Ali Yakhlef

The corporeality of practice-based learning:

Practice-based approaches to learning and knowing can be credited with their contribution to, among other things, establishing the social basis for human cognition, action and interaction. However, although they emphasise the (ontological) significance of practice, inter/action and activity as the basis of learning and knowing, little attention has been paid to the body — that which makes all doing and performs all action. The aim of the present study is to suggest a corporeal ground for a practice-based learning theory. The body is regarded as our link to the practical (social and material) world, and is thus the medium of learning and knowing. Drawing on Merleau-Ponty’s (1962; 1964; 1968) advanced phenomenology learning is viewed as a process of incorporating and absorbing new competencies and understandings into our body schema, which in turn transforms our ways of perceiving and acting. Learning is corporeal, pre-discursive and pre-social, stemming from the body’s perpetual need to cope with tensions arising in the body-environment connections. The study closes with some theoretical and practical implications for practice-based approaches to learning and knowing.

Does the Internet compete with or complement bricks-and-mortar bank branches?

What does the Internet imply for the business of banking and how will it affect it? Are branch offices “doomed” and obsolete? Explores the major Swedish banks’ adoption of the Internet with a view to highlighting the ensuing changes in the way banks conduct their business and deliver their services. Although the number of branches is shrinking in rhythm with increased Internet use, their role is increasingly changing as banks move from a view of the Internet as a means for improving efficiency, to one of seeing it as a strategic device for transforming the business. Since more and more of the transaction processing load is taken over by technology, banks are concentrating on strengthening their marketing approach and re‐inventing their business model. In this context, traditional bank branches, with an infrastructure supporting transaction processing, are being transformed into an open‐space interface within which bank experts engage intimately with their customers, delivering specialised, advisory services.

Outsourcing as a mode of organizational learning

The purpose of this paper is to explore the extent to which outsourcing can be regarded as a mode of increasing organization learning through the internalization of new routines.The paper features six case studies of firms that have outsourced parts, or all of their information technology (IT) activities.When a firm outsources an IT activity (that has been performed in-house), it needs to develop an ability to specify to its supplier(s), and articulate its IT requirements in explicit terms. A firm’s effort to externalize knowledge that was internal to an external supplier implies that a great deal of relatively tacit knowledge has to be converted into explicit knowledge, so that suppliers are able to understand the firm’s business specificity. In this very process of externalizing knowledge and interacting with suppliers and other market players, the firm develops new rules, routines and procedures relating to how to manage the outsourced IT activity, which over time will be internalized.

Practice innovation as bodily skills: the example of elderly home care service delivery

The Heideggerian strand of organization studies has highlighted important aspects of organizational practices. Because of the emphasis of the practice-oriented approach on routine practice, researchers have taken a special interest in how innovative, improvised action arises. One of the dominant views is that innovative action is the outcome of different variations in everyday practices. Insightful though these studies are, they do not recognize the role of the body in their conceptualization. This article seeks to redress this imbalance by drawing on Merleau-Ponty’s (1962) phenomenology, suggesting that the body, as a carrier of practices, is the locus of innovative action. The article proposes that innovative action emerges in our bodily expressive-responsive skilful coping mode. In illustrating this argument, we make use of case study material focusing on practices involving elderly care service provision. We show how the care workers under consideration cope with the demands of their unpredictable work by adapting their bodily expressive-responsive abilities innovatively to emerging situational calls. Practice innovation emerges as the outcome of a tension between what it makes sense for the care workers to do based on the practical intelligibility underlying their own practices, on the one hand, and bureaucratic rules and requirements inscribed in terms of economic rationality and cost-efficiency, on the other. Because bureaucratic rules are perceived as alienating and unethical, innovation would inevitably be a form of resistance. The article specifies this form of practical resistance, concluding with some implications of this approach for organization studies.

The Internet as a new locus for value creation

The aim of this paper is to explore the Internet as a new locus for value creation. Three value‐adding strategies ‐ content, context and infrastructure ‐ are used to analyse three examples of Internet ventures involving a virtual university, the restaurant business and the music industry. The establishment of a home page on the Internet creates a new context in which providers and consumers of products and services interact and transact more conveniently and cost‐efficiently. It is argued that a new context may enhance the quality of content itself. It is therefore crucial for managers to consider the effect of Internet on all the components of the value proposition, separately and in aggregation.

The Lexus and the Olive Tree: A Rising Mode of Internationalisation

The paper discusses networking through brand affiliation/endorsement as an increasing mode of internationalisation. Brand affiliation or brand endorsement involves a form of franchising, whereby local services take on a global reach. Whereas conventional theories on the internationalisation process explicitly or implicitly assume that internationalisation is a matter of tapping a new geographical market, mired with risk and uncertainty due to its “foreignness”, brand affiliation means that the offerings of a local business take on the global features associated with the global brand. The global brand endorses or vouches for the locally bound business, thereby providing it with a global recognition and reach. In spite of the global explosion in the practice of affiliation and franchising, there has been little concern with this form of internationalisation, or with the issues and the challenges posed for the franchisees, which are most often SMEs, in managing two brands, two identities and two cultures. The present paper seeks to explore this business relationship and its inherent contradictions, mainly from the franchisees perspective, and asks whether the dictates of global requirements for efficiency, functionality and consistency can be reconciled with social and cultural values associated with localisation, and what the theoretical and practical implications of this internationalisation process are.

Towards a post-human distributed cognition environment

The view of communities of practice as the relevant context for generating and gaining knowledge has raised fears that these will fall prey to various organizational, social or political manipulations. This paper aims to question these humanist concerns, arguing that knowledge context is increasingly becoming a post-human context that lies beyond the direct control and manipulation of humans. In terms of this post-human position, the paper outlines this shift, suggesting that emergence replaces human intentionality and the dynamic partnership between humans and non-humans, and that intelligent machines replace the liberalist, humanist subjects manifest destiny to dominate and control knowledge. This paper aims to raise/rekindle the debate on the prospects of managing knowledge and learning in organizations. Finally, implications for the community-based learning theory are discussed.

Global Brands as Embodied “Generic Spaces” The Example of Branded Chain Hotels

By and large, branding literature provides a view of global brands as primarily signifying, semiotic devices. This semiotization of brands is due to a cultural bias that favors the discursive world of signs over lived practices and experiences. Taking Best Western global brand and using Lefèbvre’s tripartite conceptualization—spatial practice, representation of space, and spaces of representation—it is argued that global brands can be seen as generic spaces. However, whereas generic spaces are most commonly regarded as disembodied spaces, in this article, it is argued that they actually are lived, embodied, and specific experiences.

Customer experience within retail environments An embodied, spatial approach

Although the literature on customer experience within retail environments spontaneously invokes the sensuous, affective and emotional aspects of experience, the body – which is the locus of these – is conspicuous by its absence. In these terms, researchers have relied on a theory of mind. This article seeks to suggest an embodied, spatial approach to customer experience, arguing that it is thanks to the body that we sense the environment, and that likewise, it is thanks to the environment that we can sense and experience our body. The reciprocity between body and world implies an inter-corporeality that extends or retracts the spatiality of the body as a result of its motility. This article emphasizes the bodily, spatial character of customer experience, concluding with implications and suggestions for future studies.

The interplay of service complexity and spatial layouts

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to explore the interplay of the internet and the spatial designs of the bricks‐and‐mortar contexts within which face‐to‐face services are provided.Design/methodology/approach – Focuses on the travel, the banking and book‐selling industries; the methods involve interviews, observation and visual material of the new physical spaces within which customer‐sales representatives interact face‐to‐face.Findings – The internet has not reduced the importance of physical space; on the opposite, this study argues, it has revalorised and emphasized the significance of space.Research limitations/implications – The studys explorative nature does not allow for generalization. Whereas space and time are traditionally regarded as contextual factors, this study recognizes their dynamic nature, regarding spacing and timing as economic phenomena. However, further studies may seek to establish more thoroughly such economic effects.Practical implications – Changes in spatial layouts of a ...