外文翻譯---對于一個企業(yè)的知識基礎(chǔ)型理論

中文 3125 字 本科畢業(yè)論文外文翻譯 外文題目： TOWARD A KNOWLEDGE-BASED THEORY OF THE FIRM 出 處： School of business, Georgetown University, Washington, DC, U.S.A 作 者 ROBERT M. GRANT TOWARD A KNOWLEDGE-BASED THEORY OF THE FIRM ROBERT M. GRANT School of business, Georgetown University, Washington, DC, U.S.A Given assumptions about the characteristics of knowledge and the knowledge requirements of production, the firm is conceptualized as an institution for integrating knowledge. The primary contribution of the paper is in exploring the coordination mechanisms through which firms integrate the specialist knowledge of their members. In contrast to earlier literature, knowledge is viewed as residing within the individual, and the primary role of the organization is knowledge application rather than knowledge creation. The resulting theory has implicatious for the basis of organizational capability, the principles of organization design (in particular, the analysis of hierarchy and the distribution of decision-ranking authority), and the determinnants of the horizontal and vertical boundaries of the firm. More generally, the knowledge-based approach sheds new light upon current organizational innovations and trends and has farreaching implications for management practice. Foudation The foundation for any theory of the firm is a set of initial premises which form the basis for the logical development of propositions concerning the structure, behavior, performance and indeed, the very existence of firms. Developing a knowledge-based theory of the firm raises the issue: What is knowledge? Since this question has intrigued some of the worlds greatest thinkers from Plato to Popper without the emergence of a clear consensus, this is not an arena in which I choose to compete. In terms of defining knowledge, all I offer beyond the simple tautology of that which is known is the recognition that there are many types of knowledge relevant to the firm. For the purposes of developing a theory of the firm, my primary task is to establish those characteristics of knowledge which have critical implications for management.The literature on the analysis and management of knowledge points to the following characteristics as pertinent to the utilization of knowledge within the firm to create value. Transferability The resource-based view of the firm recognizes the transferability of a firms resources and capabilities as a critical determinant of their capacity to confer sustainable competitive advantage(Barney, 1986). With regard to knowledge, the issue of transferability is important, not only between firms, but even more critically, within the firm. The management literature has clearly recognized the epistemological distinction between knowing how and knowing about which is captured by distinctions between subjective vs. objective knowledge, implicit or tacit vs. explicit knowledge, personal vs.prepositional knowledge,and procedural vs. declarative knowledge. My purpose here is not to make fine distinctions between different types of knowledge. I identify knowing how with tacit knowledge, and knowledge about facts and theories with explicit knowledge.The critical distinction between the two lies in transferability and the mechanisms for transfer across individuals, across space, and across time.Explicit knowledge is revealed by its communicanon. This ease of communication is its fundamental property. Indeed information has traditionally been viewed by economists as being a public good-once created it can be consumed by additional users at close to zero marginal cost.Tacit knowledge is revealed through its application. If tacit knowledge cannot be codified and can only be observed through its application and acquired through practice, its transfer between people is slow, costly, and uncertain (Kogut andZander, 1992). Capacity for aggregation The efficiency with which knowledge can be transferred depends, in part, upon knowledges potential for aggregation. Knowledge transfer involves both transmission and receipt. Knowledge receipt has been analyzed in terms of the absorptive capacity of the recipient (Cohen and Levinthal, 1990). At both individual and organizational levels, knowledge absorption depends upon the recipients ability to add new knowledge to existing knowledge. This requires additivity between different elements of knowledge. Efficiency of knowledge aggregation is greatly enhanced when knowledge can be expressed in terms of common language. Statistics is a particularly useful language for aggregating (andtransferring) certain types of explicit knowledge-its efficiency in this role is greatly enhanced through advances in information technology. Thus, information on Ford Motor Companys cash balances, its foreign currency exposure, its inventories of spark plugs and crankshafts is readily transferred from multiple locations within the company and aggregated at a single location. Conversely information about the capabilities of Ford managers, or the quirks of individual machine tools, is idiosyncratic knowledge cannot which cannot be aggregated at a single location. Hayek(1945: 521) refers to this asknowledge of the particular circumstances of time and place, and Jensen and Meckling (1992) as specific knowledge. As these authors have shown, and as we shall explore later in the paper,the ability to transfer and aggregate knowledge is a key determinant of the optimal location of decision-making authority within the firm. Appropriability Appropriability refers to the ability of the owner of a resource to receive a return equal to the value created by that resource (Teece, 1987; Levin et n1., 1987). Knowledge, is a resource which is subject to uniquely complex problems of appropriability. Tacit knowledge is not directly appropriable because it cannot be directly transferred: it can be appropriated only through its application to productive activity. Explicit knowledge suffers from two key problems of appropriability: first,as a public or nonrivalroos good, any one who acquires it can resell without losing it (Arcow,1984); second, the mere act of marketing knowledge makes it available to potential buyers(Arcow, 1971: 152). Thus, except for patents and copyrights where knowledge owners are protected by legally established property rights, knowledge is generally inappropriable by means of market transactions. Lack of clear property rights results in ambiguity over the ownership of knowledge.While most explicit knowledge and all tacit knowledge is stored within individuals, much of this knowledge is created within the firm and is firm specific. This creates difficulties over the allocation of the returns to knowledge and achieving optimal investment in new knowledge(Rosen, 1991). Specialization in knowledge acquisition Fundamental to Simons principle of bounded rationality is recognition that the human brain has limited capacity to acquire, store and process knowledge. The result is that efficiency in know- ledge production (by which I mean the creation of new knowledge, the acquisition of existing knowledge, and storage of knowledge) requires that individuals specialize in particular areas of knowledge. This implies that experts are (almost) invariably specialists, while jacks-of-all-trades are masters-of-none.The knowledge requirements of production Production involves the transformation of inputs into outputs. Fundamental to a knowledge-based theory of the fine is the assumption that the critical input in production and primary source of value is knowledge. Indeed, if we were to resurrect a single-factor theory of value in the tradition of the classical economists labor theory of value or the French Physiocrats land-based theory of value, then the only defensible approach would be a knowledge-based theory of value,on the grounds that all human productivity is knowledge dependent, and machines are simply embodiments of knowledge. The exitence of the firms The above precepts establish a rationale for the existence of firms. Following Demsetz (1991:171一 175), the existence of the firm represents a response to a fundamental asymmetry in the economics of knowledge: knowledge acquisition requires greater specialization than is needed for its utilization. Hence, production requires the coordinated efforts of individual specialists who possess many different types of knowledge. Yet markets are unable to undertake this coordinating role because of their failure in the face of (a)the immobility of tacit knowledge and (b) the risk of expropriation of explicit knowledge by the potential buyer. Hence, firms exist as institutions for producing goods and services because they can create conditions under which multiple individuals can integrate their specialist knowledge. These conditions include propinquity and low-powered incentives designed to foster condition between individual specialists which avoid the problems of opportunism associated with the high-powered incentives directly related to knowledge transactions. A possible solution to the inability of markets to contract over transfers of tacit knowledge is to contract over units of workers time. But ever if units of labor time are suitable proxies for the supply of tacit knowledge, so long as production requires the complex integration of multiple types of knowledge within a system of team production then Rosen(1991)shows that markets must establish an incredibly complex wage structure which sets a separate wage rate for every workers interaction with every other worker. Note that this view of the role of the firm as a knowledge-integrating institution is somewhat different from that emphasized in the literature Most research into organizational learning (Levitt and March, 1988; Huber, 1991)and the knowledge-based view of the firm (Spender, 1989;Nonaka, 1991, 1994) focuses upon the acquisition and creation of organizional knowledge. Thus, spender(1989: 185) defines the organization as, in essence, a body of knowledge about the organizations circumstances, resources, causal mechanisms, objectives, attitudes, policies, and so forth. My approach is distinguished by two assumptions: first, that knowledge creation is an individual activity; second, that the primary role of firms is in the application of existing knowledge to the production of goods and services.this dispensing with the concept of organizational knowledge in favor of emphasizing the role of the individual in creating and storing knowledge is consistent with Simons observation that:All learning takes place inside individual human heads; an organization learns in only two ways:(a) by the learning of its members, or (b) by ingesting new members who have knowledge the organization didnt previously have (Simon,1991: 125). More importantly, however, is the desire to understand the organizational processes through which firms access and utilize the knowledge possessed by their members. The flange inherent in the concept of organizational knowledge is that, by viewing the organization as thentity which creates, stores and deploys knowledge, the organizational processes through whicl individuals engage in these activities may be obscured. Thus, March views organizations a storing knowledge in their procedures, norms rules, and forms. They accumulate such knowledge over time learning from their members(March, 1991: 73). This learning process involve encoding inferences from history into routine that guide behavior. The generic term routine,includes the forms, rules, procedures, conventions strategies, and technologies around which organizations are constructed and through which the;operate (Levitt and March, 1988: 320). Takinl the organization as the unit of analysis not only runs the risk of reification, but, by defining rules procedures, conventions, and nouns as knowledge fails to direct attention to the mechanisms through which this organizational knowledge is createc through the interactions of individuals, and offers little guidance as to how managers can influence these processes. My emphasis is on the firm as an institution for knowledge application. This is not to deny the importance of organizational constext in knowledge creation. If production creation requires the integration of each persons knowledge with that of others, even if knowledge acquisition is individualistic, the firm provides necessary incentives and direction. If knowledge is specific to a particular team production process,then knowledge creation cannot be separated from knowledge application-both occur within a commen organizational context. Thus, if the members of Manchester United soccer team have cumplementary skills, then they need to be tied together by long-term relationships in order to achieve the investment in team-based skills required to maximize team performance. Market contracts are unlikely to achieve the stability of long-term relationships and are likely to give rise to all the problems of opportunism that transactions cost economics predicts are a consequence of small numbers and transaction-specific investments. This rationale for the existence of the firm may be criticized as being a special case of the Coase/Williamson transaction cost theory of the firm. Firms exist because they are able to avoid the costs associated with market transactions; the knowledge-based view simply focuses upon the costs associated with a specific type of transaction-those involving knowledge. Certainly, the above analysis draws upon some familiar concepts of market failure. However, the key distinction is emphasis upon the firm as an organization for managing team production rather than an institution for managing transactions. In common with the arguments of Ghoshal and Moran(1996), the central advantage of firms in the production process is not simply an avoidance of the transactions costs associated with market exchange, but their unique advantages for governing certain types of economic activities from a logic that is very different from that of a market(Ghoshal and Moran, 1996: 13). Integrating the knowledge of many different individuals in the process of producing goods and services is such a logic. To develop this argument further, these processes for integrating knowledge need to be specified more clearly. 譯 文： 對于一個企業(yè)的知識基礎(chǔ)型理論 ROBERT M. GRANT 美國華盛頓 喬治鎮(zhèn)大學(xué) 根據(jù)知識的特點(diǎn)和產(chǎn)品生產(chǎn)的知識要求，企業(yè)被定義為一 個整合知識的機(jī)構(gòu)。本論文的主要貢獻(xiàn)在于通過企業(yè)成員中專家的知識 來探究協(xié)調(diào)機(jī)制。和早期文獻(xiàn)資料相反，現(xiàn)在人們認(rèn)為知識存在于個人內(nèi)部。而組織最主要的角色是知識的應(yīng)用，不是知識的創(chuàng)造。隨之產(chǎn)生的理論對組織能力基礎(chǔ)、組織設(shè)計(jì)理論（尤其是對等級制度和決策等級分布的分析）以及企業(yè)橫向、縱向邊界的決定因素都有指示作用?？偟膩碚f，知識基礎(chǔ)型理論為現(xiàn)今的組織創(chuàng)新和走向指明了道路 ，而且對管理實(shí)踐有深遠(yuǎn)意義。 基礎(chǔ) 任何公司理論的基礎(chǔ)都是由一套初始假設(shè)構(gòu)成的。這些假設(shè)對公司的結(jié)構(gòu)、行為、表現(xiàn)以及存在等論點(diǎn)的邏輯發(fā)展奠定了基礎(chǔ)。若要闡述企業(yè)知識基礎(chǔ)型理論，我們勢必會碰到一個問題：什么是知識？這個問題激發(fā)了世界上最偉大的思想家（從柏拉圖到波普爾）的興趣，但始終沒有統(tǒng)一的意見。我不想再這個領(lǐng)域競爭。說到知識的定義，除了“眾所周知”的簡單真理外，人們承認(rèn)很多類型的知識都和企業(yè)有關(guān)。筆者也會在本論文中提及。為了企業(yè)理論的發(fā)展，筆者的主要任務(wù)是發(fā)現(xiàn)那些對管理有決定性作用的知識特征。許多對知識的分 析和管理指出，以下特征非常恰當(dāng)?shù)淖C明在企業(yè)內(nèi)部對知識的利用能夠創(chuàng)造價(jià)值。 可轉(zhuǎn)移性 持資源基礎(chǔ)型觀點(diǎn)的人認(rèn)為，企業(yè)資源和能力的可轉(zhuǎn)移性就是企業(yè)實(shí)現(xiàn)可持續(xù)競爭優(yōu)勢的決定因素 (Barney, 1986)。關(guān)于知識，不僅僅在企業(yè)之間，更關(guān)鍵在于企業(yè)內(nèi)部，可轉(zhuǎn)移性這點(diǎn)是非常重要的。知道“怎樣”和知道“關(guān)于”的區(qū)別在于“主觀和客觀的知識，含蓄和明了的知識，個人的和前置的知識，以及程序上和陳述上的知識”，管理學(xué)者已經(jīng)清楚的認(rèn)識到了以上幾點(diǎn)在認(rèn)識論中的差別。筆者在此的目的不是想完美地區(qū)分知識的各種形式。通過利用含蓄知識 ，筆者能夠鑒別“怎樣”，利用明了知識了解事實(shí)和理論。兩者最關(guān)鍵的區(qū)別在于可轉(zhuǎn)移性以及通過個人，空間，時(shí)間的轉(zhuǎn)移機(jī)制。明了的知識是通過通信而顯露的。這些交流的過程是最基礎(chǔ)的屬性。事實(shí)上經(jīng)濟(jì)學(xué)家一直都認(rèn)為信息是一種公共利好的資源，更多的使用者可以接近 0邊際成本的水平來消費(fèi)信息。隱性知識是在應(yīng)用中體現(xiàn)出來。如果人們不能把隱性知識精確歸類，只能在應(yīng)用中發(fā)現(xiàn)，在實(shí)踐中獲得，那么它在人們的轉(zhuǎn)移中是緩慢的，高成本的，不確定的 (Kogut andZander, 1992)。 集成能力 知識轉(zhuǎn)移的效率部分是靠知識集成的內(nèi)在潛 力。知識轉(zhuǎn)移包括轉(zhuǎn)送和接受。人們通過“接受者的吸收能力”來分析知識接受 (Cohen and Levinthal, 1990)。從個人和組織的層面上來說，知識的吸收能力取決于接受者在有知識基礎(chǔ)上增加新知識的能力。這要求不同知識之間元素的可疊加性。當(dāng)知識能以普通語言表達(dá)出來后，知識擴(kuò)張的效率就會大大提高。對于擴(kuò)張（和傳播）特定類型的明了知識時(shí)，數(shù)據(jù)就成了一門特別有用的語言。隨著信息技術(shù)的進(jìn)步，其角色的有效性大大提高。因此，福特汽車公司的員工已隨時(shí)準(zhǔn)備將公司的現(xiàn)金平衡信息，外幣曝露信息以及火花塞和曲軸的存貨從公司 的多個位置轉(zhuǎn)移并集聚到一個地方。但是，福特管理者的能力或單個機(jī)器部件的高效率是一種特殊的知識，無法集中到一個位置。 Hayek(1945: 521)認(rèn)為這是“特定時(shí)間和地點(diǎn)的下知識”， Jensen 和 Meckling (1992)認(rèn)為其是“特殊知識”。正如以上學(xué)者所述，轉(zhuǎn)移和集成知識的能力對形成企業(yè)內(nèi)部最佳決策制度來說至關(guān)重要。 適應(yīng)性 適應(yīng)性是指資源所有者接受與資源價(jià)值同等水平知識的能力 (Teece, 1987; Levin et n1., 1987)。知識是一種資源，其取決于各種獨(dú)特、復(fù)雜問題的適應(yīng)性。因?yàn)槿藗儾荒苤苯愚D(zhuǎn)移隱性知識，所以它并不是放之四海而皆準(zhǔn)的。只有當(dāng)人們把它應(yīng)用到生產(chǎn)活動中，它才能實(shí)現(xiàn)其合理性。清晰知識面臨兩大關(guān)于適用性的問題：第一，作為一種公共或者說不排他的資源，任何一個人得到它的人都可以重復(fù)出售它，但是不會失去它的使用權(quán) (Arcow,1984)。第