Will the real story of collaboration please stand up so we can see it properly?

There are two stories about collaboration in knowledge management. In one, about moving knowledge, information, and data around, collaboration has to do with getting these to the right people at the right time and solving problems efficiently. Management relies heavily on tools to see that this happens. This narrative, the product of a management mindset, is the ‘view from the top’. In the other story, a ‘view from practice’, people get things done by ‘sharing knowledge’. When they collaborate, they make meaning together. Distinguishing between these views, I pry apart narratives that are invariably intertwined but rest on incompatible ideas about knowledge and what you do with it. The view from practice reveals the ‘real’ story of collaboration. Knowledge‐work consists mostly of people (self‐)organizing. Talking together, engaged in deciding what to do, they come to know (i.e., understand) the issues they are dealing with and, in the same breath, co‐create their work.