A narrowly Cartesian understanding of knowledge tended to privilege ‘pure’ knowledge at the expense of outlining forms of social life that sustain particular types of knowledge. Nonaka and Takeuchi argue that knowledge is essentially related to human action and is grounded on the beliefs and commitment of the holder. Similarly, Davenport and Prusak (1998) assert that knowledge is a mix of experiences, values, contextual information and expert insight that provides a framework for evaluating new experiences. Yet, this definition is an all-encompassing and little-revealing concept.

Knowledge can be defined as the individual capability to draw distinctions within a domain of action based on an appreciation of context, theory or both. Similarly, collective knowledge is the capability members of a community have developed to draw distinctions in the process of carrying out their role in a particular context, by enacting sets of generalizations whose application depends on historically evolved collective understandings. So, knowledge presupposes values, beliefs and is related to action.

Based on this definition of knowledge, an individual capacity is required based on an appreciation of context and theory. Theory allows one to take a finding and generalize from any context to another one. Knowledge becomes collective when, while drawing distinctions in the course of their work by taking into account the contextuality of their actions, individuals draw and act upon a corpus of generalizations in the form of generic rules produced by the related community.

Collective knowledge can be seen as an open-ended process of coordinating purposeful individuals whose actions stem from applying their unique interpretations to local circumstances confronting them. Given the distributed character of collective knowledge the key to achieving coordinated action depends on those lower down finding more ways of getting connected and interrelating the knowledge each one has. For this to happen, the character of the community as a discursive practice should be appreciated: a form of life in which individuals come to share an unarticulated background of common understandings. Sustaining a discursive practice is as just important as finding ways of integrating distributed knowledge.