Organizational Knowledge: The Texture of Workplace Learning

ISBN-13: 9781405125598 / Angielski / Twarda / 2006 / 292 str.

Silvia Gherardi; Davide Nicolini

Opis

This book makes an important contribution to our understanding of practice-based organizational learning and knowing.

• Based on the author's detailed study of safety practices in different corporate settings.
• The author uses this study to empirically describe how learning, knowing and organizing are practised.
• Centred on the concepts of -knowing in practice- and the -texture- of organizational knowledge.
• Gives a rich account of how organizations learn and how corporate practices and policies evolve.

Spis treści

Introduction.

Chapter 1 From Organizational Learning to Knowing in Practice.

1.1 Conventional Wisdom.

1.2 The Institutionalization of the Field: The Birth of the Learning Organization.

1.3 Organizational Learning and Learning Organization as a Disciplinary Discourse.

1.4 The Reification of Knowledge in Knowledge Management Literature.

1.5 Knowing in Practice: Neither in the Head Nor as a Commodity.

1.6 The Philosophical Roots of the Concept of Practice.

1.7 The Sociological Roots of the Concept of Practice.

1.8 What is a Practice?.

1.9 To Sum Up: Two Narratives of Learning and Knowing.

Chapter 2 The Texture of Knowing in Practice.

2.1 Texture as Connectedness in Action.

2.2 A Methodological Framework: The Spiral Case–Study.

2.3 The Power of Associations.

2.4 To Sum Up: Weaving the Texture of Situated Practices.

Chapter 3.On Becoming a Practitioner.

3.1 Being ′On Site′.

3.2 Safety and Silence of the Organization: The Culture of Practice.

3.3 The Knowledge Pointers.

3.4 Knowing as Aesthetic Understanding.

3.5 Conversation in Practice and Conversation on Practice.

3.6 Knowledge Mediated By Social Relations, Artifacts, and Norms.

3.7 How ′You Learn Nothing at School!′

3.8 To Sum Up: Becoming a Practitioner.

Chapter 4.Knowing in a Community of Practitioners.

4.1 Community of Practice or the Practices of a Community?

4.2 The Notion of Situated Curriculum.

4.3 Gaining Access to a Situated Curriculum.

4.4 How Power Relations Shape Opportunities to Learn.

4.5 Practicing, Teaching and Talking of It.

4.6 To Sum Up: The Incorporated ′Known′ and the Enacted ′Knowing′.

Chapter 5 Knowing across Communities.

5.1 Practices of Accountability.

5.2. Mirror Games.

5.3 Positioning: The Discursive Production of Subjectivity.

5.4 Doing Things with Words.

5.5 To Sum Up: Practices Which Perform Communities.

Chapter 6 Knowing Within an Organization While Mending the Texture of Practices.

6.1. Breakdowns in a Texture.

6.2 Darning: The Art of Invisible Mending.

6.3 Patching: The Art of Remedial Mending.

6.4 Quilting: The Art of Signalling.

6.5 Mending the Texture and Translating Knowledge.

6.6 To Sum Up: Between the Visible and the Invisible.

Chapter 7 Knowing Within a Field of Practices.

7.1 Networks as Distributed and Fragmented Knowledge.

7.2 La Sicurezza Come Sorveglianza E Punizione.

7.3 La Sicurezza Come Tecnologie E Artefatti Sicuri.

7.4 La Sicurezza Come Formazione E Consulenza.

7.5 To Sum Up: The Woofs and Warps of a Seamless Web.

Chapter 8 The Mutual Constitution of Practice and Practicing, Knowledge and Knowing.

8.1 Material Discursive Practices.

8.2 Knowing in Practice.

8.3 A Theoretical and Methodological Framework.

References.

Index.

O autorze

Silvia Gherardi is Professor of Organization and Management at the University of Trento, Italy.

Blurb

Why has the issue of learning and knowledge in organizations been the subject of such lively debate over the last 20 years? This book furnishes an answer to this question, supported with arguments, and founded on data and examples from empirical research.

The author uses her detailed study of safety practices in different corporate settings to ground her theories of organizational learning. She shows how safety can be interpreted as an organizational practice and, using this example, she empirically describes how learning, knowing and organizing are practised. Her account centres on the transformative concepts of knowing in practice and the "texture" of organizational learning.

This book gives readers a rich account or how organizations learn and how corporate practices and policies evolve, and in this way makes an important contribution to our understanding of organizational knowledge.