Flexibility, knowledge sharing and social awareness in new work - a field study in a .com-company

The project is a longitudinal collaborative practice research aiming to identify organizational, cultural and technological strands in the formation of a knowledge company:

• Decision making and responsibility
• Idea generation
• Impact of domestication of the physical environment on problem solving and collaboration
• Use of IT
• Time-space flexibility

The company was founded in the beginning of 2000.

First phase of field studies encompassed observation and interviewing in August & September 2000. The company received weekly reports during the period of observation which served as inspiration for their internal reflection, and in November they got a report which positioned the company in the national landscape of .coms, reported our findings and presented ideas for improvement. NWOW has used data from this phase for scientific publication and as input for the ongoing NWOW-design of awareness boards.

Second phase is running August till November 2002, including another round of observation and interview supplied with a questionnaire, persuing the same questions about organizational, cultural and technological strands, but now with a more narrow focus on knowledge sharing. The data from the project will become input in a workshop where the company and NWOW will jointly address the interplay of culture and artefacts for knowledge sharing.

Publications

• Christiansen, E.: Knowledge Management in a Thinking System. Paper presented at IRIS 2001, Ulvik,Norway, Aug.11-14, 2001
• Bødker, S. & E. Christiansen: Lost and Found in Flexibility. Paper to appear in Scandinavian Journal of Information Systems. vol. 15

People

• Ellen Christiansen
• Eva Bjerrum

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