Characteristic Processes 1 Characteristic Processes and Discursive Methods in the Study of Organizational Knowledge

This article argues for a discursive turn in organizational knowledge studies. Existing efforts tend to focus on knowledge outcomes. While valuable in many respects, this approach glosses over communication processes that make knowledge organizational. To fully understand the collective creation and application of knowledge, researchers must attend to four fundamental processes of formulation, reflexivity, adaptation, and simultaneity. Existing methods like cross sectional studies, longitudinal designs, event sequence studies, and conversation analysis can all shed some light on these four processes. However, there is a gulf in existing methods where important discursive phenomena of organizational knowledge go unstudied. High-resolution, broadband discourse analysis (HBDA), which would study organization-wide spoken and written discourse for extended periods of time, is needed to fill the gap. Centering resonance analysis (CRA) is proposed as an automated means of coping with the great volumes of data HBDA would produce, and the potential impact of HBDA is assessed, focusing on examples in interorganizational alliances, structural contingency theory, and cross-functional integration. Characteristic Processes 3 For half a century, "organizational knowledge" has been recognized as a major constituent of organizations. The Thinking Company (Sims and Gioia,1986), The Learning Organization (Senge, 1990), and The Knowing Organization (Choo, 1998) are three recent titles focusing on the metaphor of knowledge as an attribute or possession of organizations. They consolidate work stemming from Herbert Simon's analysis of organization as compensation for bounded rationality (Simon, 1947). As is evident from the titles mentioned above, the "knowledge" metaphor does overlap related metaphors of organizational cognition and learning; however, we find useful the connotations of knowledge as a valuable resultant or outcome. Organizational knowledge, researchers argue, is pivotal for the coordinated activities that constitute organizations. Unique or well-adapted assemblages of knowledge can lead to competitive advantage. Of course, the metaphor of organizational knowledge (OK) is subject to radically varying interpretations. These vary from a highly individualistic conception of stocks of knowledge held by individuals to a conception as coordinated distribution of skills and habits, with no special emphasis on people as knowers. We will not review the wealth of literature taking varying positions on these controversies (cf. Schneider and Angelmar, 1993; Walsh, 1995). Instead our intention here is to identify and focus on the core, generative processes that underlie different theoretical formulations of OK. Specifically, we argue that a discursive perspective is necessary to appreciate the processes and artifacts associated with organizational knowledge. A discursive perspective focuses attention on four fundamental organizational knowledge processes: formulation, adaptation, reflexivity, and simultaneity. We identify a “methods gap” that prevents adequate study of the four phenomena, and propose a new research methodology, high resolution broadband discourse analysis (HBDA) that supplements other research methods to provide a fuller understanding of OK. We conclude by commenting on the workability of HBDA and potential theoretical contributions of the discursive approach we advocate. Characteristic Processes 4 Theoretical Approaches to Understanding Organizational Knowledge The first part of our task is to define organizational knowledge. We see much to admire in Jelinek and Litterer's (Jelinek and Litterer, 1994) definition of an organization as a "deliberately created and maintained social institution within which consciously coordinated behaviors by members aim to produce a limited set of intended outcomes. " (p. 12) We think the focus on the institutional status of organizations is vital, especially in emphasizing that organizations are systems at higher levels of analysis than individuals or relationships. We also approve the focus in the definition on conscious coordination of member activities. On the other hand, this definition implies a model of the organization as behaviors inside a pregiven institutionalized container, and coordinated by prior plan or cognition. Such a model threatens to exclude the role of communication processes in, first, creating and conveying the institutional status of interaction, and second, arranging and enabling coordinated action among members. Yet these processes should be at the center of any theory of organization for at least two reasons. First, organization implies organizing, and without communication there is either no organizing or an impoverished form of organizing that has little explanatory power. Discourse constitutes organizations. (Barnard, 1934; Taylor, 1993; Weick, 1979) Second, complex organizations have multiple sites, activities, and/or functions across space and time. The power of organizations in harnessing this multiplicity, in coordinating and directing it, gives organizations their powerful role in the world and their status as a higher-order system than small groups. Discourse, is both the most frequent medium and a uniquely powerful medium for communication across contexts and reflexive control by hierarchies or power centers. It is the central factor that makes a bunch of group activities into a complex organization, a system at the mesoor macro-level of analysis. (DiMaggio, 1991; House, Russo, & Thomas-Hunt, 1995) By analogy, any model of OK must emphasize the communication that takes place to constitute the organizational system. It is discursive communication that makes knowledge “organizational. ” Thus, we define organizational knowledge as the symbolic and/or practical routines, resources, and affordances articulated in discourse by organization members and social units as they maintain the institutional organization and/or coordinate their action and interaction across diverse sites in space and time. This definition includes objective information stocks such as libraries or software, as well as knowledge developed and spread through more or less informal conversational networks. However, both Characteristic Processes 5 common sense and research literature make clear the importance of including the shared cognitive schemata of Jelinek and Litterer, activity routines involving people inside and outside the organization, and contextual arrangements that mark the institution or stimulate coordination. We simply posit that these schemes and routines, if they are organizational at all, are referred to and known collectively through discourse. At one extreme is the tacit skill of a member or group, that can be drawn on by the organization only when it is discussed and organized in practical conversation; the other extreme is the symbolized data-base, which again can feed into organizational knowledge only it can be collectively analyzed and mobilized in operational interaction. Given our broad definition, it is clear that in order to fully understand OK, we must understand the communication processes that create and enact it. Let us examine one theories of OK from this discursive perspective. Choo (1998) recently surveyed the OK literature and found three basic strains of research: sense-making theory, research about organizational "knowledge creation" (a broad term for a wide variety of knowledge-mustering activities), and organizational decision-making research. His analysis of sensemaking is informed by Karl Weick's (1995) analysis, as well as theoretical frames developed by students of information processing such as Brenda Dervin (1983) and by students of organizational culture such as Joanne Martin (1992). Choo argues that organizational membership involves an ongoing search for information and meaning; that organizing itself is marked by the emergence of meaning; and that sensemaking is the social spread and elaboration of meaning through processes of arguing, expectation, committing, and manipulation that forge links from the clear to the less clear. He reviews a variety of "meaning-making and meaning-sharing mechanisms" (p. 80) that contribute to cognitive consensus about meaning. He also analyzes sensemaking as "the managed reduction of information ambiguity", through information seeking and use, to meet cognitive, affective, and situational needs. Choo uses Martin's multiperspective theory of culture to note that sense-making may result in divided or persistently ambiguous meaning. He shows how OK is drawn on and socially augmented even in the earliest emerging perceptions of and reactions to the changing organizational environment. In explicating knowledge creation, Choo distinguishes among three types of knowledge: tacit (individual, uncodified), explicit (codified, and thus easily becoming social), and cultural (social but uncodified). He argues that cultural knowledge should not be reduced to individual tacit knowledge; Characteristic Processes 6 instead, it is most important when enacted. And it is through enactment, for example in group problemsolving, that knowledge becomes progressively more shared and social. This argument leads to Choo’s major claim that knowledge creation includes three major processes. First (following Nonaka and Takeuchi, 1995) is knowledge conversion, taking place in a cycle between explicit and tacit knowledge. The four stages of the cycle are (1) externalization of tacit knowledge through stories or model development, (2) combination through reconfiguring disparate sets of explicit knowledge, (3) internalization through developing practical skill at applying explicit knowledge, and (4) socialization as tacit skills are spread to new members in "legitimate peripheral participation". A second, cross-cutting analysis of knowledge-creating distinguishes three ways knowledge comes into the organizational stock: Knowledge is