The Community as a Centre of Knowledge Sharing
Ernst Helmstaedter, Institute for Work and Technology, Germany
Abstract
The contribution to knowledge sharing is one of the most important features for the reputation of a city. Despite the globalizing effect by the electronic technology, still regional proximity matters in the case of knowledge interactions. Two reasons have to be mentionened: (1) during the process of brain storming at the very beginning of a search process face to face contacts are urgently needed, and (2) depending on specific knowledge tasks local vicinity can help a lot. It is still convenient to speak about such problems by notions like ‘spillovers’ or the ‘external effects’ of nearby situated research institutions. But the paper tries to replace these notional aggregates by discrete knowledge interactions between knowledge workers.
The basis of the argumentation is given by applying the New Institutional Economics approach (NIE) to the process of knowledge division as shown in the forthcoming book, edited by the author: The Economics of Knowledge Sharing: A New Institutional Approach. The key message of this book is that division of knowledge needs its specific institutions (law, rules, behaviour, customs and so on). These institutions are similar but not identical to the institutions of the division of labour, what NIE takes basicaly under consideration. Two of the most important differences are the type of remuneration and the mode of interactions. The transactions of the process of the division of labour are characterized by special payment, the interactions inside the process of the division of knowledge are remunerated by general payment according to uncomplete employment contracts. This means that trust matters even more compared to trading goods and non-knowledge services. And: trust happens out of personal neighbourhood. The modes of knowledge interactions are non-economic competition and co-operation, instead of economic competition in the exchange process.
Besides the kinds of knowledge interactions that find favourable conditions in communities, there are different tasks in the framework of the division of knowledge process itself, which are connencted with specific connections to the spatial dimension: (1) sequential interdependent tasks, where at every stage the knowledge must be known that has been included at the preliminary stage. One could call them the software tasks, because they belong specifically to these jobs, (2) tasks that need conceptual integrity and clarity, which is needed in archi-tecture, let us call them architectural tasks. Both tasks limit the division of knowledge process to the local area. Are there further tasks that favour local connections?
An interaction based approach to knowledge sharing opens up the chance to undertake empirical research. Such research stands at its very beginning.