Relational spaces for knowledge management in multinational companies

The purpose of this paper is to elaborate on the concept of relational spaces for the management of local knowledge in multinational companies (MNCs). The elaboration aims to contribute to the existing knowledge management (KM) literature by providing a thin-thick knowledge framework based on the concepts of communities of practice (CoP), socio-categorisation theory, and shared intentionality theory. The paper combines theory building and case study methodology. Theory building refers to the elaboration of the knowledge framework. The case study methodology aims to empirically explore the framework. The case study provides concrete examples of how thin concepts (such as organisational strategy) are thickened at the local level and how best practices shared in the global community should then be thickened again.