The numerous transdisciplinary research initiatives currently addressing a variety of complex social issues could benefit from a deeper understanding of the ways in which intellectually diverse groups work together to address problems. This research focused on a small group of investigators in a transdisciplinary institute as they sought to work collaboratively in the domain of infectious disease research. The unit's members described many challenges and successes that provided insights into the character and dynamics of transdisciplinary research, including how members developed a shared conceptual framework. The process proved enormously complex and was the product of long-term interactions among group members. Because participants were rooted in different disciplines and did not share professional trajectories, communication and understanding took extra effort, patience, and the development of a counterintuitive set of cognitive skills. Over time an integrated work process evolved within the group through a combination of strong interpersonal relationships, the mediating role of interactional expertise, and the development of shared boundary objects. Group members began working more closely with other team participants throughout the lifespan of projects. That experience over time allowed individuals to connect the details of their work together with the overarching goals and strategies of the group. This study employed the theory of trading zones to illustrate the ways researchers worked across boundaries to establish shared ideas, values, and goals. It developed and applied the concept of a transdisciplinary trading zone to describe the group's ability to coordinate its action despite both epistemic and communication barriers. Ultimately, the researchers studied sought a balance between being "productive," understood as providing practical tools to industry and government, and generating novel scientific solutions to complex research problems. The group's success in securing a shared research aspiration despite its member's disciplinary and professional differences resulted from an iterative process of interaction that included learning from failed attempts and a constant and persistent negotiation of goals and values among those involved. / Ph. D.

[pt] O sucesso de um candidato numa entrevista de emprego depende em grande parte do domínio do conhecimento sobre aquela atividade e de competências e habilidades no gerenciamento da relação com o entrevistador e de sua autoapresentação. Neste trabalho, procura-se contribuir para a descrição de algumas manifestações desse tipo de expertise interacional, construindo conhecimento de relevância tanto para entrevistadores quanto para aqueles envolvidos no processo de formação de profissionais. À luz dos estudos sobre análise retórica do discurso, foram analisadas três entrevistas de candidatos a um posto de trabalho numa empresa transnacional. A pesquisa mostra que os candidatos diferem quanto ao grau de expertise interacional, no que se refere à compreensão dos objetivos das contribuições da entrevistadora e do papel do entrevistado; à capacidade de fazer uma autoapresentação alinhada aos valores da empresa e às exigências do cargo; e de tornar convincente as reivindicações das competências e habilidades testadas pela entrevistadora. / [en] The success of a candidate in a job interview largely depends on the interviewee s background knowledge about the activity and on the competences and skills in managing the relationship with the interviewer and his self-presentation. In this research, we seek to contribute to the description of some manifestations of this type of interactional expertise, building knowledge of practical relevance for both the interviewer and for those involved in the training of professionals. Based on studies about rhetorical discourse analysis, three interviews of candidates to a job opportunity in a transnational corporation were analyzed. The research shows that candidates differ in their level of interactional expertise, concerning the understanding of the goals of the interviewer s contributions and of the interviewee s role; the ability to make a self-presentation according to the company values and job requirements; and convincingly make claims of competences and skills tested by the interviewer.

Driven by the insight that knowledge is power and, therefore, it is the core element for a company to be successful I examined which strategies enhance knowledge-sharing practices and processes among the HEI’s co-workers in order to create new competitive niches. This is especially important in times of ongoing change at an international level as HEIs seem to be increasingly in competition among one another for funds and students' intake. I based my study on the theoretical framework of Nonaka & Takeuchi’s SECI model of knowledge creation (1995) where, according to the authors, the knowledge-sharing takes place in four modes: socialization, externalization, combination and internalization. The main focus of my thesis is the socialization dimension, hence, the face-to-face communication between co-workers and their shared experiences and skills: the ‘tacit to tacit’ knowledge-sharing; the interaction between the different co-workers in the socialization process. Since all knowledge derives from tacit knowledge originally, tacit knowledge is, according to Nonaka/Takeuchi (1995), a person's own personal knowledge and his/her experience and skills; whereas explicit knowledge, on the other hand, is the formal and codified knowledge open to everybody via documents in a systematic language. The study of both literature and empirical data has shown that a special attention must be given to the resource-based view on strategy as it emphasizes the importance of the socialization mode by connecting the respective co-workers with one another in order to create something new. It is such a strategy that focuses on the best deployment of the knowledge resources in order for the institution to take advantage of their co-workers’ embedded, natural, context-specific, difficult to express and attached to the knower’s tacit knowledge. As a result, the key properties of a knowledge-enabling environment (in this thesis called ‘ba’) have been analyzed where tacit knowledge receives its attention by creating space and time for the tacit, hidden, embedded knowledge to emerge. Further field studies in different realities would now be helpful to further extract common patterns for the creation of a sense-making framework of strategy where the tacit dimension of each co-worker is seen to be a unique and remarkable asset for HEIs in order to gain a position of competitive advantage in the market place.