and the inputs to these activities according to their objectives, and the values and accumulated skills they hold. It is suggested that knowledge content in these activities can be efficient for consumer objectives and also have important externalities through its effect on productivity at work and economic growth. The exposition seeks to elaborate these points and contribute to multi-disciplinary dialogue on consumption. Introduction: Consuming Knowledge Dimensioning Consumption: The Use of Knowledge in Non-Work Activities The Construct of the Valuing of Knowledge and Personal Consumption Expenditure in the U.S. National Accounts 1929-1989 The Interaction of Non-Work and Work Activities: Cross-Domain Transfers of Skill and Affect Integrating Non-Work Activities into Frameworks of Economic Growth Directions for the Study of Knowledge Use in Non-Work Activities

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to discuss how managers use knowledge when making ICT investment decisions. ICT investments are complex processes and also have strategic implications for organizations. The focus of the study is to reveal how the organizational process of knowledge creation affects the individual‐level of decision making and how knowledge conversions between tacit and explicit knowledge occur in this process.Design/methodology/approachThe data consists of information collected by six semi‐structured interviews from six small‐ or medium‐sized companies. Knowledge use in ICT investment decision making is analyzed qualitatively and found categories of the different decision maker types are presented.FindingsIn ICT investments, there are three contributing factors: problem, product, and provider. The results show significant differences in how the tacit and explicit dimensions of knowledge act by forming a cognitive model of decision‐makers' use of knowledge.Research limitations/implicationsOwing to the qualitative approach, the findings do not show the frequencies of a certain type of a decision maker in the SMEs in general.Practical implicationsTo be more effective, the models of ICT investment decision making for SMEs should emphasise the tacit knowledge used in the process.Originality/valueThe paper presents rare empirical findings on how the decision makers in the SME context use knowledge in their ICT investment processes.

This article analyzes the extent to which public administrators make use of expert knowledge (i.e., research or evaluation reports) when they prepare policy advice, and the extent to which politicians deliberate on the information provided to them by the administrators. The study is based on original, quantitative data from local politics in Sweden. We find that expert-informed policy advice from the administrators and critical reflection by the politicians are more pronounced when there is a lot of public attention. Furthermore, administrators use expert information more when they operate in a context in which there are large political disagreements. However, politicians deliberate less on the administrators' policy advices in such environments. Thus, conflict seems to generate a pressure on the administrators to search for expert knowledge. But at the same time, within a context of political disputes, politicians make less effort to understand and critically reflect over the information provided to them by the administration, and are less inclined to change their opinions even if good arguments are presented to them. Thus, the empirical analysis indicates that what role expertise gets in policy making is very much a consequence of the local political environment. Adapted from the source document.