Organisational Complexity: Organizing Through the Generation and Sharing of Knowledge

This paper explores the processes of knowledge generation and sharing among the employees of a multinational business organisation. We consider the generation and sharing of knowledge as crucial for the process of organising, especially in situations in which new businesses are being developed. In particular this paper examines the new ways of organising that emerged within the multinational organisation following the creation of a new internet business unit. The paper elaborates on the effects of those changes in the way people make sense of the new working contexts through the stories they share. Considering knowledge as dynamic, generative and emergent; rooted in social practice and (re)produced and shared in social interactions has led us to focus on the study of organisational collectives such as work teams. In interpreting the findings from the empirical study, it is suggested that the interactions among those collectives are the medium through which sense making and knowledge generation occur in the organization resulting from the web of relationships developed, maintained and sustained through the participation of people within different networks. However, it becomes also apparent that the participation in those networks does not only enable but can also inhibit both the generation and sharing of new knowledge as well as the development of new ways of organising.

[1]  J. McGrath.  Groups: Interaction and Performance , 1984 .

[2]  I. Janis.  Victims of Groupthink: A psychological study of foreign-policy decisions and fiascoes. By Irving L. Janis. (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1972. viii + 276 pp. Map, illustrations, chart, notes, sources, bibliography, and index. Cloth, $7.95; paper $4.50.) , 1973 .

[3]  E. L. Cox,et al.  Investigating The Contradictions In Knowledge Management , 1998 .

[4]  R. Bostrom,et al.  Group Development (I): A Review and Synthesis of Development Models , 1997 .

[5]  Stephanie Watts Sussman,et al.  Understanding Strategic Learning: Linking Organizational Learning, Knowledge Management, and Sensemaking , 2001 .

[6]  J. McGrath.  Time, Interaction, and Performance (TIP) , 1991 .

[7]  F. Barth.  An Anthropology of Knowledge1 , 2002, Current Anthropology.

[8]  M. Alvesson.  Management Of Knowledge-Intensive Companies , 1995 .

[9]  Steve Townend,et al.  Review of: Muhr, T. 1997. ATLAS.ti 5: The Knowledge Workbench. Berlin: Scientific Software Development , 2003 .

[10]  M. Crossan.  The Knowledge-Creating Company: How Japanese Companies Create the Dynamics of Innovation , 1996 .

[11]  E.,et al.  GROUPS : INTERACTION AND PERFORMANCE , 2001 .

[12]  H. Tsoukas.  The firm as a distributed knowledge system : A constructionist approach , 1996 .

[13]  E. Wenger.  Communities of Practice and Social Learning Systems , 2000 .

[14]  Leigh Jin,et al.  Intertwining material and virtual work , 2003, Inf. Organ..

[15]  H. Tsoukas,et al.  What is Organizational Knowledge , 2001 .

[16]  Kathleen M. Eisenhardt,et al.  Integrating Knowledge in Groups: How Formal Interventions Enable Flexibility , 2002, Organ. Sci..

[17]  Gloria Mark,et al.  Some Challenges Facing Virtually Colocated Teams , 2000, Organizational and Social Perspectives on IT.

[18]  S. Newell,et al.  Managing Knowledge Work , 2002 .

[19]  J. Kallinikos.  Organized Complexity: Posthumanist Remarks on the Technologizing of Intelligence , 1998 .

[20]  I. Nonaka,et al.  How Japanese Companies Create the Dynamics of Innovation , 1995 .

[21]  Ian E. Morley,et al.  A social psychology of organizing: People, processes and contexts , 1991 .

[22]  Dorothy E. Leidner,et al.  Review: Knowledge Management and Knowledge Management Systems: Conceptual Foundations and Research Issues , 2001, MIS Q..

[23]  Robert M. Grant,et al.  Knowledge and Organization , 2001 .

[24]  A. M. Alonso.  The Effects of Truth: Re‐Presentations of the Past and the Imagining of Community , 1988 .

[25]  Jürgen Kluge,et al.  Knowledge Unplugged: The McKinsey and Company Global Survey on Knowledge Management , 2001 .

[26]  M. Alvesson,et al.  Odd Couple: Making Sense of the Curious Concept of Knowledge Management , 2001 .

[27]  Rachel W. Jones.  eVolve! Succeeding in the Digital Culture of Tomorrow , 2001 .

[28]  M. West.  Reflexivity and work group effectiveness:a conceptual integration , 1996 .

[29]  Deborah L. Duarte,et al.  Mastering Virtual Teams , 2000 .

[30]  Manuel Castells,et al.  The Internet Galaxy: Reflections on the Internet, Business, and Society , 2001 .

[31]  Morten T. Hansen,et al.  What's your strategy for managing knowledge? , 1999, Harvard business review.

[32]  L. Smircich.  Concepts of Culture and Organizational Analysis. , 1983 .

[33]  Stuart Hall,et al.  Questions of Cultural Identity , 1996 .

[34]  K. D. Joshi,et al.  Knowledge Management: A Threefold Framework , 2002, Inf. Soc..

[35]  Jon R. Katzenbach,et al.  The Wisdom of Teams: Creating the High-Performance Organization , 1992 .

[36]  J. Brown,et al.  Bridging epistemologies: The generative dance between organizational knowledge and organizational knowing , 1999, STUDI ORGANIZZATIVI.