The Basic Framework
Epistemological assumptions
The literature of organizational knowledge reveals that companies –
including project-based companies – can be regarded as knowledgeintensive
systems of knowing (e.g. Newell et al., 2002; Love et al., 2005a).
However, in this literature the epistemological assumptions have not
been well clarified. The attempts to improve a knowledge-based theory
of a company are thus also relevant here because it is assumed that
knowledge has an important role to play in project-based companies’
and projects’ knowledge management (Spender, 1996).
Epistemology is a branch of the ‘grand divisions’ of philosophy, and
deals with the ways of interpreting knowledge – i.e. the ways of knowing.
With an organizational epistemology it is possible to construct a
theory on how and why organizations, like project teams, and projectbased
companies, know. Organizational epistemology deals with some
core questions: what is knowledge, how does it develop, what are the
conditions for knowledge to develop (cf. von Krogh and Roos, 1995)?