Journal ArticleDOI
Organizational Learning and Communities-of-Practice: Toward a Unified View of Working, Learning, and Innovation
John Seely Brown,Paul Duguid +1 more
TLDR
Work, learning, and innovation in the context of actual communities and actual practices are discussed in this paper, where it is argued that the conventional descriptions of jobs mask not only the ways people work, but also significant learning and innovation generated in the informal communities-of-practice in which they work.Abstract:
Recent ethnographic studies of workplace practices indicate that the ways people actually work usually differ fundamentally from the ways organizations describe that work in manuals, training programs, organizational charts, and job descriptions. Nevertheless, organizations tend to rely on the latter in their attempts to understand and improve work practice. We examine one such study. We then relate its conclusions to compatible investigations of learning and of innovation to argue that conventional descriptions of jobs mask not only the ways people work, but also significant learning and innovation generated in the informal communities-of-practice in which they work. By reassessing work, learning, and innovation in the context of actual communities and actual practices, we suggest that the connections between these three become apparent. With a unified view of working, learning, and innovating, it should be possible to reconceive of and redesign organizations to improve all three.read more
Citations
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Journal ArticleDOI
A Dynamic Theory of Organizational Knowledge Creation
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors propose a paradigm for managing the dynamic aspects of organizational knowledge creating processes, arguing that organizational knowledge is created through a continuous dialogue between tacit and explicit knowledge.
Journal ArticleDOI
Social Capital, Intellectual Capital, and the Organizational Advantage
Janine Nahapiet,Sumantra Ghoshal +1 more
TL;DR: In this article, the authors present a model that incorporates this overall argument in the form of a series of hypothesized relationships between different dimensions of social capital and the main mechanisms and proces.
Toward a Knowledge-Based Theory of the Firm,” Strategic Management Journal (17), pp.
TL;DR: The primary contribution of the paper is in exploring the coordination mechanisms through which firms integrate the specialist knowledge of their members, which has implications for the basis of organizational capability, the principles of organization design, and the determinants of the horizontal and vertical boundaries of the firm.
Journal ArticleDOI
Toward a Knowledge-Based Theory of the Firm
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors explore the coordination mechanisms through which firms integrate the specialist knowledge of their members, which has implications for the basis of organizational capability, the principles of organization design, and the determinants of the horizontal and vertical boundaries of the firm.
Journal ArticleDOI
Interorganizational Collaboration and the Locus of Innovation: Networks of Learning in Biotechnology.
TL;DR: Powell et al. as mentioned in this paper developed a network approach to organizational learning and derive firm-level, longitudinal hypotheses that link research and development alliances, experience with managing interfirm relationships, network position, rates of growth, and portfolios of collaborative activities.
References
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Book
Situated Learning: Legitimate Peripheral Participation
Jeanne Lave,Etienne Wenger +1 more
TL;DR: This work has shown that legitimate peripheral participation in communities of practice is not confined to midwives, tailors, quartermasters, butchers, non-drinking alcoholics and the like.
Journal ArticleDOI
Outline of a Theory of Practice
TL;DR: Bourdieu as mentioned in this paper develops a theory of practice which is simultaneously a critique of the methods and postures of social science and a general account of how human action should be understood.
Book
Organizational Culture and Leadership
TL;DR: A review of the book "Organizational Culture and Leadership" by Edgar H. Schein is given in this article, where the authors present a review of their approach to organizational culture and leadership.
Journal ArticleDOI
Situated Cognition and the Culture of Learning
TL;DR: Collins, Brown, and Newman as mentioned in this paper argue that knowledge is situated, being in part a product of the activity, context, and culture in which it is developed and used, and propose cognitive apprenticeship as an alternative to conventional practices.