Beyond an IT-driven Knowledge Society: Knowledge Management as Intertwined Sociotechnical Circulation

Starting from a critical review of Knowledge Management initiatives in managerial contexts, this contribution proposes an alternative approach to knowledge management as intertwined sociotechnical circulation. In most organizational settings, Knowledge Management has been driven by ICTs (Information and Communication Technologies) and has equated knowledge with information, and so faces massive failures and conflicting results. In order to overcome the influence of the managerial debate in Knowledge Management, an alternative approach is proposed. Drawing on the Mobility Paradigm, Science and Technology Studies, and Practice-based Studies, knowledge and its management are re-framed as a collective, situated, heterogeneous and contextual practice, performed through sociotechnical processes embedded in multiple infrastructures. A short agenda of outcomes and consequences of this alternative Knowledge Management is then outlined, in order to emphasize the continuity and dialectic relationship between theory and practice, conceptual and operational levels, in enabling knowledge transformation and circulation.