The Limits of Knowledge Management in Contemporary Corporate Conditions

This paper draws on Jean-François Lyotard's (1984) seminal study The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge to reflect on two macro-level catastrophes: the global financial crisis (GFC) of 2009 (and its continuing effects throughout the Eurozone and elsewhere) and Fukushima. These two case studies probe aspects of these grand failures to reveal serious deficiencies in integrity at work, the changing nature of contemporary working relationships, knowledge management and fashionable new approaches to organisational learning. The paper deploys Lyotard's ‘performativity theory’ to examine how people in commercial enterprises may often define ‘knowledge’, how this is transferred and how, in turn, managing this knowledge affects working relationships, learning and change.