In Pursuit of Organisational Renewal: Learning and Knowledge in the Service of Organisations

Every time we open a newspaper we are confirmed in the belief that organisations are faced by increas-ingly knowledge intensive realities. More often than not, these reports tell us how companies are strug-gling with issues related to operating on an competitive stage, which is characterised by increasing de-mands for flexibility, innovation and constant improvement, and at the same time by diminishing cost and response time. The response has come in many forms related to management style, organisational form, outsourcing, competence, and work itself. How to act within these contingencies is another mat-ter, which is less explored, especially when we look at implementation and sustaining of the initiatives taken. The concern of the thesis, therefore, rests with the constructive process generating new systems, practices and understandings that improve organisational competitiveness. The thesis employs three longitudinal case studies, which follow three companies going through deep change, which challenged their capacities to act and learn. This prompted the companies to work with knowledge and learning in several dimensions, related to reflective inquiry, sensing opportunities, and development of new mean-ings, but also to the process of incorporating these with organisational mechanism such as structures and procedures by developing new practices and linking diverse lines of activity. First of all the thesis illustrates how knowledge intensive organisations are dependent on their capacity to work with the dualities and controversies that seem almost omnipresent to their activity. This capac-ity represents an ability to unfold and absorb new meanings and transform them into effective activities. This points towards the need for drawing a stronger link between micro-level activities and macro-level outcomes in order to learn about the things that impede or drive the organisation forward. Secondly, a key challenge is related to the linking of distributed knowledge domains, something which demands ef-fective boundary management beyond transactional coordination. Thirdly, it is argued that we need to see change as an ongoing phenomenon, which organisations must embrace, rather than a one-off initia-tive, which they hold at arm’s length. Overall our understanding of organisations has arguably suffered under a preoccupation with either micro-level behaviour of individuals or macro-level strategic concerns. What we seem to miss is an understanding of how organisations start to work as collectives, the thesis aims to remedy this by supplying a gateway into these processes.