Communicating Humanistic Knowledge - Knowing the Knowing?

In both knowledge communication and practice theory, knowledge theorizing has received increased attention. However, the concept of knowledge needs further exploration. It has been claimed that knowledge in organizational practice is socially and processually created among organization members in communities of practice (CoPs) as a place for knowledge creation and knowledge communication. Following this outline, the study seeks to link the knowledge concepts from organizational knowledge communication and practice theory. As empirical contributions for expansion of this knowledge theorizing have been called for, the current paper conducts a case study to scrutinize if and how organization members with different educational backgrounds communicate knowledge in CoPs. The case is an IT software company employing a humanistic academic and mainly IT professionals. The case organization has real-world relevance, since humanistic graduates currently suffer from high unemployment rates. The study finds that no attempts are made to communicate knowledge from the humanistic education. Rather, the humanistic academic is socialized into a practice through a commitment to learn the existing practice of the HR department, which further seems to be a practice placed in a lower hierarchy than the practice of the IT professionals. Interestingly though, knowledge from the humanistic education is called for by the IT profes- sionals. These findings pave the way to inform both knowledge theorizing and the real-world problem by discussing how organization members engage in fundamentally new knowledge communication and scaffold new knowing. Thus, the study discusses implications related to how organization members come to know their own knowing and the knowings of others.

Experience Sampling as a Method for Studying In Situ Organizational Communication

The communication flows in organizations seem to be in constant state of flux, and this is particularly true when thinking about how the various strategies and mediated practices people use to interact with peers. As organizations work to establish healthy communication workflows, they need insight into how communication around projects exists in situ (i.e., as it happens in the moment) to better understand and support the employee experience so work can get done. The employee experience with communication across different events, settings, and ideologies plays an important role in meeting the intended outcomes of project work, and learning about the in situ communication practices of teams and individual employees remains an important consideration for organizational researchers. This article describes a method for studying in situ communication in the workplace called experience sampling. The goal for this article is to explain how experience sampling can be used to study communicative events in the workplace by drawing from two datasets of original research. From the use of experience sampling depicted in these case studies, the article indicates lessons learned about using experience sampling to study worker’s in situ communication in the workplace.

Communicating knowledge, getting attention, and negotiating disagreement via videoconferencing technology: A multimodal analysis

This article takes a multimodal approach to examine how two young men communicate knowledge, shift attention, and negotiate a disagreement via videoconferencing technology. The data for the study comes from a larger ongoing project of participants engaging in various tasks together. Linking micro, intermediate and macro analyses through the various methodological tools employed, the article presents multimodal (inter)action analysis (Norris, 2004, 2011, 2013a, 2013b) as a methodology to gain new insight into the complexity of knowledge communication via videoconferencing technology, which is relevant to many settings from education to employment, from organizations to gaming.

Research Design – Composition, Configuration and Interdependencies

In this essay I will present an integrative view on research design. I will introduce what Itake to be the skeleton components of any research design within the social sciences, i.e.the elements of research question, philosophy of science, methodology, method and data.With this as my point of departure I will go on to focus on a presentation, a discussionand an evaluation of a new appreciation of the interdependencies of the elements in theresearch design. An appreciation that favors a relational rather than an atomistic outlookand which gives rise to an ecological conceptualization of research design. A research design,in other words, which promotes plasticity and fluidity over adherence to static protocol.And which, at the same time, does not relinquish control over project-relevant, multifaceteddecision-making processes – and their respective interdependencies – but which deliberateseach and every one of them. The aim of the paper is twofold. At a more abstract level, itaims at paving the way for establishing a reflexive approach to research design which, in turn,would be in tune with the tenets of the field of Organizational Knowledge Communication(e.g. Kastberg, 2014). At a more concrete level, it aims at presenting an idea of researchdesign which would – hopefully – be an inspiration to (young) scholars.

Methods for Investigating Organizational Knowledge Communication

Methods for Investigating Organizational KnowledgeCommunication

Distributed, Negotiable and Hyper-Individual Towards a Definition of Shareable Knowledge

This article presents a definition of sharable knowledge. The study presented in this article shows that knowledge is best shared in the format of high degree of interaction and high degree of use of shared modes.When groups wish to share or co-create knowledge, they often end up exchanging information or experiences instead. This article puts forward the claim, that knowledge cannot be shared like a cake or another physical resource, as it is by definition bound to personal experience. Thus when sharing knowledge, groups are either exchanging knowledge mono-modally, often through language, or they co-create something that either of the group members could have come up with themselves. The latter form of knowledge sharing might actually be knowledge co-creation rather than sharing, but is nevertheless what is sought for in knowledge sharing processes.The article outlines six cases of which three were successful in sharing and co-creating knowledge and three were not. One of the successful cases is submitted to microanalysis and on that basis some fundamental claims are made about multimodal knowledge sharing and -co-creation.The overall conclusion is, that multiple modes are not enough for multimodal knowledge sharing to take place. Rather groups wanting to share knowledge must interact as well as make shared use of the available modes. This in turn has consequences for the definition of knowledge as well as for sharing-practices.

Fostering Inter-Departmental Institutional Memory in the Nonprofit Sector: Borrowing Microtransaction Knowledge Strategies from a Successful U.S. Restaurant Chain

<p>The purpose of this paper is to describe practices used for knowledge storing, sharing, and gathering across a shift-based organization where narratives may not overlap among other employees. The paper uses a case study to identify nine best practices used in a successful, family-owned chain restaurant in the southern United States, and illustrate how those practices might be useful in a nonprofit organization. These practices include consistent training procedures, routine plans for mundane work, cross-cultural/departmental communication strategies, staggered cross-staff notifications, visual conveyance of information, shift reports, and weekly management meetings.</p><p>While the connection between a restaurant and a nonprofit organization may not seem readily apparent, a U.S. survey of fundraisers (n = 580) revealed the two industries have many traits in common. Both industries struggle with employee turnover, work with time-sensitive materials that require rapid turnaround, and act in highly competitive markets. I argue that the nonprofit sector may benefit from the procedures that this restaurant had in place to share the outcomes of their accomplishments and failures, and that a restaurant shift serves as a hyper-speed version of daily processes found in any organization, and that outcomes may be more readily observed due to the nature and number of events that occur between the business’s open and close. This paper aims to provide suggestion for issues of handling employee training amidst turnover, creating usable institutional memory, and building interpersonal trust among employees. </p>

Knowledge Sharing is Knowledge Creation: An Intervention Study of Metaphors for Knowledge

<p>Knowledge sharing and knowledge transfer are important to knowledge communication. However when groups of knowledge workers engage in knowledge communication activities, it easily turns into mere mechanical information processing despite other ambitions.</p><p>This article relates literature of knowledge communication and knowledge creation to an intervention study in a large Danish food production company. For some time a specific group of employees uttered a wish for knowledge sharing, but it never really happened. The group was observed and submitted to metaphor analysis as well as analysis of co-creation strategies. Confronted with the results, the group completely altered their approach to knowledge sharing and let it become knowledge co-creation.</p><p>The conclusions are, that knowledge is and can only be a diverse and differentiated concept, and that groups are able to embrace this complexity. Thus rather than reducing complexity and dividing knowledge into to dichotomies or hierarchies, knowledge workers should be enabled to use different strategies for knowledge sharing, -transfer and –creation depending on the task and the nature of the knowledge. However if the ambition is to have a strategy for sharing personal or tacit knowledge, the recommended approach is to co-create new knowledge by use of joint epistemic action.</p>

The Palgrave Handbook of Critical Thinking in Higher Education

<em>The Palgrave Handbook of Critical Thinking in Higher Education,</em><strong> </strong>edited by Martin Davies and Ronald Barnett, USA: Palgrave Macmillan