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Pluralist Epistemology and the Knowledge-Based Theory of the Firm
Abstract
Our focus is the differences between monist and pluralist epistemologies. We want to illustrate how the adoption of a pluralist epistemology can reshape our theorizing about firms, organizations and their management. We can then build theories that are inherently dynamic and treat firms and organizations as the processes of creating the values which markets distribute. But to do this we must move beyond today's positivist monist conventions to a kind of epistemological pluralism that some might describe as postmodern. Given this shift we can then address the kinds of dynamic non-equilibrium systems that are proving of increasing interest to social and economic systems theorists. Our conclusion is that useful knowledge-based theories of the firm are less theories of objective entities `out there' than sets of contextualized heuristics guiding managers' intervention in their organizations as quasi-autonomous systems.
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Cites
Vygotsky, L. S. (1964) · Bulletin of the Orton Society · doi:10.1007/bf02928399 · Cited by 20,704
Cited by
A Stupidity‐Based Theory of Organizations
Alvesson, M., & Spicer, A. (2012) · Journal of Management Studies · doi:10.1111/j.1467-6486.2012.01072.x · Cited by 534
Organizing Processes in Complex Activity Networks
Blackler, F., Crump, N., & McDonald, S. (2000) · Organization · doi:10.1177/135050840072005 · Cited by 297
Metadata
- Authors
- Spender, J. C.
- Venue
- Organization
- Publisher
- SAGE Publications
- Published
- 1998-05
- Volume
- 5
- Issue
- 2
- Pages
- 233-256
- ISSN
- 1350-5084 (ISSN-L)
- 1461-7323
- OpenAlex
- W2138173796
- Cited by
- 238
- References
- 1
- FWCI
- 31.20
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
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Bibliographic data: Semantic Scholar, OpenAlex, Crossref.
Contains information from the Semantic Scholar Academic Graph Datasets, made available under the ODC Attribution License (ODC-BY 1.0).
Semantic Scholar’s data is described in: Kinney, R., et al. (2023). The Semantic Scholar Open Data Platform. arXiv:2301.10140.
