The ignorance economy

Prometheus: Critical Studies in Innovation

Volumn 26, Issue 4, 2008, Pages 335-354

  Roberts, Joanne ^a   Armitage, John ^a  

^a NONE

Author keywords

Ignorance; Intellectual property rights; Knowledge commodification; Knowledge economy; Knowledge workers

Indexed keywords

COMMODITY; EDUCATION; INFORMATION AND COMMUNICATION TECHNOLOGY; INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY RIGHTS; KNOWLEDGE; THEORETICAL STUDY;

EID: 56349129826     PISSN: 08109028     EISSN: 14701030     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1080/08109020802459322     Document Type: Article

References (61)

1. An earlier version of this paper was presented at the Critical Management Conference, University of Manchester, in July 2007. The authors are grateful to the conference participants and to Prometheus referees for comments on earlier versions of the paper.
2. Oxford English Dictionary, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2003, p. 862.
3. For example, J. Roberts, 'The drive to codify: Implications for the knowledge-based economy', Prometheus, 19, 2, 2001, pp. 99-116
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8. Oxford English Dictionary, op. cit., p. 862.
9. Ibid, p. 862.
10. Fritz Machlup, The Production and Distribution of Knowledge in the United States, Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ, 1962
11. see also, Daniel Bell, The Coming of Post-Industrial Society, Heinemann, London, 1974.
12. See, for example, Department for Trade and Industry (DTI), Our Competitive Future: Building the Knowledge-Driven Economy, Cm4 176, London, 1998 (in 2007 the DTI was replaced by the Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform)
13. OECD, The Knowledge-Based Economy, Paris, OECD, OCDE/GD(96)102, 1996
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15. OECD, op. cit., p. 3.
16. DTI, op. cit.
17. W. Powell and K. Snellman, 'The knowledge economy', Annual Review of Sociology, 30, 2004, pp. 199-220 at p. 201.
18. Joseph Stiglitz, 'Public policy for a knowledge economy', speech delivered to the Department of Trade and Industry, and the Centre for Economic Policy Research, London, January 1999.
19. Codified knowledge can be easily reproduced and distributed at low or zero cost. This tends to undermine private ownership. Hence the growing use of instruments of Intellectual Property Rights (IPR). Tacit knowledge is more difficult to transfer since it requires the establishment of networks of relationships.
20. Building Ireland's Knowledge Economy-The Irish Action Plan for Promoting Investment in R&D to 2010, report to the Inter Departmental Committee on Science, Technology and Innovation, Forfás, July 2004, available at: http://www.forfas.ie (accessed June 2008).
21. Joel Mokyr, The Gifts of Athena: Historical Origins of the Knowledge Economy, Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ, 2002.
22. For example, Peter Drucker, Post-Capitalist Society, Harper Business, New York, 1993
23. Robert R. Reich, The Work of Nations: Preparing Ourselves for 21st Century Capitalism, Vintage Books, New York, 1992.
24. Manuel Castells, The Information Age: Economy, Society and Culture, Volume I: The Rise of the Network Society, Blackwell Publishers, Oxford, 1996.
25. Ibid, p. 32.
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27. Drucker, op. cit.
28. Reich, op. cit.
29. Peter Senge, The Fifth Discipline: The Art and Practice of the Learning Organization, Doubleday, New York, 1990.
30. Etienne Wenger, Communities of Practice: Learning, Meaning, and Identity, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1998
31. E. Wenger, R. McDermott and W. M. Snyder, Cultivating Communities of Practice: A Guide to Managing Knowledge, Harvard Business School Press, Boston, MA, 2002; H. Saint-Onge and D. Wallace, Leveraging Communities of Practice for Strategic Advantage, Butterworth Heinemann, London, 2003.
32. Ash Amin and Patrick Cohendet, Architectures of Knowledge: Firms, Capabilities and Communities, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2004
33. Ash Amin and Joanne Roberts (eds), Community, Economic Creativity and Organization, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2008.
34. Daniele Archibugi, Jeremy Howells and Jonathan Michie (eds), Innovation Policy in a Global Economy, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1999.
35. Peter Dicken, Global Shift: Mapping the Changing Contours of the World Economy, Sage, London, 2007.
36. Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations; A Selected Edition, Oxford World Classics, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1998 [1776], p. 11.
37. Ibid, p. 429.
38. As Rosenberg notes, Smith's analysis of the division of labour also recognizes that it has a positive impact on knowledge and creativity. While the majority of workers experience little variety, specialization provides greater variety in society as a whole, thereby providing huge scope for those not engaged in one particular occupation to 'exercise their minds in endless comparisons and combinations' and in so doing engage in a creative process (p. 431). For further elaboration,
39. see N. Rosenberg, 'Adam Smith on the division of labour: Two views or one?', Economica, 32, 126, 1965, pp. 127-39.
40. G. Becker and K. Murphy, 'The division of labor, coordination costs, and knowledge', Quarterly Journal of Economics, 107, 4, 1992, pp. 1137-60 at p. 1138.
41. Ibid, p. 1146.
42. David Landes, The Wealth and Poverty of Nations, Abacus, London, 1999.
43. J. Roberts, 'From know-how to show-how? Questioning the role of information and communication technologies in knowledge transfer', Technology Analysis and Strategic Management, 12, 4, 2000, pp. 429-43.
44. Jean-No÷el Jeanneney, Google and the Myth of Universal Knowledge University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 2007.
45. Roberts, 2001, op. cit.
46. Jannis Kallinikos and José-Carlos Mariat́egui, 'The life of information', Telos-eu, 25 May 2007, available at: http://www.telos-eu.com/english/2007/05/the_life_of_information.php (accessed May 2007).
47. Ibid.
48. Tarleton Gillespie, Wired Shut: Copyright and the Shape of Digital Culture, MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 2007.
49. Ibid, p. 7.
50. Ibid.
51. Vandana Shiva, 'Biodiversity, intellectual property rights, and globalization', in Boaventura de Sousa Santos (ed.), Another Knowledge is Possible: Beyond Northern Epistemologies, Verso, London, 2007, pp. 272-87
52. Margarita Alonso, 'Can we protect traditional knowledge?', in de Sousa Santos (ed.), op. cit., pp. 249-71.
53. Vandana Shiva, Afsar Jafri, Ashok Emani and Manish Pande, Seeds of Suicide: The Ecological and Human Costs of Globalisation of Agriculture Research Foundation for Science, Technology and Ecology, New Delhi, 2002, p. 124.
54. G. Harvey, M. Novicevic, M. Buckley and G. Ferris, 'A historical perspective on organizational ignorance', Journal of Managerial Psychology, 16, 6, 2001, pp. 449-68 at p. 465.
55. Ibid, p. 465.
56. B.-Å. Lundvall and B. Johnson, 'The learning economy', Journal of Industry Studies, 1, 2, 1994, pp. 23-42.
57. de Sousa Santos, op. cit.
58. Peter Drahos with John Braithwaite, Information Feudalism: Who Owns the Knowledge Economy?, New Press, New York, 2002.
59. B.-Å. Lundvall and B. Johnson, 'The learning economy', Journal of Industry Studies, 1, 2, 1994, pp. 23-42.
60. de Sousa Santos, op. cit.
61. Peter Drahos with John Braithwaite, Information Feudalism: Who Owns the Knowledge Economy?, New Press, New York, 2002.