Twenty-first International Conference on Knowledge, Culture, and Change in Organizations

Abstract

This historical case study investigates how the British Foreign Office (FO) organised and managed its knowledge production throughout the twentieth century. It analyses how knowledge production has changed over time, highlighting why and how the FO transformed its approach to gaining foreign policy knowledge. The study takes a micro-scale analysis of knowledge production about British state visits, which are an informative example because state visits are regular occasions of high importance involving different government and Palace actors. This perspective will be combined with a macro-level analysis of the FO’s organisational structure to understand the (changing) institutional settings of knowledge production. The paper presents a long-term perspective, and argues that two distinct phases mark a change in knowledge production regarding state visits during the twentieth century. During the first phase, from the beginning of the century up until the 1960s, knowledge about state visits was developed reactively, in response to specific situations, which is referred to as the practice of actualising knowledge. The second phase, from the 1960s onwards, was characterised by targeted interventions made with the deliberate intention of making more knowledge available and developing general ideas and standards. This procedure is referred to as systemising knowledge. Thus, using an historical case study, this paper answers the question of how organisational structures shape knowledge and to what extent the culture of organisations influences what kind of knowledge organisations produce.