Organisation und Koordination von Wissen und Wissensträgern in Organisationen

• Applicant: Privatdozent Dr. Achim Hecker
• Subject Area: Accounting and Finance
• Term: from 2008 to 2009
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 63771986

Knowledge is fuel to a great part of economic activity and indeed nearly eclipses labor and capital as the most important production factor. Yet, compared to the latter two, the effective allocation and coordination of knowledge within organizations clearly remains an under-researched topic. To tackle this shortcoming, I plan to develop a stylized model of the organization, determining and interlinking: (i) the optimal knowledge structure (i.e. defining which members of the organization should acquire what knowledge and who should specialize to which degree); (ii) the optimal organizational structure (i.e. defining roles or jobs and their arrangement, as well as their interconnection by channels of communication); and (iii) the process of matching pending tasks with those members of the organization possessing that knowledge adequate for their execution. As a basic prerequisite, a formal framework for reasoning about individually-held knowledge as well as that held by complex social systems like an organization needs to be established. Toward this end, integrating some insights and tools of epistemic logic into mainstream economics seems an innovative and promising approach.

• DFG Programme: Research Fellowships
• International Connection: France
• Host: Timothy van Zandt