4
A Sense-making View
of Knowledge in
Organisations:
The insiders’ tale
Dubravka Cecez-Kecmanovic,
Cate Jerram, and Lesley
Treleaven
All truth, in the long run, is only common sense clarified.
Thomas Henry Huxley
In this chapter we investigate social dimension of knowledge
in an organisational context. Inspired and informed by a sensemaking view of organisations (Weick, 1995; Wiley, 1994), our
inquiry focuses on knowledge as both a subject and a product of
sense-making by individuals, groups and organisations. By
referring to four different levels of sense-making in organisations
(intra-subjective, inter-subjective, generic subjective and extrasubjective), we propose a model of knowledge management that
identifies four respective types of knowledge: individual,
collective, organisational and cultural knowledge. At each level,
a point of view is different and meanings are created differently.
Consequently, the nature of knowledge and its creation at each
level are different. By drawing from an empirical field study of
A Sense-Making View of Knowledge in Organisations
93
knowledge during a comprehensive restructure of a University,
we demonstrate how the model can be applied to inform the
analysis and interpretation of data. As a result, we were able to
explain how underlying knowledge creation, transmission and
sharing, that typically remain largely invisible, determined the
nature of the organisational change processes and impacted
upon their outcomes.
Introduction
One of the highly critical areas of contemporary management is
knowledge management. We suspect that disregard for
knowledge in organisations and inability to manage knowledge
lie behind many organisational ailments and failures. This
however remains largely hidden, as knowledge is fluid and
intangible and the way it is created, used, shared or transmitted
is not easily distinguishable from the work processes and
communication. Typically, knowledge mismanagement goes on,
causing a variety of problems and yet escapes attention of its
protagonists.
While the lack of understanding of knowledge management in
organisation is a widespread phenomenon, we have seen
proliferation of so called Information Technology (IT) solutions.
Namely by capturing, storing and transmitting ‘organisational
knowledge’ IT-based systems promise to solve the knowledge
management problem. Such an approach has been widely
criticised as being technologically driven, based on simplified
and naïve assumptions and lacking a theoretical foundation
(Swan et al., 1999; Galliers and Newell, 2001; Carlsson, 2001).
These and many other researchers emphasise how critical it has
become for organisations to understand fundamental issues of
the nature of knowledge and the ways knowledge can be
managed so as to advance organisational performance.
Researchers from disciplines as different as psychology,
sociology, linguistics, cognitive science, Information Systems,
anthropology, to name just a few, have embarked on
investigating the nature of knowledge, though often without
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Cecez-Kecmanovic, Jerram and Treleaven
mutual recognition. Many contemporary investigations have
adopted a cognitive science view of knowledge as mental
representations in a memory of an individual and focused on the
cognitive processing aspects (Bechtel and Graham, 1999). While
the ‘representational’ concept of knowledge has made a
significant contribution to understanding knowledge and
meaning, it explains only one side of this complex phenomenon.
Knowledge is also acquired, transmitted, shared and intersubjectively created through various social encounters. In
everyday communications, members of a group assume and
implicitly refer to their collectively shared knowledge. It allows
them to understand each other without explicitly mentioning all
relevant knowledge. Based on such common ground, members
of the group develop shared understanding of a situation and
agree about a required action. Clearly, knowledge has an
important social dimension, in addition to the cognitive one. It is
this social dimension of knowledge that we investigate in this
chapter.
More specifically, we investigate knowledge within a broad
context of sense-making in organisations (Weick, 1995). We
understand knowledge as both a subject and a product of sensemaking by individuals, groups and organisations. Our objectives
in the chapter are to present the sense-making approach to
knowledge in organisations and demonstrate how it can be
applied to gain deep insights into complex knowledge
management phenomena in real life situations. Drawing from an
empirical study of knowledge during a comprehensive
restructure of a University, we aim to explain how underlying
knowledge creation, transmission and sharing, that remained
largely invisible, determined the nature of the organisational
change processes and impacted upon their outcomes.
Before we embark on our empirical findings, we discuss first
some relevant approaches to knowledge and knowledge
management in organisations from different literatures. We then
present the assumptions and basic concepts of a sense-making
view of knowledge creation and sharing and propose a sensemaking model of knowledge management in organisations. In
A Sense-Making View of Knowledge in Organisations
95
the section that follows, we briefly describe our field site,
research approach and methodology. Furthermore, we present
the story of the University restructure and interpret the
empirical data using the proposed sense-making model of
knowledge management. By exploring and revealing issues in
knowledge
sharing,
achieving
or
preventing
mutual
understanding, inter-subjective meaning making and knowledge
co-creation, entangled in social interaction, we explain some
contradicting outcomes of the restructure and outstanding
claims that it was a success by some and a failure by others.
Based on this analysis, we demonstrate how the sense-making
model of knowledge management assisted us in understanding
the nature of knowledge and its transformation in the
organisational change process. It also helps us to realise how
this model needs to be enriched further, in order to integrate
other subtle aspects of both cognitive and social dimensions of
knowledge in organisations.
Approaches to Knowledge in Organisations
Many approaches have been taken to knowledge in
organisations in recent years, some complementary, others
contradictory. “Knowledge is that slippery and fragile thing or
process we have a hard time defining. It has the curious
characteristic of changing into something else when we talk
about it” (Spiegler, 2000). Here, Spiegler introduces one of the
fundamental arguments - is knowledge a process or an object?
Knowledge as a process needs to be approached differently than
knowledge as an object. Similarly, is knowledge a commodity or
a human and social phenomenon? When using the phrase
"organisational knowledge", is the focus of discussion on "all the
knowledge in the organisation" as defined by the collective
knowledge independently held by all the persons in the
organisation and all the information and data held within that
organisation's storage capacity? Or does it refer to the dynamics
of the knowledge created and shared between the persons
involved in the organisation? Is it a living dynamic or an object
that can be placed into and withdrawn from cold storage? And
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Cecez-Kecmanovic, Jerram and Treleaven
how does this affect the approach the organisation will need to
take in the management of that knowledge?
To answer these questions, we look first to why we ask these
questions. Why are better models of knowledge and knowledge
management important to organisations? When an organisation
invests in 'better knowledge management', what is being sought?
Tissen, et al., answer this by describing an organisational
view of knowledge as a saleable commodity, a possession to be
protected, sold, capitalised, etc. “Knowledge is becoming a
product. In some areas - accountancy, the law, and advertising
– this has always been the case.” (1998, p. 21). Huang, et al.,
describe it in similar fashion, “As firms evolve from competition
based on cost to value to core competency, knowledge is
increasingly recognised as the most valuable asset of the firm”
(1999, 97). Thus, the stance taken by businesses investing in
knowledge management is that knowledge and knowledge
management are a necessity to achieve superior performance,
become more competitive, and consequently increase business
value. The basic goal is summed up by Andrews (2000) as
“creating wealth (or achieving public good) by managing
intangible assets”.
The descriptions “asset” or “product” definitely imply
knowledge as an object – a fixed “thing” that can be acquired,
manipulated, transferred, stored, etc. But that, alone, is an
inadequate representation. Jarvis (2000), for instance, points
out that knowledge can lead to “purposeful activity, in particular
decision-making”. This is a common view with wide acceptance,
that knowledge leads to, precipitates or enables action. "Other
connotations of knowledge, which tend to differentiate it from
data and information, are that it represents ‘truth’ and therefore
offers a reliable basis for action." (Burton Jones, 1999, 5).
And knowledge, quite simply, is about using that
information… When you connect the information with the
people who need it on a network, the information is what
flows on the net, but the focus of knowledge is more on
using it than on moving it. (Davis, Stan; 1998)
A Sense-Making View of Knowledge in Organisations
97
Taking the approach that knowledge can reside outside of
human brains, is transferable, and codifiable, defines the main
task in Knowledge Management as to make explicit the implicit,
and codify, transfer and store knowledge from 'internal to the
individual' to 'accessible by the organisation'.
Knowledge Management is a discipline that promotes an
integrated approach to the creation, capture, organisation,
access and use of an enterprise’s information assets.
These assets include structured databases, textual
information… and most importantly, the tacit knowledge
and expertise resident in the heads of individual
employees (The Gartner Group in Hart 2000) (underline in
original).
Yet the view that knowledge is a fluid, processual reality and
that knowledge, information and data are in a constant state of
flux, is almost universal.
Few references these days see
knowledge as a static, fixed and unmoving ‘thing’ – it is rarely
seen as only a noun, but rather as simultaneously noun and
verb, both a possessable thing or asset, and an actionable
process.
The common terms "knowledge sharing" and
"knowledge creation" necessarily imply a process and a living
dynamic of human interaction.
However, it is less the knowledge existing at any given time
per se than the firm's ability to effectively apply the
existing knowledge to create new knowledge and to take
action that forms the basis for achieving competitive
advantage from knowledge-based assets (Alavi & Leidner,
2001).
Nevertheless, the more specific aims and goals of these
companies for ‘creating wealth’ provide, de facto, a definition of
what they want knowledge management to be and to accomplish
for them. Although empirical research is needed to investigate
this question in depth, answers found in the literature are
consistent with one another. They fall into five complementary
streams: first is concern with information; second, people as a
company’s most valuable asset and resource; third, knowledge
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Cecez-Kecmanovic, Jerram and Treleaven
sharing and creation; fourth, decision-making and action; and
fifth, technology to assist in implementation.
Of these five, only "concern with information", refers to a
static or fixed and storable 'thing', while the fifth concern refers
to the more mechanised issue of technological implementation
(an action, but not people-focused). The other issues are more
concerned with individuals, human interaction, and human
action. This leaves a huge and diverse field that, in itself,
explains why definitions are so confused in discussions on
knowledge and knowledge management.
The differing
approaches to knowledge management and the analysis and
betterment
of
knowledge
management
are
variably
in/appropriate and un/successful depending upon the
relevance of the approach to the aspect of knowledge
management
being
discussed.
Analysing
knowledge
management with an approach or with tools designed for
behavioural psychology might be appropriate when examining
"people, as a company’s most valuable asset and resource", but
will have little value or worth when analysing how best to handle
the informational aspect of knowledge management.
Thus far, the literature provides us with no examples of
analytical approaches or tools that allow us to look at these
separate knowledge management issues together, or in an
integrated fashion. In this chapter, we offer a model that allows
us to articulate different perspectives when approaching some of
the variable aspects of knowledge and knowledge management
in organisations. The model is grounded within the sensemaking approach to organisations (Weick, 1995) and extended
with the concept of self and its reduction in a social context
(Wiley, 1988, 1994). The sense-making model of knowledge in
organisations, to be introduced in this chapter, does not
necessarily accept or reject various concepts of knowledge as an
object, a process, asset or commodity found in the literature.
Instead, its purpose is to assist us to comprehend the richness
and multifaceted nature of knowledge in all its different forms
and modes. In addition, the sense-making model aims to provide
A Sense-Making View of Knowledge in Organisations
99
a systematic framework to classify and organise various
knowledge phenomena in organisations.
A Sense-making Theory of Knowledge as a Methodological
Framework
A sense-making view of knowledge creation and sharing
in organisations
Sense-making is an everyday activity, briefly described as
"The reciprocal interaction of information seeking, meaning
ascription, and action” (Thomas, Clark, and Gioia, 1993, p.240).
Whenever we encounter an event that is surprising, puzzling,
troubling, or incomprehensible, we try, more or less consciously,
to interpret it, to assign meaning to it, that is, to make sense of
it. In the process of interpretation and explanation, we typically
draw from our experience and from our background, knowledge
of a context within which the event occurred. We also often talk
to other fellow colleagues (workers, citizens) and share and test
our assumptions and beliefs in an attempt to “structure the
unknown” and assign the meaning to the surprising event. The
interpretation and understanding of the event, achieved either
individually or collectively, is an outcome of the sense-making
process (Louis, 1980, p. 241), the importance of which is usually
more appreciated if it triggers or enables an action.
Several aspects of sense-making are relevant for exploration
of knowledge in organisational contexts. First, an individual
makes sense of their work environment, tasks and activities,
and also more broadly of organisational processes and events. In
this process, the individual both uses and re-creates their
personal knowledge. Second, members of an organisation
interact, informally and formally, to explore problematic
situations, share their assumptions and experiences, and cocreate inter-subjective meanings. In this collective sense-making
process, problematic situations are named and framed, the
boundaries of intervention are set, and a coherent ‘structure’
imposed, allowing an intelligible action (Schon, 1983). Key
components of this process – knowledge sharing, achieving
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mutual understanding, inter-subjective meaning-making and
knowledge co-creation, as well as taking action – are all
entangled in social interaction in an undistinguishable manner.
Only by engaging in and observing social interaction, can we as
researchers make sense of them and learn about collective
knowledge formation and use.
Third, in any organisation there are commonly accepted ways
of seeing and doing things. There are organisational (work,
management) roles, processes and structures, the meaning of
which is shared among its members without them participating
in their creation. The meaning ascribed to organisational roles,
processes and structures persist, while individuals performing
them are changing (though not completely). Sense-making
involved in creating and maintaining such generic meanings is
called ‘generic subjective’. At this social structure level,
“concrete human beings, subjects, are no longer present. Selves
are left behind at the interactive level. Social structure implies a
generic self, an interchangeable part—as filler of roles and
follower of rules—but not concrete, individualised selves” (Wiley,
1988, p. 258). While inter-subjective meaning-making through
social interaction is a source of innovation, encouraging change,
generic subjectivity enforces control, securing stability. In this
dialectic relationship, Weick (1995) sees the essence of
organisation.
Fourth, involved in all sense-making processes described
above, are customs, norms, habitual behaviour, rituals, myths,
metaphors and other language forms, etc., that fall under the
general rubric of culture. This realm of abstract symbolic reality
underpins all other sense-making levels. Referring to Wiley
(1988), Weick calls culture an ‘extra-subjective’ level of sensemaking which provides a reservoir of background knowledge
allowing and constraining meanings at other levels.
Organisations can thus be seen as continuous interplay
between interacting subjects with their intra-subjectivity, their
inter-subjective and generic subjective (social structure) sensemaking, all embedded in organisational culture. The three levels
of sense-making above the level of individual should be
A Sense-Making View of Knowledge in Organisations
101
understood, not in an hierarchical sense, but as different
generalisations of social reality, each more distant from the
individual.
The sense-making model of knowledge management
By taking this four-level sense-making view of organisations
as our point of departure, we explore the nature of knowledge at
each level and processes by which such knowledge is created
and used. We begin with the level of individual sense-making,
where knowledge belongs to an individual and is thus called
‘individual knowledge’. We then identify ‘inter-subjective or
collective knowledge’, ‘organisational knowledge’ and ‘knowledge
embedded in culture’, following three levels of sense-making
above an individual. Studying the nature of sense-making
processes at each level should help us understand not only the
nature of knowledge and knowledge management processes at
these levels, but also the continuous interplay and knowledge
dynamics between the levels.
Individual knowledge is acquired through personal
experience. It involves a person’s values, beliefs, assumptions,
experiences, skills, formal training, etc. that enable the person
to interpret and make sense of the environment, their own
actions and the actions of others. In other words, individual
knowledge is created, maintained, used and recreated through
intra-subjective sense-making. By being involved in particular
organisational processes and work practices, by interacting with
other members, an individual gains new experiences, faces
problems and makes sense of them, which usually triggers
revisiting and updating their personal knowledge. Furthermore,
it is an individual who acquires knowledge, has memory and
learns, who makes sense of the world, interacts with others and
acts, and therefore makes other (‘supra-individual’) levels
possible.
When individuals have a history of working together, that
involves
cooperative
interpretation
of
situations
and
development of mutual understanding, parts of their individual
knowledge are exposed and challenged in social interaction out
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Cecez-Kecmanovic, Jerram and Treleaven
of which inter-subjective or collective knowledge emerges. In such
a process, not only inter-subjectively created meanings are
assigned to situations and events, but also a particular ‘level of
social reality’ is formed and maintained. Inter-subjective
knowing or ‘collective mind’ transcends individual knowledge. It
does not reside within but between and among individuals (Ryle,
1949). Inter-subjective knowledge is possible due to a collective
sense-making process in which participants interrelate heedfully
and individual selves get transformed from ‘I’ into ‘we’ (Weick
and Roberts, 1993). In any social setting, this process is ongoing
within groups and among groups, leading to a multiplicity of
pockets of collective knowledge that are in a permanent state of
flux, with shifting focus and indeterminable ‘boundaries’.
Unlike collective knowledge, organisational knowledge has
more visible forms, is subject to much more rigorous criteria
and is thus more easily identifiable. Organisational knowledge
involves generic meanings and social structures shared by and
transmitted to organisational members irrespective of their
participation in their creation. Typically it includes notions of
organisational structure, roles, policies, norms, rules and
control mechanisms, social networks, patterns of activities or
actions, and scripts or standard plots (Barley, 1986). Wiley
(1988) talks of ‘collective agents’ or ‘collective subjects’ as roleincumbents. Generic meanings emerge through sense-making
processes involving institutional role-holders and following the
norms and rules (that specify authority and legitimacy, due
process etc.). At the same time, generic knowledge emerges from
a continuing transition from inter-subjective meanings to
generic-subjective meanings (Weick, 1995, p. 71). If this process
produces meanings that are different from authority-based
organisational knowledge, tension and uncertainty increase,
potentially leading to conflict, destabilisation of organisational
knowledge and ultimately to a crisis.
Figure 4.1. The sense-making model of knowledge management in organisation
Knowledge embedded in culture assumes a stock of tacit,
taken-for-granted convictions, beliefs, assumptions, values and
experiences that members of an organisation draw upon in
order to make sense of a situation and create meanings at all
other levels. As such, knowledge embedded in culture serves as
a reservoir from which they derive their meanings and thus
determines the horizon of possible understanding among the
members. Moreover, common beliefs and values are said to be
the ‘glue’ that holds communities together (Blumer, 1969). As
part of a symbolic reality, cultural knowledge is extra-subjective.
People are usually not consciously aware of their cultural
knowledge. Such knowledge is transmitted through language,
symbols, metaphors, rituals and stories. Only when an element
of this knowledge is explicated and brought into a situation can
it be thematised, contested, and justified. Only then does it
become criticisable knowledge that is part of an explicit stock of
knowledge resulting from interpretive accomplishments of actors
at other levels.
The identified four types of knowledge, corresponding to
specific sense-making levels, are graphically illustrated in Fig
4.1.
Knowledge embedded in culture is not limited to an
organisation. It is influenced by cultural knowledge of an
industry or profession, national knowledge or ‘universal’
knowledge. However, in our model we identify cultural
knowledge of an organisation as a distinguishing feature of
collective identity in an organisation. To indicate that it is
embedded in a wider cultural context, cultural knowledge of an
organisation is delimited by a dotted line in Fig 4.1, assuming
that it does not actually separate but connect.
In order to understand the nature of knowledge in
organisations, it is obviously important to identify and analyse
different types of knowledge at each sense-making level, but it is
equally important to investigate how one level affects the other,
and tensions between the levels. For instance, the ways
individuals
interact
are
determined
by
patterns
of
communication and organisational routines as part of social
A Sense-Making View of Knowledge in Organisations
105
structure (organisational knowledge). On the other hand,
individuals in social interaction continuously re-create and
innovate inter-subjective meanings that may disrupt knowledge
from social structure (including those patterns and routines).
The influences between different knowledge types are indicated
by arrows in Fig 4.1. While organisational knowledge, expressing
generic subjectivity, tends to endure and resist change, thus
enabling stability, inter-subjective knowledge is just the
opposite. As a continuous source of creativity and innovation
that emerges from social interaction, inter-subjective knowledge
tends to challenge these generic meanings, thus undermining
social structure stability. The inherent tension between intersubjective and the organisational knowledge is one of the
sources of organisational conflict.
The Field Site and the Methodology
The field site
The research site, the University of Eastern Australia (UEA),
is one of the 'new' universities of the 1990s, established as three
federated universities, and now undergoing a restructure to
merge into a single university. From working as three separate
(although
federated),
small,
community-centred
outermetropolitan universities, UEA has now become one of the
largest universities in Australia, sprawling across six campuses
dispersed over nine geographic sites that are from 5 to sixty
kilometres apart. Originally small, intimate universities where
staff knew most of their students by name, UEA now has
student numbers of over 35,000 and a full-time staff of nearly
2,300. UEA has been undergoing this restructure, uniting the
three federated universities, since early 1999. . The restructure
process has many consequences, as everything has needed to

not the real name.
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Cecez-Kecmanovic, Jerram and Treleaven
change for all three members, including academic,
administrative, and policy matters.
This study focuses on the particulars of one process of
change within the university - the Formation of the School of
Management within the College of Business. The stated process
of the formation of schools within the restructure included a
prescribed set of steps. These ‘draft guidelines’ were published
early in the process and finalised within a month.
They
included the collation and application of relevant documentary
material; the recruitment and appointment of volunteer staff
members to the role of ‘facilitators’ (to facilitate the process in
colleges other than their own); the opportunity for staff to
assemble themselves into proposed schools and, through an
iterative process assisted by the facilitators, to finalise set
proposals for the schools they wish to form and in which they
wish to be situated; the Vice Chancellor's acceptance or
rejection of each proposed school, and the Executive's preemptive decision about schools where the staff involved are
unable to negotiate an agreeable proposal; the appointment of
the Heads of School by the Executive, and finally staff location
within the accepted schools, in a consultative process that
predominantly permitted staff self-selection.
Research methodology
The approach to this case study is very much that of
participant-observers, and recognises that, as such, the
researchers bring their own understandings and interpretations
to the events. This is an interpretevist case study (Walsham,
1993, 1995) working from an assumption that reality is socially
constructed. "A case study design is employed to gain an indepth understanding of the situation and meaning for those
involved. The interest is in the process rather than outcomes, in
context rather than a specific variable, in discovery rather than
confirmation" (Merriam, 1998, p.19).
Working from the
fundamental approach that persons' interpretations are intersubjectively
created
through
shared
experiences
and
understandings within their given contexts, we understand our
participant-observer status to enhance our theoretical sensitivity
A Sense-Making View of Knowledge in Organisations
107
(Glaser, 1978), and add depth of opportunity for shared contexts
and meanings that facilitate understanding (Nandhakumar and
Jones, 1997).
In-depth semi-structured interviews have been conducted (to
date) with twenty participants of the restructure. These actors
include members of the Executive, academic and general staff,
as well as unions. Amongst the academics interviewed were
representatives from various rival ‘factions’ in the School
Formation Process, including staff in each of the three major
“School of Management (SOM) proposals” as well as staff from
other disciplines and schools, whose School Formation Process
was a significantly different experience from that of the SOM.
Staff interviewed represented a wide range of experience and
tenure, from Associate Lecturers to Professors, Deans and
Heads of School, and a diverse field of disciplines, research and
teaching philosophies and experience. These interviews were
recorded and transcribed, following which diverse forms of
analysis have been used to study the content, intent, meaning
and communication of the actors.
Other bodies of material adding depth and substance to our
understanding include our own authors' field notes during
personal lived experience of the events being studied, including
the authors' lived experience of the historical and social context
in which the restructure is taking place. These subjective
documents are balanced against a substantial body of published
documents, both hard copy and electronic, principally those
posted on the website created for the purpose of communication,
information dissemination, and knowledge co-creation and
sharing. These documents range from the official policies and
publications from the Vice-Chancellor and the Executive,
through various proposals submitted, discussed and mediated
online, protest statements objecting, and condemning sundry
actions, statements and policies of the restructure, to mild and
discursive
"open
letters"
discussing
possibilities
and
opportunities offered. There is also a large body of emails, as
email was used even more extensively than the website as a
communication, mediation and negotiation medium.
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Cecez-Kecmanovic, Jerram and Treleaven
Some preliminary analysis was conducted using the common
qualitative approach of inductive analysis, coding by common
threads and recurring themes (McCracken, 1988). However, the
primary form of analysis used to make sense of the empirical
data, was the sense-making model presented in this chapter.
Interpreting the data through the framework of this sensemaking model allowed us to reconcile conflicting views and data,
gaining perception and understanding that permitted context,
personalities, situations and events to be comprehensible and
reconcilable. We find this approach permits us to not only gain
deeper understanding of the situation and the actors, but also
opens possibilities to offer new choices for action, based on that
understanding.
Particularly in the realm of knowledge
management, the sense-making model permits a clearer view of
otherwise ‘foggy’ issues and it permits clarity that can lead to
potentially new and better means to facilitate knowledge
sharing.
The Story of School Formation
When the objectives of the merger were introduced, they were
stated as including: to have a very democratic ‘bottom-up’
process of decision-making; to flatten hierarchy and eliminate
layers of bureaucracy; to strengthen research; and to develop a
profile as an innovative, student-focused university. Shortly
afterwards it was announced, as a top-down decision, that there
would be four colleges: Business, Science, Humanities and Arts.
Within each college, academics were to arrange themselves into
discipline-based schools of no less than twenty-five academics
and no more than fifty, in a democratically decided ‘bottom-up’
process.
“Which College(s) may discipline areas/fields of study be
allocated to? An integral part of the College and Schools
facilitation process is about opening up opportunities for
academic staff to work through the range of options and
possibilities, based of course, on considerations such as
'natural' synergies, size (of School), ability to attract
A Sense-Making View of Knowledge in Organisations
funding research, teaching,
Chancellor email June 2000).
consulting,
etc)”
109
(Vice
This was a challenging task for many reasons. Certain
difficulties were to be expected as each of the three federated
members (Uni-M, Uni-N, and Uni-H) had their own traditions,
culture, internal alliances and leaderships, established norms
and preferences. There was the additional difficulty that there
had, in some instances, been strongly established animosities
between the three, varying from friendly rivalry to enmity. In
each of the three members, there had also been internecine
antagonism between a few discipline groups. Four facilitators
were appointed to smooth the process. They were briefed to
listen, suggest and report as mediators between negotiating staff
and Executive, but were not empowered to make decisions.
Some schools formed quickly and easily. This could be
explained by the coherence of their discipline identity. Nursing,
for instance, although approached very differently on three
different campuses, was still undisputedly Nursing. A few
subjects struggled to find a rational home at all; and a couple of
widely-based fields incorporating many smaller disciplines found
it difficult to come to agreement, as many of the disciplines were
too small in themselves to form a single school, but too different
from other disciplines within the field to coherently work
together with a single focus. The field of Management was one
such area that had these difficulties. Some schools within the
College of Business were (relatively) easily formed. Accounting,
Economics & Finance, Marketing, and Property & Construction
all had comparatively little difficulty forming, as they were
coherent disciplines that fit the specified parameters.
Many smaller departments found it less easy to match
coherently with other disciplines. Aviation, Information Systems
and Knowledge Management, Work & Employment Relations,
Organisational Behaviour, Organisational Studies, and others
were each too small - and sometimes still too small after forming
semi-coherent partnerships - to meet the "minimum" limit of 25
academics, as there had been a staffing freeze for a few years
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Cecez-Kecmanovic, Jerram and Treleaven
and many of these departments were running very short-staffed
and heavily reliant on casual teaching staff.
Despite these inherent difficulties, at the end of 1999 there
was an initiative by a group from Uni-M, inviting members from
many smaller disciplinary groups to discuss one large School
encompassing all disciplines within the Management field of
study that were not already disposed of in larger disciplinary
schools such as Accounting or Marketing. In February/March
the official guidelines for the school formation process that were
published, stated that a school should be in a coherent field or
discipline area, with a minimum of 20 and a maximum of 50
academics. Despite these restrictions, in May 2000, a single
School Of Management (SOM) proposal was submitted by Uni-M
as a consequence of the initial December 1999 meeting. This
proposal encompassed between 70 and 80 academics, all
belonging to disciplinary groups too small singly to be
considered for a school, but loosely affiliated in the field of
Management.
A new idea for a separate school of Organisation Studies &
Information Systems (OS/IS) began to circulate amongst a
number of staff from these two disciplines in March 2000 and
developed into a proposal in July. The proponents of the OS/IS
School, who were predominantly based in Uni-H, consulted with
the Uni-M-based proponents of the single SOM and expressed
their dissatisfaction with certain attitudes, aims and goals of the
proposal, desiring a research- and teaching-based vision of
modern management theory and techniques, and disciplinary
coherence. This stated dissatisfaction was ignored in the
consequent presentation of the single SOM proposal, upon
which the OS/IS group concluded that they needed to totally
reject the single-school proposal and adhere to a separate
proposal. They informed the single SOM proponents of their
dissatisfaction, but failed to specifically state that they were
withdrawing from that proposal and presenting their own, so the
formal announcement of the second proposal was unexpected by
the majority of the Management academics, and not well
received for this and other reasons. The major thrust behind the
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111
SOM proposal was an understanding of the power of numbers
and the political and financial benefits of numbers and
solidarity. The OS/IS proposal would severely reduce numbers,
fracture the solidarity, and cause myriad “border dispute”
problems determining what disciplines, subjects and fields
belonged to which school. These two groups were unable to
come to agreement about either a single SOM or two schools
including an SOM and an OS/IS School, and so were required to
attend an officially facilitated meeting in early August 2000.
Independently, a group in Uni-N based in the Work Relations
and Employment disciplines within Management studies were
also developing a proposal for a single School of Work Relations
and Organisational Studies (WROS), separate from the School of
Management. This proposal, too, came as an unexpected shock
to the original proponents of the SOM, who had thought that all
academics from all previous Faculties of Management or
Business would accede to the large, disparate, single School of
Management.
The Uni-N-based group proposing the third
option of a School of WROS was also required to attend the
facilitated meeting.
This facilitated meeting involved the Dean of the college and
appointed
Restructure
Facilitators.
After
considerable
discussion, the instructions at the meeting were to combine the
OS/IS proposal with the WROS proposal as a way to potentially
overcome the impasse caused by each of these groups lacking
critical mass in staff numbers. Some of the original proponents
of the OS/IS School considered this combined proposal so far
from their original aims that they pulled out of the proposal, but
the majority still felt that the WR/OS/IS compromise could still
accomplish their primary aims of a more innovative, crossdisciplinary and less traditional approach to business and
management research and teaching, and supported the modified
proposal.
Consequently, in mid-August a joint WR/OS/IS
proposal was submitted to the Facilitators.
In September 2000, a second facilitated meeting was held to
discuss the 2 alternative proposals. Despite the combined
strength of the WR/OS/IS School proposal, there was a strong
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push from the Uni-M group for a single school. Finally, a
tentative agreement was achieved from the members of the
dissenting groups, that they would agree to a single SOM
provided that the SOM would have a substructure of discipline
groups. A list of potential discipline groups that could function
within such an SOM was distributed at the meeting. At this
stage, everyone immediately involved, including the Facilitators,
the Dean, and the academics from previous Management or
Business Faculties, all thought that a unified resolution had
been achieved with which everyone could be moderately happy.
A third facilitated meeting was called in late October 2000 at
which the Dean informed those gathered that the UEA Executive
had decided that no substructure would be allowed, thus
removing the agreement and returning the situation to the
earlier position of two conflicting proposals. That meeting
concluded with the two groups disagreeing and each sticking to
its own proposal, with no indications of potential harmonisation
of the conflicting views. In November 2000, the conflict was
resolved by a final decision imposed by the Restructure
Committee. There was to be a single SOM with approximately
80 members, with no official substructure. This new structure
was implemented on 1 January 2001.
Despite the historic member conflicts throughout the School
Formation Process, no conflicts or animosities had been shown
amongst the academics. As one interviewee stated,
… we did not have any known animosities – we didn’t
dislike people from Uni-M – we liked them… it’s an issue of
disciplinary views and visions as well as of practicality…It
wasn’t motivated by anything negative like we didn’t want
to be with them or we didn’t like them, it was more that we
developed an understanding between ourselves about
desirable new ways of approaching management education
(Uni-H Academic A5).
However, with or without animosity, the formation of the
School of Management was a total failure of the democratic
‘bottom-up’ process, to the degree that the hierarchy finally
stepped in and arbitrarily made and published their decision.
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113
Despite this, senior staff members in the university are positive
that the School Formation Process was a democratically
achieved success.
So for a large part those [Schools] worked because it was
interactive and it was certainly bottom up…
(OVC
executive, 9 March 2001).
The academics that participated in the School Formation
Process whom we interviewed, including both those positioned
at a very senior level for the restructure, and those who were
members of the “undisputed” schools, all disagreed with that
perception.
Also at the moment there’s such a vacuum of knowledge
as to what’s happening. As far as I can see all the
decisions are being made at the top. There seems to be a
lot of compromise decisions. And there’s such a lack of
clarity as to where things are going (Senior academic A6).
I don’t think it’s bottom up myself. I think the Vice
Chancellor has endeavoured to get ideas flowing up but I
think the major changes are so complex and a desire to
lead it is so strong at the top that, actually the perception
around the place is that decisions are being made at the
University Management Committee sort of level (Senior
academic A7).
What is the origin of such contradictory views about the same
event, processes and people?
Each of the participants
interviewed had a different perspective of the School Formation
Process, and of the whole restructure.
Some of these
perspectives coincided, others were completely conflicting,
despite the fact that most participants genuinely desired a
bottom-up School Formation Process and widely agreed-upon
decisions, and were truly willing to make certain concessions to
achieve them. How do we understand the conflict that arose
and reconcile these different perceptions of the same event
among willing and fair-minded participants? Why did academics
fail to come up with an agreed decision and need executive
intervention?
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We cannot necessarily reconcile differing perspectives, but we
can explore the origins of these perceptions and the processes
by which people (re)construct their own understandings of the
events. To this end, in the following section we use the sensemaking model to inform and systematise our analysis and
interpretations of empirical material.
Analysis of Empirical Data: Knowledge Transformations in
the School Formation Process Revealed through the Sensemaking Model of Knowledge Management
In order to understand the nature of knowledge transformations
and its implications in the School Formation Process, we shall
analyse and interpret the empirical data from the sense-making
perspective, using the proposed model of knowledge
management. We shall explore particular roles that different
actors – the UEA Executive, academics and facilitators – played
in the creation, sharing, transmitting and legitimating
knowledge about new schools throughout the School Formation
Process. We shall also examine how these knowledge processes
affected the outcomes (decisions about new schools) and with
what consequences.
New organisational knowledge in the School Formation
Process
The UEA Executive designed, planned and governed the
School Formation Process as part of the broad redesign of the
whole University. The official document, "Guidelines for School
Formation Process", had some specific functions in knowledge
transformations. Firstly, it was a vehicle to establish and
legitimise new organisational knowledge about schools
formation and a school structure (new rules, principles,
processes and structures). Secondly, it provided the mechanism
for the adoption of this new knowledge by the broad academic
community and directions for further actions. Thirdly, together
with public forums and electronic communications, it attempted
to build a cooperative relationship and trust between the
Executive and the academic community.
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115
The new organisational knowledge was explicated by the
rules and ‘parameters’ for the new schools formation, and the
processes to be followed by academics and facilitators.
Furthermore, as stated by the Executive members in a public
forum, in e-mails and interviews, the Process was designed as a
‘bottom-up’ process. It was generally intended to open up
“opportunities for academic staff to work through the range of
options and possibilities” (Vice Chancellor email June 2000).
Intentions to create an open and bottom-up process and the
assumptions and beliefs about this process are exemplified by a
senior Executive:
[the objective] was to encourage people to do a number of
things: firstly, [to] .. articulate their ideas about the
formation of the Schools, to make that available through
the web, … so that people can circulate it onto others - to
make sure that people knew of meetings that were taking
place, so that if an individual wanted to, they could go to
the meetings where several Schools were being discussed,
so that they could make an informed choice and engage in
the process of School formation etc. … So we try to
promulgate that notion that here are the ideas that people
have in forming the Schools - these are the meetings that
are taking place – all are welcome and so forth. That was
the process to try and get people not only coming through
the [University] committee that we had and then informing
the facilitators but informing the staff as well so that they
knew. (senior Executive E1)
In this quote, E1 explains a genuine and honest intention to
have a broad academic participation in generating ideas and
discussing proposals for new schools. Note here that the
discussion was not meant to be about the future structure and
a model for the new schools, nor about the principles for their
creation. This knowledge had been already created (contained in
the Guidelines). The invitation to academics to engage in the
School Formation Process implied that this knowledge had been
already legitimately established and was presumed in all
actions. Therefore, the bottom-up process was both the vehicle
for the adoption and implementation of this knowledge in the
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restructure. If the academics acted in accordance with the rules
and principles – that is, if they applied that knowledge – they
had an opportunity to be ‘the creators of their own destiny’.
Another senior Executive was explicit in presenting a similar
position by the Vice Chancellor:
… there are a number of [academics] or small groups [who]
took it upon themselves … to say to their colleagues “OK
lets not resist let's find a way and make sense and lets see
what we can do to get what we want” and I think that's
critical in this whole process. The Vice Chancellor wasn't
saying “I want a school of this and a school of this and a
school of this and go away and do it”. She said to them
“come back and tell me what you think” so the people that
actually believed it said “We can have what we want if we
can justify that this is an appropriate thing”, “Let's see
how we can make it work”. (senior Executive E2)
So, the Vice Chancellor did not exercise her power to create
schools, but instead gave the academics a chance to propose
schools they liked. However, academics had to understand that
they “can have what [they] want if [they] can justify that this is
an appropriate thing”. Thus, academics were given the right to
produce school proposals (that is create new knowledge at the
bottom level) but the Executive retained the right to judge their
arguments and make a final decision.
Preserving the right to have a final say in the school
formation was deemed necessary by the Executive in order to
maintain a common frame of reference across the University:
Principles, processes and guidelines are not only for the
bottom up … but the top down … because mostly people
[are] well intentioned but they think their frame of
reference is the important one and they believe they are
acting in good faith, but it's not always a consistent way of
doing it. (senior Executive E2)
‘Principles, processes and guidelines’, interpreted within the
Sense-making model of knowledge management, are in fact
elements of the social structure that are required to maintain
coherence in the change process and to ensure convergence and
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117
timely completion of a large number of parallel and vague
bottom-up processes of school formation throughout the four
colleges. As legitimated organisational knowledge, these
principles, processes and guidelines also enabled the Executive
to exercise control over these processes and make sure that the
objectives of the restructure would be achieved.
It is important to understand that the School Formation
Process could have been significantly different:
If we wanted to I could have sat down and then in an
afternoon designed the Schools. It would have been one
outcome it wouldn't necessarily suit everybody and that is
why we wanted a bottom up process so at the end of the
day we could say to people “well you chose this”. Obviously
there was a set of parameters around it like that. (senior
Executive E1)
E1 emphasises that he himself could have designed the
schools (the Executive had that power) but they chose not to.
Instead, they defined the parameters for the new schools and
devolved the process to include the broad base of academics. By
setting up such a bottom-up process, the Executive wanted to
demonstrate their commitment to cooperate with academics and
their willingness to build a trust relationship with them.
The quotes by E1 also indicate that he sees himself in the
role of a collective agent who protects the University’s interests
and also acts in the best interests of all staff. He uses first
person plural – “we try”, “we wanted” – to identify himself with
other fellow collective agents (members of the Executive) charged
with the responsibility to restructure the University.
An
important assumption behind the role of the collective agents is
that they were responsible to re-establish social structure (new
colleges and schools, new administrative structure, decisionmaking processes, etc.) and thus recreate and re-install
organisational knowledge.
Finally, the Executive approved some school proposals and
not the others:
It was very much an attempt to produce a bottom up
process. Now that didn’t mean to say that at the end of
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the day all of the bottom up ideas survived - they didn't.
But nevertheless, it was an attempt to … say “well here is
the set of parameters. You can come up with something
useful that fits into those and you have a good chance of
being able to form that School.” And we were flexible in
that. (senior Executive E1)
… we tried to be flexible around those sorts of things but
at the end of the day – the issue of Management, for
example – there were certain areas where we said “No, two
ideas have come forward. We don’t see enough difference,
if you like, to entertain having two Schools, so we will have
one.” Medicine was another area where that occurred where there were two proposals for Medicine Schools and
we said “No. One.” (senior Executive E1)
Here again, E1 as a collective agent (and the custodian of
organisational knowledge) indicates how they (Executive) see
their role not only as creators but also as interpreters of
organisational meanings and legitimate arbiters of disputed
meanings. In the case of the two conflicting school proposals in
the Management domain, they didn’t ‘see enough difference’ and
therefore decided to approve a single SOM.
Knowledge creation and sharing in the bottom-up School
Formation Process
Knowledge generation and sharing among academics from a
broad-ranging field of management was multi-focal: academic
groups from different member Universities (Uni-M, Uni-N and
Uni-H), incidentally located on different campuses, initiated
three different proposals. First the Uni-M group called a meeting
and put forward a proposal for a single all-embracing School of
Management (SOM):
…basically a few of us called a meeting and we wanted
anybody interested in management. We managed to get a
vague list of people and we contacted others on other
campuses who we thought might be management like
people. We invited them to come over here - we didn't get
much response - only a few came - but we sort of put
together … a summary of that and we spread it around.
(Uni-M academic A2)
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119
So we went through and got all of the staff that we could
and set up an email list inviting those people to meetings.
And …[by] about April - May we had about 5 meetings on
different campuses of all Management staff, to try and
come to a consensus . . . There was a consensus view then
amongst the Management academics that the best way to
go would be a single School. … It was not the ideal way to
go for anyone in Management, but looking at the
university as a whole, there was an agreement there that a
single School of Management would be the way to go. (UniM academic A1)
While the number of academics from the ‘other’ two groups
that participated in these meetings was small (2-4 from each),
the Uni-M group nevertheless believed that “There was a
consensus view amongst the Management academics that the
best way to go would be a single School”. The content of the
proposal for an SOM, that they argued at these meetings, was
about student and staff numbers, rationalisation of existing
academic programs, expected economies of scale achieved by
integrating programs and subjects, an integrated first year
Business Principles subject, etc. An academic from Uni-H
commented on one such meeting:
In terms of the vision of teaching or research – there was
no talk. It wasn’t the subject of the meeting. The
substantive issues were not really discussed. It was more
the recognition that we share a lot in common and that we
would be a strong school in terms of numbers of
academics and numbers of students … What was evident
… we did not have dissenting voices – we did not have
people claiming the opposite. (Uni-H academic A5)
Since at these meetings there were no “dissenting voices”,
leaders of the Uni-M group assumed that ‘others’ shared their
strongly held convictions that a large, single SOM was the best
option for all due to a significant resource base (large student
numbers in various management programs), meaning power
base in the new College of Business. They were not concerned
about a small proportion of academics from ‘other’ groups
involved in this ‘consensus’ building. A key assumption was that
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they ‘represented’ their groups. Moreover, by sending the
invitation for the meetings and distributing minutes via e-mail,
they assumed that “everybody in management” was informed
about this initiative and that they mostly agreed with it.
At the same time, Uni-N academics within a cohesive and
coherent group from the Department of Employment Relations
(ER) proposed their de facto transformation into an ER school in
the new College of Business. They organised meetings, invited
others from Uni-M and Uni-H to participate (a few did) and put
forward their proposal. According to a Uni-H academic, it was “a
narrowly defined School of Employment Relations” and others
did not show much interest.
A Uni-H group came up with their school of Organisation
Science and Information Systems (OSIS) proposal somewhat
late, in May-June, when the other two proposals were already
known:
We realised that the other group at Campbelltown were
working towards the one big school and it seemed very
conventional and very boring and didn't offer much in
terms of an exciting new future, so we had the meetings to
talk to about how we could actually combine the two
approaches;… they were coming from the very pragmatic
student numbers position whereas we were coming from a
more philosophical position JC
The OSIS proposal focused on a new approach to
management teaching and research that rejects traditional
functional divisions and introduces, instead, integrative, holistic
views of organisations. Knowledge created within the Uni-H
academic group was about the vision of management education,
the ways to introduce new research results (such as knowledge
management and organisational learning) into curriculum, the
role of the academe in advancing practice, etc. They understood
the bottom-up process of school formation as an opportunity for
innovation and break up with tradition.
In practical terms, however, the OSIS and ER proposals
meant separation of almost half of the staff, subjects and
students from the single SOM proposal. The Uni-M group
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121
perceived the ‘sudden appearance of the OSIS proposal’ as a
sabotage, undermining their ‘fair-minded and rational single
SOM proposal’.
…[the one SOM] didn’t suit – to my way of thinking – the
political agendas of a couple of people. And after an
agreement had been reached with those people that there
would be a single School of Management, an alternative
proposal went in, and then the process just became a
political one, rather than rational. (Uni-M academic A1)
Initially there was a good [knowledge] sharing of what the
needs, demands and resources of the Management
grouping were. And that was sufficient to see that it was
logical to put together a single School of Management. As
soon as the alternatives were being put forward, a lot of
that stopped. As soon as it became a political process
rather than an organisational process, it [knowledge
sharing] stopped. … People were trying to forward their
own agendas and trying to get a power base. Rather than
doing something that was in the university as a whole’s
best interests. (Uni-M academic A1)
To what extent proponents of any proposal achieved
‘consensus’ with all those they listed in their document is a
critical issue here. There was a large overlap between about 80
academics listed in the single SOM and the 30+ academics
named on the OSIS proposal. The claims by proponents of both
proposals that they had commitment by the academics listed,
were, to say the least, problematic:
Our names were on the [single SOM] proposal but nowhere
were we actually asked personally or whatever – “do you
want to be part of this proposal?” … We never said a word
that we wanted to be part of the [single SOM] - not to say
"yes, you can have my name on your proposals" - they
always assumed that that was the case. (Uni-H academic
A4)
No one consulted me, asked my permission, invited me to
any meetings or asked my permission to add my name to
their lists, but my name was on two – conflicting –
proposals. (Uni-H academic A3)
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To explain this situation, we have to point out that there were
no norms and rules regarding ‘representation’ and ‘information
sharing’ in the School Formation Process. As it was virtually
impossible for all 80 academics to get together face-to-face and
discuss proposals, it was assumed that those from a particular
group that did not come to a meeting were ‘represented’ by those
who came. But since nobody knew what it actually meant, it
caused confusion and mistrust:
that [representation] was abused on a number of occasions
where people stood up and said “I represent these twenty
people”, which wasn't true at all. (Uni-H academic A4)
The vague notion of ‘representation’ and the lack of norms
about how one gets to represent others in various occasions and
what are their obligations towards those they represent, allowed
everybody to interpret it arbitrarily. When, for instance, there
was a need to legitimise an agreement to take a particular
action, participation of a member from another group was
interpreted as representation of that group. This explains how
proponents of the three proposals came to believe that they each
achieved consensus about their proposal.
Furthermore, norms and rules regarding proper information
distribution and knowledge sharing among academics interested
in a particular school proposal were non-existent as well. It was
not clear how to establish and maintain an official list of
academics interested in a particular school proposal and what
are the obligations of those that initiated a school formation. In
the case of the three school proposals in the management
domain, each group conducted the process based on their
assumption about who was interested. Invitations for meetings
and the minutes after the meetings were occasionally distributed
by e-mail using ad hoc lists. As a result, many academics felt
excluded and marginalised. Their names appeared on the
proposals without their participation in the process or their
agreement.
This explains contradictory views regarding knowledge
sharing and co-creation in the School Formation Process: those
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123
actively involved in the creation of each of the proposals believe
that they shared knowledge with others and that new knowledge
expressed in a proposal was co-created with others; ‘others’
however are equally strongly convinced in exactly the opposite.
The analysis shows how the multi-focal nature of knowledge
generation (within the three groups in Uni-M, Uni-N and Uni-H),
dislocation of groups and large numbers of academics
preventing face-to-face interaction, lack of norms regarding
‘representation’, self-nomination and obligations of initiators to
inform and involve those self-nominated (inclusiveness of the
process) contributed to poor knowledge-sharing and a failure to
successfully co-create knowledge and produce an agreed
proposal or proposals.
Organisational culture affecting knowledge co-creation
through social interaction
The differences between the initial three proposals were
ostensibly related to disciplinary issues:
The concerns of the two school [proposals] are much more
on discipline. The one school [SOM proposal] focuses
much more on quantifiable issues like size, EFTSU,
strength, power, and so on. The OS/IS school proposal
emphasizes distinction from traditional teaching of
management, non-functional approach, innovative views of
organisations, its knowledge and learning, including IS/IT
as integrative part (not to be considered separate in
studying organisations and in teaching). (Uni-H academic
A3)
Disciplinary and conceptual issues were used to demonstrate
the distinctness of each proposal. However, another academic
questions that argument and points to biases on each side
regarding ‘others’ and their proposal and motivation:
… what is… interesting is the assumptions that one group
made about the other groups’ proposals. The [Uni-H]
group … had assumptions about the initial single SOM
[proposed by Uni-M group] being traditional and it is in a
way – maybe there are some signs of it – but there are no
justifications for that assumption. It could have developed
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into anything we wanted. And [the Uni-M academic]’s
assumption that the other one [OS/IS proposal] was all
about power and dissention was equally unjustified. So
apart from visionary views and interests, there are also
assumptions about ‘others’ and what ‘others’ wanted and
what their motivations were. (Uni-H academic A5)
The above comments indicate that behind the disciplinary
façade there were unquestioned, deep-seated assumptions
about ‘others’ and mistrust regarding their motivations. These
were routed in their University cultures as the academic A3
explains:
… we came from three different campuses, three different
traditions, universities, cultures and practices, and you’re
more likely to trust the known – even if they’re not your
friends as it were – than the unknown. (Uni-H academic
A3)
Apart from disciplinary concerns, each school proposal
implied cultural knowledge –experiences, beliefs, values,
metaphors – shared by academics from a single memberUniversity. As key sources of inter-subjective sense-making, of
individual and collective identity and intra-group trust, member
cultures emerged as impediments to knowledge sharing and
development of mutual understanding between the groups. The
consequence
was
inter-group
mistrust
and
lack
of
understanding.
Ironically, the three member cultures
significantly affected the very process of changing these cultures
and creating a new UEA culture.
Tensions between social-interaction and social structure
level
In the discussion so far, we investigated knowledge creation
and sharing in the School Formation at the social structure level
and the social interaction level, both influenced by cultural
knowledge. We examined the re-creation of organisational
knowledge (at the social structure level) and how it emerged as
an essential mechanism that the UEA Executive used to
instigate, govern, and control School Formation Process at the
social interaction level. Further analysis is required to reveal the
A Sense-Making View of Knowledge in Organisations
125
contradictions,
tensions
and
dialectics
of
knowledge
transformation between these two levels.
As discussed previously, the Guidelines expressed the generic
knowledge at the social structure level that should have been
shared, interpreted and acted upon in the school formation at
the social interaction level. In other words, by instituting the
Guidelines, the Executive defined the playing field – the
principles and parameters for future schools, the bottom-up
process for creating school proposals, and the role of facilitators
in this process.
At the social structure level, on the other hand, academics
had to interpret and apply the Guidelines (generic knowledge) to
their specific circumstances. Encouraged by the Executive to
express their views and send e-mails regarding any aspect of the
process, many perceived the bottom-up process as a dialogue
with the Executive.
… there has been an enormous amount of consultation
done, an enormous amount of feedback. …So it really has
been a bottom up process and it has been literally two-way
sharing of information or two-way processing of
information management. Because people at the bottom
managing information up to central processes and people
at the top managing information down to central
processes. (senior academic, middle management, A8)
If people feel that they’re trusted by senior management
they’re more likely to cooperate and make those decisions
than if they think that the decisions are just being made
from on high and that they’ve had no input into the
process. So as a facilitator I saw that happen. (facilitator
F1)
Both of these actors were in a position to experience
knowledge creation at the social structure level and at the social
interaction level, and the flow of information between the levels.
They witnessed enormity of information exchanged (mostly emails) and willingness to cooperate among both Executive and
academics, especially at the beginning of the process.
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However, in several cases, academics found parameters and
rules for school formation as defined by the Guidelines, too
restrictive and crude to cater for their specific needs and
situations. In line with their belief in a dialogue with the
Executive, they suggested that some of the rules and criteria for
schools be modified or principally changed.
Illustrative is the example of the school formation in the
management
domain.
Through
facilitated
negotiations,
proponents of the two final (and conflicting) proposals SOM and
WR/OS/IS found a common ground and agreed to a single
SOM, provided the school had an official substructure
(discipline-based). As, according to the Guidelines, schools were
the lowest organisational entities, with no subgroups, the agreed
SOM proposal with discipline-based substructure was outside
the parameters.
… and the Dean said, and the facilitators said, that they
would investigate whether we can have sub-structure in
the School as it was outside the parameters. But they
[proponents of one SOM] said we will have these
groupings, and you can develop whatever groupings you
want. And there was even a paper with these groupings
written down [distributed at the meeting]. And we said,
OK, if we can have official groupings. And at the next
meeting it was confirmed that we were not allowed to have
groupings. (Uni-H academic A6)
if we could have had sub-structures in the SOM, so there
could have been an identified eg. Department of
organisational studies, Department of employment
relations, etc. then … a lot of problems … could have been
easily avoided. (Uni-M academic A1)
As the Executive did not approve the substructure of a school
(which was communicated by the Dean and the facilitators) the
process of school formation in the management domain was
taken back to square one. The only opportunity for negotiation
and compromise has been lost. After another failed attempt to
reconcile the differences, with both sides having compelling
A Sense-Making View of Knowledge in Organisations
127
arguments, the two conflicting proposals were put forward to the
Restructure Committee who made a final decision.
This example illustrates the inherent tension between the
social structure and the social interaction level and the
conflicting nature of knowledge created at each level. Knowledge
at the social structure level, such as the one expressed in the
Guidelines, is by its nature generic and rigid, aimed at
preserving coherence across an organisation and a long term
stability. On the other hand, knowledge at the social interaction
level is continually created and recreated, producing new and
innovative options of organising and working, with a risk of
disintegration and instability. The School Formation Process
exemplified this inherent tension between the levels and the
dynamics of conflict between the two kinds of knowledge. A key
issue here is why such a tension was not attenuated by the
bottom-up process and what prevented a more mutually
satisfying resolution of conflictual situations. In addition, was
there an opportunity to transform conflicting knowledge
(re)creation processes into dialectic knowledge transformations?
To answer these questions, we have to note that, the
assessment of the bottom-up process by the Executive and the
academic staff was more contradicting after the school decisions
were made and implemented than before. From the Executive
point of view:
So at a large part [the School Formation Process] …
worked because it was interactive and it was certainly
bottom up. (executive E2)
I think there are a number of Schools that formed where
we could have had a real blood bath. In fact the staff
involved went through what I think are excellent
consultative processes and came out at the other end with
really good Schools which people tell me that they are
really happy to belong to. And there are a number of
those. …
…the majority of staff felt they've been empowered to get
on with it, and to talk to their colleagues, and to come up
with a sort of School they want to live in. (executive E1)
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Cecez-Kecmanovic, Jerram and Treleaven
…it was a pretty amazing outcome I think for a University
… to have these schools formed, there had to be
reasonable agreement. Not absolutely universal, but pretty
reasonable agreement. (executive E2)
The School Formation Process was successful because it was
bottom-up, the majority felt empowered, and despite some
problems, a reasonable agreement had been achieved.
On the other hand, academics expressed a lot of discontent
and cynicism:
It was very disappointing because the VC was more or less
saying that you can create your own new structure but in
the end - I think the parameters were extremely narrow
and we were kind of moved into this model that was either
predetermined or imposed. (academic A6)
They tried to get everyone to agree there was a single right
answer when there wasn’t – it was never going to be a right
answer. (academic A9)
I think everybody kind of feels incredibly disempowered. ...
Because I think the net result of the structure … has been
imposed … because they don’t actually know what they
have created. (academic A7)
I felt in the end it wasn't an open process to make
decisions - it was closed. Empowered to a certain degree,
but in the end the decision was made that the hierarchy
wanted.
So, cynically, I would say the consultation
process was an exercise in trying to make people think
they were empowered, but in the end they weren't.
(academic A4).
I think there is a very strong feeling of malaise around the
place at the moment. I have been here since time
immemorial and I don't think that I’ve talked to so many
people who are so fed up. (academic A10)
After the long and exhausting experience of School
Formation, the tension between the social structure level and
the social interaction level was not attenuated but rather
intensified. A senior academic A8 who was close enough to both
levels, provided his explanation:
A Sense-Making View of Knowledge in Organisations
129
I would think that many junior staff, both admin and
academic would feel quite disempowered. But I don't
know whether that's because expectations were raised too
high.
Or I think in some ways they have been
disempowered in that it hasn't been possible to get all the
information out and deadlines are so horrendous … I
mean, with the best will in the world sometimes it's
absolutely impossible to get information out to people.
The VC and Executive have been very keen to ensure that
it is a bottom-up process, now people at the bottom
speaking crudely, always perceive it as a top down process
because it's almost impossible to see where your
contribution went.
I think [school formation] was conceived as a bottom-up
process. But, as Management staff said to me – well I said
“I'd like this to be a bottom up process”. But they said
“yeh, but you've got to have a format, a context within
which to structure the bottom-up process”. (senior
academic, middle management, A8)
As A8 mentioned earlier, and is alluding to here, a huge
amount of information has been transmitted by e-mail (among
the academics and between academics and the Executive) and
via the Web site. There was an assumption that by posting
information by public e-mail (eg. to an e-mail list or to all staff in
the University) that the information is distributed and shared
with everybody. Interestingly, when a person sent such an email they assumed that its information content would then be
known to all addresses. The same person at the receiving end of
typically large numbers of e-mails did not assume that they were
in fact informed. The sheer volume of information and e-mails
(with some more formal documents posted on the Web site)
undermined the very purpose of electronic communication, and
disabled, rather than enabled, information sharing. The problem
was especially severe for the Executive members as an academic
explains:
[a key problem was] information overload at a senior level.
I've seen some cases where senior staff are getting 200-300
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Cecez-Kecmanovic, Jerram and Treleaven
emails a day - most of which are copy only for information.
And they're just clogging their system. (academic, A11)
While throughout the process the number of e-mails rose
exponentially, sense-making by individuals and groups, and
understanding of others have hardly improved.
The
fundamental assumption that unsystematic transmission of
information via e-mail and the Web would enable and assist in
information sharing was naïve and unrealistic. This assumption
also raised unrealistic expectations regarding the nature of the
bottom-up process.
The other issue that senior academic A8 raised in his quote
above is a ‘format, a context within which to structure the
bottom-up process’. Namely, the School Formation Process was
extraordinarily complex. It involved practically all academics
from three former member Universities, dispersed in seven
campuses. Every single discipline group or a larger field group
(such as management) had its own initiative or several attempts
to initiate a school formation, and a series of events, activities
and meetings, followed by e-mails and documents. The only
assistance came from facilitators (2-3 allocated to each college)
who provided professional support to academics in this process
and mediated interaction with the Executive. While individual
processes made sense for those immediately involved (often selfnominated), the totality of bottom-up School Formation
Processes across the UEA seemed chaotic and disorganised.
Even academics that got actively involved in the process
complained that they ‘did not know what was going on’, ‘felt
excluded’ and ‘alienated’.
The bottom-up School Formation Process did not have any
prescribed structure: it was not clear what was the role of
initiators and how they should have included all interested
academics and assured inclusiveness of the process; norms and
rules regarding information dissemination (apart from ad hoc emails) and knowledge sharing within and between different
groups, and between academics and the Executive, were not
established; there was no obligation to take into account
different views and opinions and resolve differences in a
A Sense-Making View of Knowledge in Organisations
131
cooperative manner, in which the force of the better argument
wins. Such conditions would have restricted the School
Formation Process further, but would have also made it less
complex and less arbitrary, more coherent, systematic and
predictable, more transparent and manageable. As a result, the
bottom-up process might have been more mutually satisfying for
both the academics and the Executive, and could have
decreased tension between them. In our view, by instituting
such a structured School Formation Process there could have
been an opportunity to develop better mutual understanding
among the different academic groups and between the
academics and the Executive, enabling a more creative tension
and dialectic transformation of knowledge between different
groups.
Conclusion
In this chapter, we proposed a sense-making perspective of
knowledge as a basis for a multidisciplinary theory of knowledge
management in organisations. By referring to four sense-making
levels of social reality in the life of an organisation, we identified
four types of knowledge – individual, collective, organisational,
and cultural – which are continually created, transmitted,
shared, contested and recreated within and between levels.
Even this relatively simple classification of knowledge types and
relations between them, indicates how complex such a theory of
knowledge management and its impact on organisations must
be.
By applying the sense-making model of knowledge in the
analysis and interpretation of findings from the field study of the
University restructuring, and specifically the formation of new
schools, we demonstrated its potential contributions. Firstly, the
model provided theoretical concepts that helped us identify texts
and events indicative of specific types of knowledge underlying
the school formation processes, and explore how they are
related. For instance, we were able to differentiate knowledge as
a social interaction phenomenon as opposed to knowledge as a
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Cecez-Kecmanovic, Jerram and Treleaven
social structure phenomenon, which helped us derive a
meaningful explanation of conflicting understandings of the
same events by different actors. Secondly, the sense-making
model of knowledge assisted us in looking at and searching
beneath the surface of speech and text in order to reveal
meanings that individuals and groups attach to them, and thus
helped us make sense of their actions. For example, by exploring
processes of knowledge sharing and creation within a large but
fragmented group of academics in the field of Management in
their attempt to propose a school (or schools), we unearthed
assumptions, beliefs and meanings that impacted upon their
actions. As a result, we provided an explanation of why they
failed to produce an agreed school proposal. Thirdly, and more
generally, by understanding the social nature of groups and
inter-group relations within the sense-making model, we were
able to understand the nature and relevance of knowledge that
was being created and how it was being shared, transmitted,
distorted and transformed throughout the restructure process.
While conflicts, communication breakdowns and disruptions in
the restructure processes surfaced in one way or another, the
underlying processes of knowledge production and legitimation
at each sense-making level, and tensions and contradictions in
its transmission between levels, remain largely hidden. Finally,
the sense-making model of knowledge provided both an
integrative view of these processes and enabled insights into
micro mechanisms that operate at individual levels, thus
contributing to our systemic understanding and a critical
attitude towards our own interpretations (Klein and Myers,
1999).
The use of the sense-making model of knowledge to inform
our empirical study and interpret the findings, raised many new
questions that need to be investigated. Knowledge production at
each level has to be explored further, perhaps assisted by
relevant concepts and theories from different disciplines.
Furthermore, knowledge transformations between levels and
their dynamics showed to be extraordinarily complex and
difficult to grasp. They need to be studied in more detail in
A Sense-Making View of Knowledge in Organisations
133
different organisational contexts and conditions. On reflection,
the model we proposed and used has taught us how much more
we have to learn to understand the nature of knowledge in
organisations.
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Acknowledgement
This research has been conducted as part of the ARC SPIRT
grant No C00002546 (2000-2002).