Tsoukas, Haridimos. (2009) A dialogical approach to the creation of new knowledge in organizations. Organization Science, Vol.20 (No.6). pp. 941-957. ISSN 1047-7039

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Abstract

Despite several insightful empirical studies on how new knowledge is created in organizations, there is still no satisfactory answer to the question, how is new knowledge created in organizations? The purpose of this paper is to address this question by focusing on direct social interaction, adopting a dialogical approach. The following argument is advanced. From a dialogical perspective, new knowledge in organizations originates in the individual ability to draw new distinctions concerning a task at hand. New distinctions may be developed because practitioners experience their situations in terms of already constituted distinctions, which lend themselves to further articulation. Further articulation develops when organizational members engage in dialogical exchanges. When productive, dialogue leads to self-distanciation, namely, to individuals taking distance from their customary and unreflective ways of acting as practitioners. Dialogue is productive depending on the extent to which participants engage relationally with one another. When this happens, participants are more likely to actively take responsibility for both the joint tasks in which they are involved and for the relationships they have with others. Self-distanciation leads to new distinctions through three processes of conceptual change (conceptual combination, conceptual expansion, and conceptual reframing), which, when intersubjectively accepted, constitute new knowledge. Several organizational examples, as well as findings from organizational knowledge research, are reinterpreted to illustrate the above points.

Item Type:	Journal Article
Subjects:	H Social Sciences > HD Industries. Land use. Labor > HD28 Management. Industrial Management
Divisions:	Faculty of Social Sciences > Warwick Business School
Journal or Publication Title:	Organization Science
Publisher:	Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences (I N F O R M S)
ISSN:	1047-7039
Date:	November 2009
Volume:	Vol.20
Number:	No.6
Number of Pages:	17
Page Range:	pp. 941-957
Identification Number:	10.1287/orsc.1090.0435
Status:	Peer Reviewed
Publication Status:	Published
Access rights to Published version:	Restricted or Subscription Access
URI:	http://wrap.warwick.ac.uk/id/eprint/16880

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