Paul R. Carlile

Into the Black Box: The Knowledge Transformation Cycle

This publication contains reprint articles for which IEEE does not hold copyright. Full text is not available on IEEE Xplore for these articles.

Relations in Practice: Sorting Through Practice Theories on Knowledge Sharing in Complex Organizations

We examine practice theories concerned with knowledge sharing in complex organizations to distinguish common trends and variations in this complex body of work. We suggest that an analytical framework highlighting the relational thinking in practice theories can serve as a tool to sort through the literature on knowledge sharing. First, we delineate a relational framework consisting of seven attributes associated with a practice theory. Second, we use this framework to analyze a narrow set of practice theories represented by three seminal works on communities of practice. Third, we compare and contrast the relational dynamics found in the three seminal works in regard to how they conceptualize knowledge sharing within and across communal boundaries.

A Dynamic Theory of Expertise and Occupational Boundaries in New Technology Implementation: Building on Barley's Study of CT Scanning:

In this paper, we develop a theory to explain why the implementation of new technologies often disrupts occupational roles in ways that delay the expected benefits. To explore these disruptions, we construct a dynamic model grounded in ethnographic data from Barleys widely cited (1986) study of computed tomography (CT) as implemented in two hospitals. Using modeling, we formalize the recursive relationship between the activity of CT scanning and the types and accumulations of knowledge used by doctors and technologists. We find that a balance of expertise across occupational boundaries in operating the technology creates a pattern in which the benefits of the new technology are likely to be realized most rapidly. By operationalizing the dynamics between knowledge and social action, we specify more clearly the recursive relationship between structuring and structure. *

Into the black box: the knowledge transformation cycle

This paper examines how knowledge is integrated in complex technology and product development settings. By framing the task of knowledge integration as a cycle, we highlight the inability of current knowledge transfer theories to explain the consequences that arise from the path-dependent nature of knowledge. We compare the complexity of this knowledge integration task to previous efforts in terms of its novelty and the organizational properties of specialization and dependence that are required. Drawing on evidence from two empirical studies, we outline three stages of the “knowledge transformation cycle,” which addresses the complexity of this integration task. We conclude with the implications of this knowledge transformation cycle on our understanding of knowledge management and organizational learning. (Knowledge Transfer; Boundary Spanning; Organizational Learning; Product Development)

The incompatibility of knowledge regimes: consequences of the material world for cross-domain work

In this paper, we argue that successful integration of knowledge across work domains in the short-term can mask the generation of long-term consequences. We explore a setting, the introduction of environmental considerations into semiconductor manufacturing, where the eventual adoption of common measurement artifacts and associated practices enabled knowledge integration, but failed to address significant underlying consequences. Drawing from observational, interview, and archival data we develop an understanding of the work practices of the Tech and EnviroTech groups as structured by the material world and broader collective conventions. We introduce the concept of knowledge regime to outline the differences in knowledge across these work domains. More specifically, we find that differences in the causal specificity and developmental time horizon of knowledge and the measurement artifacts that result contribute to the relative power of one knowledge regime over another. Understanding these sources of incompatibility provides insight into the design requirements of information systems as boundary objects for knowledge integration, but also specifies the potential limits to any design effort.

How practice matters: a relational view of knowledge sharing

This paper addresses the issue of knowledge sharing practices in complex organizations. The authors propose that a refined understanding of the relational thinking underpinning practice theories is required if we want to further our comprehension of knowledge sharing and distinguish existing approaches. Knowledge sharing, we argue, is defined by the specific differences and dependencies in practices existing within or across communities. Changes in those differences and dependencies leads to the formation of new knowledge. Specifying the differences, dependencies and changes provides the first analytical step in understanding knowledge sharing as it takes shape in and across communities of practice. The authors apply this relational perspective to probe the discrepancies and complementarities among three seminal approaches to knowing within and across communities of practice.

Generating Novelty Through Interdependent Routines: A Process Model of Routine Work

We investigate how multiple actors accomplish interdependent routine performances directed at novel intended outcomes and how this affects routine dynamics over time. We report findings from a longitudinal ethnographic study in an automotive company where actors developed a new business model around information-based services. By analyzing episodes involving interdependent routines, we develop a process model of routine work and dynamics across routines. We identify three types of routine work (flexing, stretching, and inventing) that generate increasingly novel actions and outcomes. Flexed, stretched, and invented performances create emerging consequences for further actions across routines and surface differences between actors that could lead to breakdowns of routine work. Actors respond to such consequences through iterative and cascading episodes of routine work. We discuss how our findings provide new insights in efforts to create variable routine performances and the consequences of interdependence for routine dynamics.

Architectural Optimisation Using Real Options Theory and Dependency Structure Matrices

This paper outlines a methodology for optimising the multi-domain architecture of a relatively integrated system through an appropriate level of modularisation to maximise societal value created. This method is developed through the application of real options theory and the dependency structure matrix (DSM), and illustrated using a reference example of an industrial gas turbine.Copyright

The Irony of Making Materiality of Consequence

I worry that in our continued enthusiasm to embrace dynamics (INGness) we have thrown the baby out with the bath water. Most unfortunately that baby is all of us because the consequences of our actions fade into a soft humanistic yet indistinguishable stew. For me materiality gives us the means to see durability and not just dynamics; accumulations and not just activities; outcomes and not just process; consequences and not just change. But this essay is just words and the irony I see may go unnoticed; at least until the next attempt.

Characterising Modular Architectures

In this paper, we introduce the basic syntax and semantics for scrutinising DSMs in order to characterise the architecture of a complex system. Using this language, we then describe the process issues faced by clustering algorithms and use them to arrive at quantifiable signature measures for describing architectural types spanning the modular-integrated continuum. This language is demonstrated using a sequence of illustrative cartoons that are woven between the analysis of a more complex architecture of an industrial gas turbine.Copyright