Grace Teo-Dixon

Citation

Thesis Title
Rotten with perfection: The rhetoric of knowledge in knowledge management

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Ms Teo-Dixon critically examined the concept of knowledge as represented in knowledge management theory texts. Her rhetorical analysis of selected academic texts revealed that the texts reify positive images of the concept of knowledge and that there is a rhetorical drive to perfect these images. Rhetorical theory suggests that such perfection has a ‘dark side’, and rhetorical analysis of the selected theory texts exposed assumptions that individuals are resources to be exploited, pawns in organisational strategies, victims of unbalanced power relationships and anonymous nodes on networks. This suggests that ethical aspects of managing knowledge are largely absent from existing knowledge management theory, and it therefore needs to be practiced with care.

Supervisors
Associate Professor Nanette Monin
Associate Professor John Monin