Mikelle A. Calhoun
William H. Starbuck

This chapter focuses on institutionalized processes for creating knowledge, especially methods that academics and professionals espouse publicly when they create objective knowledge. Knowledge creation also blocks discovery, because when people decide that an explanation or observation is true, they create barriers to the acceptance of alternative truths. Whether people see knowledge as being objective depends upon consensus, so the chapter next considers the development of consensus. What kinds of knowledge elicit general agreement? Because knowledge creation suffers from many human dysfunctions, the chapter's final section considers the usefulness of knowledge creation. How essential is it to create knowledge? Are barriers to knowledge creation actually harmful or might they be beneficial?