Knowledge Is Power
A Critical Analysis of
“Knowledge is Power”
1. Introduction
The claim of “Knowledge is power”, made by Francis Bacon, has been universally well known. Originally, it was proposed to stress the importance of knowledge in science and an academic spirit because human were experiencing a major scientific revolution at that time and information technology is not as developed as now to spread knowledge. Now it has been recognised by a much wider range of fields. An interesting question is what the implication of this claim is in business, especially in an era quite different from Bacon’s time and a world featured with globalisation and knowledge revolution (Alvesson and Karreman, 2001). The advanced technology today not only changes the way of conducting business and facilitates the communication inside and outside the company, but also become a rising industry itself. Possession of physical property and capital is no longer the major source of sustainable competitive advantage but replaced by efficient information flow and intellectual (Mundra, Gulati & Vashisth, 2011).
Realizing the importance of knowledge in business, massive investment has been dedicated to knowledge management, aiming to fully utilize the power of knowledge. From both academic field and practical business world, there is a general belief that the time of knowledge has come and knowledge is at the centre of business strategy making and operations (Davenport et al., 1998). Many academic researchers and business practitioners have done a lot of work investigating how to utilize knowledge for business success. But few of them really considered to what extent Bacon’s claim hold true for individual and organisation respectively at first hand and whether there is any limitation. To fill up this gap, this paper is dedicated to critically evaluate Bacon’s claim, “knowledge is power”, in business context and the impacts of knowledge when it is employed as source of power.
In order to
“Knowledge is Power”
1. Introduction
The claim of “Knowledge is power”, made by Francis Bacon, has been universally well known. Originally, it was proposed to stress the importance of knowledge in science and an academic spirit because human were experiencing a major scientific revolution at that time and information technology is not as developed as now to spread knowledge. Now it has been recognised by a much wider range of fields. An interesting question is what the implication of this claim is in business, especially in an era quite different from Bacon’s time and a world featured with globalisation and knowledge revolution (Alvesson and Karreman, 2001). The advanced technology today not only changes the way of conducting business and facilitates the communication inside and outside the company, but also become a rising industry itself. Possession of physical property and capital is no longer the major source of sustainable competitive advantage but replaced by efficient information flow and intellectual (Mundra, Gulati & Vashisth, 2011).
Realizing the importance of knowledge in business, massive investment has been dedicated to knowledge management, aiming to fully utilize the power of knowledge. From both academic field and practical business world, there is a general belief that the time of knowledge has come and knowledge is at the centre of business strategy making and operations (Davenport et al., 1998). Many academic researchers and business practitioners have done a lot of work investigating how to utilize knowledge for business success. But few of them really considered to what extent Bacon’s claim hold true for individual and organisation respectively at first hand and whether there is any limitation. To fill up this gap, this paper is dedicated to critically evaluate Bacon’s claim, “knowledge is power”, in business context and the impacts of knowledge when it is employed as source of power.
In order to
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