Challenges to the creation of a knowledge product in a cross-functional, geographically dispersed virtual team.

2 Introduction This paper is a work in progress. It describes the development of a geographically dispersed, cross functional virtual team. The research on which the paper is based is ongoing and findings are necessarily tentative and provisional. In October 2004 a group of European partners came together in a European Union Socrates funded initiative to develop a learning programme that would satisfy the needs of managers of lifelong learning across Europe. This is a 2-year project due to finish in September 2006 culminating in the delivery of a training course for these managers. For the purposes of the paper, the project will be referred to using the pseudonym 'Europroject'. The main focus of the paper is best described as a 'story of two narratives'. On one hand is the official, formal narrative that sets out the project aims and objectives; its resources, rules and regulations; its formal stages and material artifacts; and its end product, a development course for managers of lifelong learning across Europe. In the context of this official narrative, the course represents culmination of sharing and synthesis of individual participants' knowledge and might be described as a 'knowledge product'. Set against this official narrative is the informal and unofficial story of the micro-processes and practices at work within the team. This unofficial story presents an alternative version of events. It describes a team that is characterized by conflict, tension, power struggles and failure to reach agreement on fundamental concepts of lifelong learning and knowledge. Taking a practice perspective on learning and knowledge (which will be discussed later in the paper), the knowledge emergent from this collaboration is collectively negotiated tension, confusion and conflict. The course is conceptualized as a material entity; as the materialization of ideas. Material things are concrete expressions of thoughts and are, once produced independent of their creators. (Gherardi and Nicolini, 2003). From this perspective, the course is an element of practice in the construction of knowledge not an end knowledge product. The aim of the paper is to explore the dissonance between the official and unofficial narratives, and to develop an explanatory theoretical framework. The paper will demonstrate how the use of the practice perspective on learning helps to foreground the ways in which micro-practices can undermine official narratives. It will also show that 3 reframing understanding of the project's progress within the practice perspective can help the team deal with conflict …