A hermeneutical reading of Penrose and Nelson and Winter

Abstract This paper aims to understand based on a hermeneutical reading of Penrose (1959) and Nelson and Winter (1982) what knowledge is and where it is stored in the respective authors. Furthermore, the author wants to learn whether the subsumtion of Knowledge Integration to Knowledge Management, as it can be often in the literature, has any foundation when coming from these authors.

Reason for this overall analysis is the widely held view in the discipline of Knowledge Management that these authors are forefathers for it. Based on an interpretative, qualitative approach the author examines the way in which knowledge is held and created within organisations in the main work of this pair of author.

The author comes to the conclusion that the discipline of Knowledge Management has seemingly overemphasised certain elements in the work of Penrose and Nelson and Winter, while neglecting the key aspect that for both author(s) the act of Knowledge Integration is much rather described in these works. Keywords: Communication and Language, Employees, Knowledge Management, Knowledge Integration, Organisation, Resources and Services, Processes