A Case Study of Physicians at Work at the University Hospital of Northern Norway

The knowledge management literature suggests that reuse of externalized knowledge is fundamental for improved efficiency, reduced costs and reduced dependency on individual know-how. Rather than considering knowledge as a specific thing the paper relates knowledge to the work people do. It suggest that knowledge management literature avoids to take into account how knowledge needs to be made credible, relevant and trustworthy in order to be used across time and across different contexts in large organizational contexts. The paper analyses how work is needed to render knowledge trusted through patient trajectories and how different contexts, people and situations shape the comprehension of trust associated with existing knowledge. Empirically, the paper draws on different medical contexts at the University Hospital of Northern Norway.