Laurent Taskin

Telework: a challenge to knowledge transfer in organizations

Over the last decade, teleworking has gained momentum. While it has been portrayed as both employer- and employee-friendly, we question the positive normativity associated with teleworking by showing how it may endanger an organizations knowledge base and competitive advantage by threatening knowledge transfer between teleworkers and non-teleworkers. Drawing on the literature on knowledge we present the cognitive and relational components of organizational socialization as key facilitators of knowledge transfer and we demonstrate that teleworking may negatively affect these cognitive (shared mental schemes, language and narratives, and identification with goals and values) and relational (quality of relationships) components, depending on its frequency, location(s), and perception. Finally, we suggest some managerial avenues for addressing these potential negative side effects of teleworking.

Out of Sight, Out of Mind in a New World of Work? Autonomy, Control, and Spatiotemporal Scaling in Telework

We draw on the geographical concepts of social space, territoriality, and distantiation to examine an apparent tension inherent in telework: i.e., using information and communication technologies to work away from traditional workplaces can give employees a greater sense of autonomy while simultaneously placing new constraints on the way they conduct themselves in settings that were previously beyond the reach of managerial control. We draw on a longitudinal case study of a Belgian biopharmaceutical company to show how technical and professional teleworkers developed broadly similar strategies of spatiotemporal scaling to cope with this tension. We conclude by considering how these scaling strategies allowed employees to cope with the demands of ‘hybrid’ work that is conducted both at home and in traditional settings.

Knowledge Management Through the Development of Knowledge Repositories: Towards Work Degradation

This paper questions the consequences of the use of electronic knowledge repositories for work and employment. Drawing on critical research suggesting that knowledge management associated with such tools presents similarities to scientific management principles, it proposes to examine the following key research question: how do employees experience the transformation of the employment relationship when a knowledge repository is introduced to the workplace? The inquiry is grounded in an exploratory qualitative case study of a knowledge management system designed to foster knowledge-sharing in a Belgian public administration. The findings illustrate two complementary outcomes: this system resulted in employees experiencing deskilling and work degradation, and was met with resistance. Significantly, this paper considers work degradation as a reflexive phenomenon in the context studied, where knowledge-sharing systems produced deskilling and resistance as part of a specific re-regulation process.

Introducing telework in a public and bureaucratic environment: a re-regulationist perspective on a non-conventional change

Teleworking is part of the strategy of modernisation of public organisations in Belgium and is largely perceived as a management device coming from the private sector that is not adapted in a public environment. It also deeply challenges traditional organisation of work, like bureaucracy. Based on a case study conducted in a Belgian federal public agency where telework had to be implemented, this article studies the re-regulation process at work. Its main contribution is to argue that the adoption of such organisational change depends on the ability to re-negotiate the prevailing organisational conventions.

Post-crisis learning in public agencies: what do we learn from both actors and institutions?

ABSTRACT Post-crisis learning is a challenge for public organizations, and especially for agencies which handle health and environmental risks. This article investigates how the Belgian Food Safety Agency settles mechanisms for drawing lessons from crises while ensuring day-to-day routine. The framework by Crozier and Friedberg is used as a guideline to consider both the actors and the system, both strategic games and institutional constraints. The article helps in understanding the institutional logics underpinning how the public organizations learn from societal risk and crisis. Centralization and openness appear to be guiding principles, resulting from the learning games. They also generate tensions that the actors’ games manage by defining new rules for cooperation. Both the practice (through our case study) and the theory (combining actors and institutions) broaden the lens of policy analysis for what policy-making at organizational level concerns.

Book review: New Ways of Organizing Work: Developments, Perspectives and Experiences

To conclude this piece, I would suggest that this edited textbook is indeed innovative and could ultimately accelerate learning and transformation for managers through engaging with the material. Overall, given some of the conceptual and practical insights contained in the textbook, particularly surrounding issues connected to the need for more authenticity in leadership, I think that it would be a useful addition to reading lists for academic OD modules and for managers and leaders who are involved in organizational change and development. On a more practical note and given the increasing number of international students, I think that using a more internationally oriented approach could prove useful.

New Ways of Working: From Smart to Shared Power

This chapter questions the relevance of the concept of smart power in organization studies and, specifically, in the study of new ways of working (NWOW) implementation. NWOW embrace a broad set of organizational practices, ranging from spatial and temporal flexibility to self-management. Beyond such set of (somehow traditional) work practices, the singularity of NWOW seems to lie in its governance epitome, valuing a peculiar philosophy of management, i.e., a more democratic way of managing organizations. The smart power approach could play a key role in the effective implementation of NWOW. However, drawing on existing studies, we report some paradoxes making NWOW a piece of what may be seen as old-fashioned management practices and organizational pattern that, far from constituting a promise for alternative modes of governance, also constitute new attempts to discipline employees. Claiming organizational rules need to be appropriated by actors in order to become effective, this chapter argues a smart power perspective is not relevant at the microlevel, where traditional approaches of power and agency are more complete. While considering innovative NWOW, smart power approach seems well relevant to analyze meso-regulations and, especially, governance issues.

Book review: Idea work: Lessons of the extraordinary in everyday creativityCarlsenArneCleggStewartGjersvikResidar, Idea work: Lessons of the extraordinary in everyday creativity (Cappelen Damm Akademisk), Cappelen Damm: Oslo, 2012; 208 pp.: 9788202403379

The next section looks forward with three chapters considering what might be. Chapter 9 discusses the importance of cultural literacy for open, global organisations. Then, Chapters 10 and 11 become rather speculative – ‘embracing Open in the New Millennia’ and seeking to address the question ‘should you go open?’ They are the kinds of chapters where someone at least half convinced by the aforegoing arguments of the book would want to read on. However, the more discerning reader might demand more: a more critical evaluation with hard data rigorously conceived and collected in support of the various dimensions of the model of open organisation that the author seeks to promote. Would I buy this book? Personally no, but I can see that it might appeal to MBA students and practitioners seeking ideas for how to shape their newly launched business venture.