E-mail and Knowledge Creation

2011 ◽  
pp. 509-524
Author(s):  
Sharman Lichtenstein ◽  
Craig M. Parker ◽  
Margaret Cybulski

The real promise of organizational communication technologies may lie in their potential to facilitate participative discourse between knowledge workers at all levels in distributed locations and time zones. Such discourse enables the exchange of sometimes conflicting viewpoints through which resolution and symbiosis, organizational knowledge can be built. This chapter presents a case study of a Singerian inquiring organization which illustrates how a fluid dynamic community of employees can use email to build knowledge, learn, make decisions, and enhance wisdom through a cycle of knowledge combination (divergence) and knowledge qualification (convergence). The chapter offers new theoretical perspectives on the enhancement of wisdom in inquiring organizations and provides practical insights into the use of email for supporting effective knowledge creation in inquiring organizations.

2011 ◽  
pp. 89-108 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sharman Lichtenstein ◽  
Craig M. Parker ◽  
Margaret Cybulski

The real promise of organizational communication technologies may lie in their potential to facilitate participative discourse between knowledge workers at all levels in distributed locations and time zones. Such discourse enables the exchange of sometimes conflicting viewpoints through which resolution and symbiosis, organizational knowledge can be built. This chapter presents a case study of a Singerian inquiring organization which illustrates how a fluid dynamic community of employees can use email to build knowledge, learn, make decisions, and enhance wisdom through a cycle of knowledge combination (divergence) and knowledge qualification (convergence). The chapter offers new theoretical perspectives on the enhancement of wisdom in inquiring organizations and provides practical insights into the use of email for supporting effective knowledge creation in inquiring organizations.


Author(s):  
Laura Zapata-Cantú ◽  
Teresa Treviño ◽  
Flor Morton ◽  
Ernesto López Monterrubio

During the last decade, improvements in information and communication technologies have made possible the transformation of knowledge transfer processes from purely informal to increasingly formal and more diverse communication mechanisms that enrich intra-organizational communication channels. In this chapter, the authors followed a case study approach to analyze three Mexican companies with the objective of understanding how companies in the IT sector are implementing digital technologies to achieve knowledge transfer in their organizations. The findings suggest that workers seek and choose tools that can be personalized and customized to adapt to their own needs. New digital technologies are proving to be a new and relevant channel of communication among people: therefore, these should be considered to be one possible way to motivate knowledge transfer at work.


Author(s):  
Leah A. Zuidema

The term parawork describes spaces and activities that function alongside—yet also outside—of traditional workplaces. Parawork spaces are not regulated by the workplace, but they are available for work-related activities. In parawork environments, it can be desirable to overlap the personal, social, and professional. Participating with others in parawork activities may not “get work done,” yet these interactions may facilitate professional identity formation, association with workplace and professional culture, and readiness to accomplish workplace tasks and professional goals. This chapter defines parawork, focusing on parawork enabled by online communication technologies. The author reviews literature that supports and informs understanding of online parawork. Through case study of one woman’s participation in an e-mail discussion list for teacher interns, the practical realities and possibilities of online parawork are considered. The chapter closes with conclusions about conditions necessary for effective online parawork, as well as implications for future research.


Author(s):  
Shefali Virkar

This article critically examines the role of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) in governmental reform processes in development through a case study of the Greater Bangalore Municipal Corporation. The study explores the increasing use of ICTs for property taxation and its impact on municipal government reform processes within a developing world context. Attracted by the ‘hype and hope' of such technologies and related platforms, development actors across the world have adopted computer-based systems and related ICTs for use in government as a means reforming the inefficiencies in public service provision. Much has been written about e-governance within a growing stream of literature on ICT for development, generating countervailing perspectives where optimistic, technocratic approaches are countered by far more sceptical standpoints on technological innovation. This paper will examine not only the interplay of local contingencies and external influences acting upon the project's implementation but also aim to offer an insight into disjunctions in these relationships which inhibit the effective exploitation of ICTs in the given context. The research on which this paper is based focus on an empirical case study surrounding the implementation and use of an electronic property tax collection system in Bangalore, India between 1998 and 2008. Drawing on the theoretical perspectives of the ‘Ecology of Games' and ‘Design-Actuality Gaps' which recognise the importance of a multitude of diverse motives and individualistic behaviour as key factors influencing organisational reform and institutional change, the article contributes not just to an understanding of the role of ICTs in administrative reform in development, but towards that emerging body of research which is critical of managerial rationalism for an organization as a whole, and sensitive to an ecology of actors and their various motivations within the organisation.


1977 ◽  
Vol 8 (4) ◽  
pp. 256-263
Author(s):  
Roberta Chapey ◽  
Geraldine Chapey

Occasionally, it is the responsibility of a supervisor to help a staff speech clinician resolve professional and or personal problems that interfere with the delivery of quality services. To deal with this situation, the supervisor must be equipped with the techniques and procedures for effective organizational communication. This article presents a case study in which a speech clinician demonstrated irresponsibility in various job areas. The supervisor’s philosophy and the procedures used in managing these problems are presented. The behavioral changes suggest that the supervisor’s interventive procedures were clinically significant and warrant further investigation.


Author(s):  
Joseph Plaster

In recent years there has been a strong “public turn” within universities that is renewing interest in collaborative approaches to knowledge creation. This article draws on performance studies literature to explore the cross-disciplinary collaborations made possible when the academy broadens our scope of inquiry to include knowledge produced through performance. It takes as a case study the “Peabody Ballroom Experience,” an ongoing collaboration between the Johns Hopkins University Sheridan Libraries, the Peabody Institute BFA Dance program, and Baltimore’s ballroom community—a performance-based arts culture comprising gay, lesbian, queer, transgender, and gender-nonconforming people of color.


Author(s):  
Burak Pak

This paper aims at discussing the potentials of bottom-up design practices in relation to the latest developments in Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) by making an in-depth review of inaugural cases. The first part of the study involves a literature study and the elaboration of basic strategies from the case study. The second part reframes the existing ICT tools and strategies and elaborates on their potentials to support the modes of participation performed in these cases. As a result, by distilling the created knowledge, the study reveals the potentials of novel modes of ICT-enabled design participation which exploit a set of collective action tools to support sustainable ways of self-organization and bottom-up design. The final part explains the relevance of these with solid examples and presents a hypothetical case for future implementation. The paper concludes with a brief reflection on the implications of the findings for the future of architectural design education.


Author(s):  
Martin W. Wallin ◽  
Georg von Krogh ◽  
Jan Henrik Sieg

Crowdsourcing in the form of innovation contests stimulates knowledge creation external to the firm by distributing technical, innovation-related problems to external solvers and by proposing a fixed monetary reward for solutions. While prior work demonstrates that innovation contests can generate solutions of value to the firm, little is known about how problems are formulated for such contests. We investigate problem formulation in a multiple exploratory case study of seven firms and inductively develop a theoretical framework that explains the mechanisms of formulating sharable problems for innovation contests. The chapter contributes to the literatures on crowdsourcing and open innovation by providing a rare account of the intra-organizational implications of engaging in innovation contests and by providing initial clues to problem formulation—a critical antecedent to firms’ ability to leverage external sources of innovation.


NanoEthics ◽  
2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jamie Woodcock

AbstractDigital technology is playing an increasingly visible role in the organisation of many people’s work—as well as large parts of their lives more broadly. The concerns of emancipatory technology studies, or other critical accounts of technology, are often focused on finding alternative uses of technology. In many workplace contexts—from call centres to platform work—the imperatives of capital are deeply written into these technologies. Yet at the same time, many capitalist technologies are playing a key role facilitating emerging workers’ struggles. For example, in the case study examined here, Deliveroo drivers rely on communication technologies like WhatsApp to organise against algorithmic management. Drawing on an ongoing workers’ inquiry, this paper seeks to consider what a workerist approach to digital technology can add to these debates. The paper outlines the challenges and opportunities for a “digital workers’ inquiry,” considering how this approach combines research with organising. The argument is divided into two main parts: first, the need for inquiries in digital work and the importance of these and second, how the process of inquiry and co-research (and the methods these involve) can be adapted and refined with digital technology. By starting the critique of technology from the workplace, this paper proposes a workerist account of how technologies can be destroyed or re-appropriated, starting from a reading of workers’ struggle.


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