Architectures of Knowledge Firms, Capabilities, and Communities

In Architectures of Knowledge, Ash Amin and Patrick Cohendet argue that the time is right for research to explore the relationship between two other dimensions of knowledge in order to explain the innovative performance of firms: between knowledge that is 'possessed' and knowledge that is
'practiced' generally within communities of like-minded employees in a firm. The impetus behind this argument is both conceptual and empirical. Conceptually, there is a need to explore the interaction of knowledge that firms possess in the form of established competencies of stored memory, with the
knowing that occurs in distributed communities through the conscious and unconscious acts of social interaction. Empirically, the impetus comes from the challenge faced by firms to the hierarchically defined architecture that bring together specialized units of ((possessed)) knowledge and the
distributed and always unstable architecture of knowledge that draws on the continuously changing capacity of interpretation among actors. In this book, these questions of the dynamics of innovating/learning through practices of knowing, and the management of the interface between transactional and
knowledge imperatives, are approached in a cross-disciplinary and empirically grounded manner. The book is the synthesis of an innovative encounter between a socio-spatial theorist and an economist. The book results from the delicate interplay between two very different epistemologies and consequent
positions, but which progressively converged towards what is hoped to be a novel vision. The book begins by explaining why knowledge is becoming more of a core element of the value- generating process in theeconomy, then juxtaposes the economic and cognitive theorization's of knowledge in firms
with pragmatic and socially grounded theorization's and a critical exploration of the neglected dimension of the spatiality of knowledge formation in firms. The book concludes by discussing

1 - Placing Knowledge
2 - Economics of Knowledge Reconsidered
3 - The Firm as a Locus of Competence Building
4 - Practices of Knowing
5 - Spaces of Knowing
6 - Communities and Governance of Knowledge
7 - Public Policy Implications

Ash Amin is Professor of Geography at Durham University. He has held Fellowships and Visiting Professorships at the Universities of Naples, Venice, Bologna, Copenhagen, Rotterdam and Uppsala. He is a founding co-editor of the Review of International Political Economy and co-editor of Cities. He was Member of the Steering Committee of the European Association for Evolutionary Political Economy (EAEPE) from its foundation in 1989 to 1999. He was member of the Economic and Social Research Council's Research Priorities Board from 1997 to 2001. He is an academician of the Academy of the Learned Societies in the Social Sciences. His research interests lie in the fields of urban and regional development, the geography of the post-mass production economy, spatialities of globalisation, governance alternatives to market and hierarchy, urban democracy and the multicultural city, the geography of the social economy, and the cultural economy. Patrick Cohendet is Professor of Economics at University Louis Pasteur of Strasbourg, France. He has held Fellowships and Visiting Professorships at the Universities of UVA (Charlottesville, Virginia, USA), Toyo (Tokyo, Japan), and HEC-Montréal (Canada). He is one of the co-founders and members of BETA (Bureau d'économie théorique et appliquée), a research group in economics and management of the University Louis Pasteur of Strasbourg. He is member of the commitee of national research (CNRS) in economics and management. He was Member of CADAS (comité d'applications de l'académie des sciences ) from 1989 to 1999. His research interests lie in the fields of economics of innovation, economics of knowledge, theory of the firm, theory of decision, industrial organization and research policy.