Team-Based Knowledge Integration

Cecilia Enberg

Department of Management and Engineering

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• Community (gemeinschaft) as opposed to association (gesellschaft).

• Characterised by enduring social relations of intimacy and solidarity and care for each other and trusted each other.

• Affect-laden relations among a group of individuals.

• Requires a commitment to a set of shared values, norms and meanings, shared history and identity – a shared culture.

ONCE UPON A TIME THERE WERE COMMUNITIES…

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• A social structure characterised by dense relations of mutuality.

• A shared cognitive structure characterised by a shared repertoire which includes routines, words, tools, ways of doing things, stories, gestures, symbols, genres, actions, concepts… and probably a lot more.

• For such social and cognitive structures to form individuals have to perform together in the CmP for an extended period of time.

• Presupposes face-to-face interaction and communication.

• Is the concept of community of practice relevant to understand organisations of today?

AND PEOPLE WERE SOCIALISED IN A COMMUNITY OF PRACTICE

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• Projects abound in organisations today project-based organisations.

projectification of society (Ekstedt et al., 1999).

• Projects teams and project tasks are temporary and directed toward transition.

• Task/goal orientation rather than social or emotional ties are favoured.

• People have to act based on swift trust as traditional sources of trust do not prevail in projectified contexts.

THAT WAS BEFORE SOCIETY BECAME PROJECTIFIED AND FIRMS BECAME PROJECT-BASED

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• Interdisciplinary (heterogeneous) – different knowledge, experience, background etc.

• Coordination withouth a strong, shared task-relevant knowledge.

• Undeveloped group – but with an ability to act with a developed mind

NOW, PEOPLE HAVE TO COLLABORATE ACROSS COMMUNITIES IN WHAT CAN BE DESCRIBED AS COLLECTIVITIES OF PRACTICE…

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KNOWLEDGE COMMUNITIES AND KNOWLEDGE COLLECTIVITIES

The knowledge community The knowledge collectivity

General type of knowledge base Decentered knowledge Distributed knowledge

Type of memory Blackboard memory Network memory

Main repository Knowledge-as-practice, communcal acitivity

Individual knowledge and competence

Integration principle Knowledge base similarity Well-connectedness of ind.

The individual members

Way of learning Socialisation Problem-solving

Operating basis Dispositional knowledge Articulate knowledge

The knowledge worker Enculturated Free agent

Type of knowledge dev. Paradigm-driven Goal-directed trial-and-error

Epistemological maxim We know more than we can tell. We tell more than we can know.

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• Different specialists, who represent different communities of practices if you want, are involved.

• Distributed knowledge - the knowledge needed is dispersed throughout the organisation

COLLABORATING IN COLLECTIVITIES OF PRACTICE IS DIFFICULT BECAUSE…

“The organizational problem that firms face is the utilization of knowledge which is not, and cannot be, known by a single

agent. Even more importantly, no single agent can fully specify in advance what kind of practical knowledge is going

to be relevant, when and where. Firms, therefore, are distributed knowledge systems in a strong sense: they are

decentered systems, lacking an overseeing mind”.

(Tsoukas, 1996:11)

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Knowledge is specialised and differentiated

• Differentiation – differences in cognitive orientation and differences in attitude and behaviour. (Lawrence & Lorsch, 1967)

• Thought worlds – different funds of knowledge and different systems of meaning. (Dougherty, 1992)

• Different cognitive representations and different mental models. (von Meier, 1999)

COLLABORATING IN COLLECTIVITIES OF PRACTICE IS DIFFICULT BECAUSE…

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• I didn’t know that, but now I realise/understand what you mean (funds of knowledge).

• I hear what you say but I don’t understand what you mean (systems of meanings).

• I understand what you say but I don’t agree (different goals, competing interests, conflicting values).

SO IN PRACTICE, THAT MEANS THAT COMMUNICATION IMPASSES ARE CREATED

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SUMMARISING; WHY DID WE END UP WITH THIS SWING?

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Let’s see what Okhuysen and Eisenhardt (2002) suggest.

Knowledge integration as an outcome;

”…consisting of both the shared knowledge of individuals and the combined knowledge that emerges from their interactions” (371).

Knowledge integration as a process;

”…involves the actions of groups members by which they share their individual knowledge within the group and combine it to create

new knowledge” (371).

KNOWLEDGE INTEGRATION YOU SAID – WHAT’S THAT? - WELL, IT DEPENDS ON WHO YOU ASK..

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Okhuysen and Eisenhardt (2002:384) further suggest;

”…knowledge integration is not simply a matter of assembling discrete pieces of knowledge, like Lego blocks, as the knowledge as resource view implies. Rather, knowledge integration depends

on how members know and integrate their individually held knowledge (…) in other word, the same knowledge can be known

in multiple ways”.

KNOWLEDGE INTEGRATION YOU SAID – WHAT’S THAT? - WELL, IT DEPENDS ON WHO YOU ASK..

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Enberg (2007:10) would rather suggest that;

”Knowledge integration is the processes of goal-oriented interrelating with the purpose of benefiting from knowledge

complementarities existing between individuals with differentiated knowledge bases”

The primary outcome of this knowledge integration process is the new product etc. that was to be developed as part of the project (or research, change).

Knowledge integration is both and outcome and a process – but different perspectives open up for different ways of managing the

process of knowledge integration.

KNOWLEDGE INTEGRATION YOU SAID – WHAT’S THAT? - WELL, IT DEPENDS ON WHO YOU ASK..

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KNOWLEDGE INTEGRATION CAN BE ENABLED IN DIFFERENT WAYS / BY THE USE OF DIFFERENT MECHANISMS

Some favor the cross-learning approach and suggest that specialists have to intensively learn from each other to integrate knowledge. This occurs through; close interaction frequent communication

Others (e.g. Enberg) suggest that cross-learning is not needed and then you can rely on impersonal and standardised mechanisms such as; modularisation transactive memory systems mechanisms which are not communication and interaction

intensive.

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DIFFERENT CONTINGENCIES CREATE DIFFERENT CIRCUMSTANCES

• Degree of knowledge differentiation; low – high

• Task frequency; low – high

• Task heterogeneity; low – high

• Complexity (causal ambiguity); low – high

• Uncertainty; low – high

How do stacker and turbine development respectively score on the above contingencies? (you will get the answer for stacker development, the turbine case you have to solve

by yourself ).

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Did not rely on;

• Clearly specified goal

• Shared knowledge

• Network memory

Rather it was described as;

• Individual to its character

• Routine

• The stacker (more generally the artefact) was important

KNOWLEDGE INTEGRATION IN THE STACKER CASE

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KNOWLEDGE INTEGRATION IN THE STACKER CASE

Routinework

Representation

Contribution

Consensus reaching/problem solving

Feedback reporting

MeetingsIndividualwork

Routinework

Representation

Contribution

Consensus reaching/problem solving

Feedback reporting

MeetingsIndividualwork

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ONE ITERATIVE MODEL OF KNOWLEDGE INTEGRATION – OR MANY?

INTERACTING ACTING

Collective processes

Individual work

Artefacts

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CAN WE TALK ABOUT TEAMWORK

IN THE STACKER CASE?

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WHAT IS A TEAM?

• A social system of three or more people working together in an organizational context who perceive themselves, and are perceived by others, as members of this social system.

• Does this mean that they are teamworking?

• Teamwork quality (TWQ) construct to measure the quality of interactions within the team and to suggest that TWQ is positively related to the success of innovative projects where success is measured as regards ”team performance” and ”personal success”.

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THE TWQ CONSTRUCT

COMMUNICATION - The possibility for all members to communicate with all other members.

COORDINATION - The need to agree on work schedules, budgets, deliverables etc.

BALANCE OF MEMBER CONTRIBUTIONS - All members can bring in their views/ideas, unrestrained by hierarchy.

MUTUAL SUPPORT - The existence of cooperative frames of mind and mutual respect.

EFFORT - Everyone knowing and accepting the work norms concerning sufficient effort.

COHESION - Team members’ sense of togetherness, beloning, and desire to remain on the team.

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OK, SO DID THE TQW EXPLAIN VARIANCES IN SUCCESS?It depends on who you ask.

Team members – 41% of the variance in performance explained by TWQ.

Team leaders – 11% of the variance in performance explained by TWQ.

Managers – 7% of the variance in performance explained by TWQ.

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