Technology and The Courtroom: An Inquiry into Knowledge Making in Organizations
通过意大利六个法庭采用录像技术记录刑事审判的案例，揭示了组织知识并非客观商品，而是充满争议、拼凑和媒介依赖的动态集合体。
Recent theories of knowledge management have offered a functionalist understanding of knowledge creating dynamics in organizations. Their focus is on the role of knowledge assets as a determinant of competitive performance. However, the presupposition that knowledge can be managed or treated as an objective commodity seems to overlook the highly interactive, provisional and controversial nature of knowledge‐oriented phenomena in organizations. By deviating from the mainstream, we conduct a phenomenological inquiry into knowledge making within the setting of courtroom trials. Evidence is provided by in‐depth case studies carried out in six Italian courtrooms adopting videocassette recording (VCR) technology as a tool for recording and storing the proceedings of criminal trials. The behavioural responses of courtroom actors confronted by the intrusion of an alien technology in a highly institutionalized and resilient setting are particularly relevant for the study of knowledge in organizations. They reveal the highly controversial, pasted up and medium‐specific features of organizational and professional knowledge systems. Rather than being the product of smooth conversion processes, knowledge in organizations is the outcome of inquiry, controversy and bricolage , resilient as a whole, but subject to local disputes, experiments and reassembling. Based on the findings of the cases, our account points towards a view of organizational knowledge as a dynamic, heterogeneous ‘assemblage’ characterized by ongoing transformations and reconfigurations.