Ragnhild Kvålshaugen

Choosing to Learn and Learning to Choose: Strategies for Client Co-Production and Knowledge Development

Decisions about what types of assignments and clients to prioritize are essential for the strategic development of successful knowledge intensive business service firms (KIBS-firms). Two important considerations that need to be addressed are: the degree to which clients are ready to be efficient co-producers of value and the opportunities for knowledge development available in client co-production processes. Based on experience and several empirical studies, we identify characteristics of assignments and clients that are positively related to knowledge development. These characteristics are: novel tasks with a high degree of customization; multi-disciplinary assignment teams; large assignments; time pressure (to the extent that the tasks are novel and creative); highly knowledgeable clients; and a high degree of client interaction.

Transnational practices in communities of task and communities of learning

This article explores situated practices in communities that provide transnational services. Communities of practice generally focus on reinforcing local ties. Our study identifies two distinctive but interdependent communities of practice that are transnational and virtual: one community consists of employees who share work and tasks, labeled communities of task; the other consists of employees who jointly share and create knowledge, labeled communities of learning. We extend the existing community of practice literature by providing a heterogeneous understanding of the different types of situated practices, claiming that the situated practices of sharing work and sharing knowledge stem from the type of participation within the communities, either through service relays or virtual servicing. Empirical data in this study were collected from two transnational professional service firms. Our study shows that both types of communities benefit from managerial facilitation, even though one community type is more formal and the other is informal.

Stability and change in managerial elites: the institution of management education in Norway from 1936 to 2009

Market transformations and organizational changes lead to new needs for managerial competence, and such changes are proposed to influence the institution of management education over time. However, in an examination of the educational backgrounds of Norwegian CEOs from 1936 to 2009, this paper finds that changes in the institution of management education cannot be interpreted as direct responses to the organizational and external changes that companies face. This study suggests that the institution of management education is modified rather than fundamentally changed. These modifications can largely be explained by the concepts of institutional solidarity (i.e. dominant agents define what management education is, and this understanding is difficult to change due to path dependencies in the recruitment of top managers) and institutional plasticity (i.e. the ‘stretching’ of established institutional scripts to fit new contexts).

Practices in institutional projects as mobilizers of change: A case of adaptation to climate change

This paper explores the role of institutional projects in mobilizing change in fields characterized by institutional complexity. Our starting point is the empirical observation of how organizations in the field of natural hazards in Norway collaborate through a series of projects as a response to needs for change. Natural hazards, such as flooding and landslides/avalanches are a major societal concern in Norway, and prevailing practice to deal with these has proved ineffective. The reason being lack of coordination between the organizations and divergent prescriptions of what are appropriate solutions. Our study shows that the organizations use projects as arenas for joint sensemaking, improvisation and experimentation. Institutional projects result in the development of new practices that allow the organizations to respond more effectively to the needs for dealing with the natural hazard events. We identify three sets of practices, i.e. information gathering, mobilizing, and educational practices that he...