II-06 — Implementation Knowledge: What a Carrier Can Supply on Request
Year: 2026
Type: conference-abstract
Abstract: This paper defines Implementation Knowledge, the fourth and final foundational concept in the Implementation Intelligence programme, and the one the programme holds provisionally. Implementation Knowledge is what carriers can supply on request about an implementation object and about what making it function in a specified setting requires. The paper establishes that knowledge is a stock — a holding an actor can draw on — as distinct from capability, which is an enacted pattern; this distinction is the concept's reason for existing and, the paper states explicitly, its central vulnerability, since knowledge and capability are carried in the same reservoirs and can decay through the same channels. It establishes that implementation knowledge comprises four elements — what must be preserved about the object, why it works, how to install it, and who holds what and who can act — of which the third resists codification and is learned largely through supervised practice, and the fourth is frequently the binding constraint on implementation in practice. It establishes that knowledge is a depreciating stock, decaying through skill loss and, more significantly, through personnel turnover, so that a knowledge assessment is valid only as of its date. The paper distinguishes knowledge from mere experience, from effectiveness or validation evidence, and from generic implementation method. Its central and gating open question, stated plainly rather than argued past, is whether Knowledge and Capability are empirically separable when both reside in the same carriers (H10): if they are, the programme's vocabulary comprises four foundational concepts; if they are not, this concept collapses into Capability and the vocabulary comprises three. The paper states this provisionality as the concept's honest, published status.
Author: Duffour, Suzanne
Language: English
Subfield: Strategy and Management
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W7204897100