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Through the Looking Glass: Understanding a Complex Relationship between Knowledge and Action

Drawing on the study of knowledge and action as a reference, this thesis explores how practitioners in two different firms perform their practice, 'knowing' and 'acting' simultaneously. It argues that types of knowledge, activities, individuals and context are interwoven at the moment of acting. However, this relationship is not static. The empirical work in a local labour placement company and in a multinational consultancy firm shows that practitioners resort to a host of different expressions of knowledge (or bundle of knowledge) when acting. Therefore, the prevailing role of explicit knowledge and the need for being a precedent in order to be applied is called into question.The empirical work also reveals that the bundle of knowledge is not static. It evolves over time and at the same time the prevailing type of knowledge varies depending on the type of practice and the practitioner's level of expertise. Therefore, the results underscore the fact that the relationship between knowledge and action is more dynamic and that both interplay simultaneously. Finally, this research shows that formal company categorisations (senior/junior) describe different practices rather than correspond to differential stocks of formal knowledge. This means that even when experts and novices apparently seem to be doing the same job, their actions are different as they are constituted through different combinations of knowledge types and orders of relevance. These results seem to point toward the fact that the essence of expertise resides in the expert's ability to reframe. He is able to reconstruct practice, whether by reframing his tasks or the overarching context.

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:TDX_URL/oai:www.tdx.cat:10803/9175
Date30 January 2006
CreatorsBou Alameda, María Elena
ContributorsSauquet, Alfons, Universitat Ramon Llull. ESADE-BS - Màrqueting, Operacions i Finances
PublisherUniversitat Ramon Llull
Source SetsUniversitat Ramon Llull
LanguageEnglish
Detected LanguageEnglish
Typeinfo:eu-repo/semantics/doctoralThesis, info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion
Formatapplication/pdf
SourceTDX (Tesis Doctorals en Xarxa)
RightsADVERTIMENT. L'accés als continguts d'aquesta tesi doctoral i la seva utilització ha de respectar els drets de la persona autora. Pot ser utilitzada per a consulta o estudi personal, així com en activitats o materials d'investigació i docència en els termes establerts a l'art. 32 del Text Refós de la Llei de Propietat Intel·lectual (RDL 1/1996). Per altres utilitzacions es requereix l'autorització prèvia i expressa de la persona autora. En qualsevol cas, en la utilització dels seus continguts caldrà indicar de forma clara el nom i cognoms de la persona autora i el títol de la tesi doctoral. No s'autoritza la seva reproducció o altres formes d'explotació efectuades amb finalitats de lucre ni la seva comunicació pública des d'un lloc aliè al servei TDX. Tampoc s'autoritza la presentació del seu contingut en una finestra o marc aliè a TDX (framing). Aquesta reserva de drets afecta tant als continguts de la tesi com als seus resums i índexs., info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess

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