Circuits of power/knowledge

Abstract

Knowledge and organizational learning may be said to move in and through circuits. I shall demonstrate that macro events frame the development of forms of organizational knowing and knowledge, learning and capabilities. Using an ideal typical approach, in which certain aspects of reality are artificially accentuated for analytical reasons, the implications of two major relatively recent crises will be examined: the collapse of the USSR and the global financial crisis. Very different lessons flow from understanding these crises. After presenting brief histories of the present, I shall turn to discussion of the relations between social and system integration and the new social media, before drawing some conclusions with implications for thinking about circuits of power/knowledge.

Keywords:

• power
• social integration
• system integration

Acknowledgements

Thanks to Xavier Deroy, Marco Berti, Walter Jarvis, Ace Simpson, Chris Carter, Tyrone Pitsis, David Silverman, Danielle Logue, Mairi MacLean, Charles Harvey and Mark Haugaard.

Notes

The paper was originally delivered as a Keynote Address for the International Conference on Organizational Knowledge, Learning and Capabilities: Circuits of Knowledge held at BI, Oslo 23rd April 2014, whose theme was ‘Circuits of Knowledge’. Because it was delivered as a speech there are no specific references in the text, although I have included a select biography of significant sources consulted. The interest in the Soviet Union arose from a separate but related paper on ‘recursive contingency’, theoretically centred on Luhmann’s work, co-authored with Xavier Deroy, which was sparked by reading Tony Judt’s work, following a suggestion from Will Clegg. I have updated the paper slightly from its original version in line with changing events.

1. In 1969 the Royal Bank of Sweden created the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel, the so-called Nobel Prize in Economics. It is not a prize bequeathed by Nobel. It is an example of a very successful professional legitimation device.

2. The Google hits were generated by searching for ‘Putin Russia anti-gay’ and ‘Ukraine Independence Square Russia Crimea’ and were searched for on 7 March 2014.