The Practices of Knowledge Creation: Collaboration Between Peripheral and Core Occupational Communities

• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/emre.12064
• Date: 01 March 2016
• Author: Israel Drori,Shmuel Ellis,Adi Sapir
• Published date: 01 March 2016

The Practices of Knowledge Creation:

Collaboration Between Peripheral and Core

Occupational Communities

Adi Sapir2,Israel Drori1,Shmuel Ellis2

1School of Business, College of Management, Rishon LeZion, Israel

2School of Management, Tel Aviv University, Tel Aviv, Israel

This study examines how members of core (engineers) and peripheral (technical writers) professional com-

munities are creating new knowledge. Base of field observation and interviews from DigTel, an innovative

technology firm, we explore how specific interaction mechanism, the chavruta, borrowed from Judaic religious

tradition, creates dialogical practices that enable technical writers and engineers to capture each other’s lan-

guage and to reflexively create knowledge out of their discourse. We demonstrate how the chavruta enable to

bridge status and power and transform occupational differences into collaboration. We provide a theoretical

explanation for the way local knowledge created at the chavruta has served as a new context for new knowledge

through engineers and technical writers managing three dialogical practices – learning, inquiry, negotiation

and knowledge sharing.

Keywords: knowledge creation; practice, collaborative knowledge work; occupational communities

Introduction

Empirical studies about knowledge exchange and col-

laboration across occupational communities highlight

the difficulties of conducting knowledge work across

boundaries. Scholars who employ the practice perspec-

tive to organizational knowledge havebeen looking with

particular interest at the nature of actual working prac-

tices across communities of practice and discussed

various boundary-spanning mechanisms used by profes-

sional communities to create common ground (e.g.,

Orlikowski, 2000, 2002; Carlile, 2002, 2004; Bechky,

2003a, 2003b; Kellogg, Orlikowski and Yates, 2006;

2006; Ewenstein and Whyte, 2009). However, research

generally fails to address cross-occupational knowledge

work in the context of organizational hierarchies

(Yanow, 2004; Oborn and Dawson, 2010). In addition,

research is lacking on the role of dialogical interactions

in the micro-dynamics of cross-occupational knowledge

creation (Tsoukas, 2009; Kreiner et al., 2011).

In this paper, we examine joint knowledge creation

across occupational groups, by focusing on the role of

peripheral occupational communities in knowledge

creation and transfer. We define peripheral occupational

communities as communities that are not directly linked

to core organizational functions and practices. Members

of peripheral communities possess local, situated knowl-

edge, developed through their work experience. As they

perform tasks that are perceived to be non-core, rela-

tively easy, or routine, their status is marginal to one

degree or another, depending on their distance from the

organization’s core activities. Such peripheral commu-

nities can consist of administrative assistants and

members of other classical support occupations, but they

are also contextual to the organizational environment: IT

workers can occupy a peripheral position in a hospital,

even though they constitute the core of the IT industry.

Work on the interactions between these groups of actors

and core organizational groups are largely missing from

studies of knowledge exchange across occupational

communities. The few studies that explored these inter-

actions argued that although peripheral communities

possess local, situated knowledge, their knowledge is

often devalued by groups at the core of the organization

(Orr, 1996; Bechky, 2003b; Yanow, 2004). In this paper

we explore how members of a peripheral group engage

in daily work interactions with members of a core group,

the knowledge creation practices they use in such

Correspondence:Adi Sapir, School of Management, Tel AvivUniversity,

Tel Aviv, Israel. email: sapirad@gmail.com

DOI: 10.1111/emre.12064

© 2015 European Academy of Management

European Management Review, Vol. 13, 1 –3 (201 )

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interactions, and how they were able to participate in

meaningful knowledge creation.

We conducted our study at DigiTel, a pseudonym for

a leading multinational communication firm that treats

knowledge as central to both its strategy and its daily

practices. At DigiTel, we identified two occupational

communities responsible for knowledge creation, each

of which deals with a specific facet of the firm’s com-

petencies: technical writers and engineers. These two

groups represent peripheral and core occupational com-

munities, respectively. The formal role of the technical

writers is to produce technical documents on technology

and work processes: users’ guides, document templates,

and other memos and documents (Thurman, 1999).

Typically, they articulate and organize others’ knowl-

edge in a format amenable to duplication and transfer.

Thus, technical writers are a unique peripheral occupa-

tional community, in that they serve as mediators

between the creators of knowledge (here, engineers) and

its users within and outside the firm.

Our study contributes to scholarly discussions

on boundary-spanning knowledge mechanisms. We

describe dyadic and dialogical mechanisms of knowl-

edge creation in the settings of cross-occupational col-

laborations, when two professionals with complementary

knowledge to contribute to the task at hand interact. We

argue that important aspects of the interactions of tech-

nical writers and engineers in DigiTel – the transforma-

tion of local knowledge, the creation of shared

understandings – are achieved via dialogical interactions.

Our findings support Tsoukas’s (2009) claim that dia-

logue is an important mechanism through which new

knowledge emerges, and provide evidence of the impact

of dialogical interactions, such as give-and-take negotia-

tions and asking questions, to bridge the technological

gap and create new knowledge. Our research shows that

the chavruta, a dialogical practice borrowed from the

realm of Jewish religious studies, represents a repertoire

of knowledge creation tools that can join two occupa-

tional communities. The ongoing exchange of the

chavruta is characterized by specific dynamics and tools

that facilitate the sharing of knowledge and the construc-

tion of new insights and understandings.

Our second contribution relates to the role of periph-

eral occupational communities in organizational knowl-

edge creation and transfer. We argue that the dyadic

mechanism of the chavruta enables the peripheral

community of technical writers to participate in mean-

ingful knowledge creation. We show how the chavruta

serves as a leveling mechanism, providing a unique

organizational space within which differences can tem-

porarily disappear. The writer and the engineer were

able to draw on the writers’ practical and local knowl-

edge and create new knowledge through the dialogical

mechanisms of asking questions, give-and-take negotia-

tion, and knowledge sharing. The dynamics of these

dyadic relations are not necessarily harmonic or consen-

sual, and may require the use of power-game practices

and sense-making mechanisms from members of the

peripheral community. Yet these dialogical mechanisms

between members of different professional communities

located at the periphery and the core of the organization

lead to the creation of new knowledge in the form of new

thinking about interactions between different parts of the

system, more efficient procedures, and solutions that

will meet the customers’ needs.

We beginwith a theoretical discussion of the literature

on organizational knowledge creation, followed by a

discussion of peripheral occupational communities and

their role in knowledge processes. Following a descrip-

tion of the research context and a methodological section

we present our findings through a discussion of the char-

acteristics of the professional community of technical

writers at DigiTel as a peripheral community, in terms of

identity and status, and the writers’ local and practical

knowledge. We then examine the dialogical practices of

knowledge creation at DigiTel. We conclude with a dis-

cussion of our theoretical and empirical contribution.

Literature review

Though the process of organizational knowledge crea-

tion has attracted considerable attention in the literature

over the past 15 years, the prevailing epistemology con-

ceives of knowledge either as mental processes of indi-

vidual brains or as static, objectified entities that can be

possessed, transferred, and shared (e.g., Nonaka and

Takeuchi, 1995; Nonaka et al., 2006). Furthermore, the

literature variously presents knowledge creation as

explicit or tacit (Nonaka, 1994) and as embedded both in

the organization’s material and physical space and its

vision and culture (Nonaka et al., 2006).

By contrast, practice-based approaches treat social

processes as the key element in the construction of

knowing and learning in organizations. Organizational

knowing, according to these approaches, is situated in

specific conditions, mediated by material and symbolic

artifacts, continually reproduced and negotiated, and

always rooted in a context of social interaction (e.g.,

Cook and Brown, 1999; Orlikowski, 2000, 2002). More

specifically, knowledge created through daily practices

within specific contexts and cultures is used by the

parties engaged in its creation, and constituted and

reconstituted in practice (e.g., Fleck, 1994; Gherardi

et al., 1998; Nonaka et al., 2006; Styhre et al., 2001;

Orlikowski, 2002; Yanow, 2004).

In this schema at least, most of what people do is part

of some practice or another, and such social phenomena

as institutions and power can be understood via the

structures of relations among practices (Schatzki, 1997).

Theories on knowledge creation in organizations often

A. Sapir et al.

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