Belief revision and organisational knowledge dynamics

Abstract

It is widely accepted nowadays that the ability of a firm to display sustained competitive advantage, relies heavily on its efficiency in managing organisational knowledge, and keeping it up-to-date with internal and external developments. It is therefore imperative to develop a deeper understanding of organisational knowledge evolution. In this paper, we propose the use of methods and techniques from the area of Belief Revision in studying organisational knowledge dynamics. Belief Revision lies at the intersection of Formal Philosophy and Computer Science, and studies the process by which a rational agent changes her beliefs in the light of new information. The formal models that have been developed in this area are intuitive and elegant, and in this paper we show how they can be imported into the context of organisational knowledge management.

Keywords:

• organisational studies
• management
• dynamic capabilities
• artificial intelligence

Acknowledgements

We are grateful to Haridimos Tsoukas, Nicos Mylonopoulos and the anonymous referees for their detailed and very useful comments.