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Abstract
In this paper, I outline a perspective on knowing in practice which highlights the essential role of human action in knowing how to get things done in complex organizational work. The perspective suggests that knowing is not a static embedded capability or stable disposition of actors, but rather an ongoing social accomplishment, constituted and reconstituted as actors engage the world in practice. In interpreting the findings of an empirical study conducted in a geographically dispersed hightech organization, I suggest that the competence to do global product development is both collective and distributed, grounded in the everyday practices of organizational members. I conclude by discussing some of the research implications of a perspective on organizational knowing in practice.
(Distributed Competence; Geographically Distributed Organizing; Knowing; Organizational Knowledge; Organizing Practices)
With the intensification of globalization, acceleration in the rate of change, and expansion in the use of information technology, particular attention is being focused on the opportunities and difficulties associated with sharing knowledge and transferring "best practices" within and across organizations (Leonard-Barton 1995, Brown and Duguid 1998, Davenport and Prusak 1998). Such a focus on knowledge and knowledge management is particularly acute in the context of global product development, where the development and delivery of timely and innovative products across heterogeneous cultures, locales, and markets are critical and ongoing challenges. Dealing effectively with such challenges requires more than just good ideas, strong leaders, and extensive resources; it also requires a deep competence in what may be labeled "distributed organizing"-the capability of operating effectively across the temporal, geographic, political, and cultural boundaries routinely encountered in global operations.
What constitutes effective distributed organizing in global product development? In this paper, I wish to explore a possible explanation-an explanation which rests on and elaborates on the premise that effective distributed organizing is an enacted capability constituted in the everyday practices of global product development activities. Such an explanation leads away from the focus on organizational knowledge occupying much of the contemporary discourse on knowledge management, and towards a focus on organizational knowing as emerging from the ongoing and situated actions of organizational members as they engage the world. It is an explanation grounded in what it is people do every day to get their work done.
My focus...