Abstract
Purpose: To develop and test a framework which can be used to facilitate the understanding of how ideas interact with behaviour in organisations, in ways that have practical relevance in organisational development and improvement.Design/methodology/approach: The framework proposed in this paper is the product of an abductive research process. This process involved testing and reflecting in action, and on action when writing. The emerging framework was also challenged by theoretical input from continual literature studies and has (atdifferent stages of its development) been part of the theoretical framework for a PhD dissertation, research articles and master’s theses.Findings: The framework graphically highlights the relationship between explicit (i.e., spoken or documented) and tacit ideas, and that the latter is what largely controls action. It also implies that for new explicit ideas or theories to become effective, they have to become part of the tacit guiding ideas. This is often difficult to achieve. The framework gives a perspective on why this is thecase and how it can be counteracted, including by: addressing the coherence between its parts; supporting sense-making; and seeing development as iterative and contextual.Practical implications: The framework has been tested with practitioners and has rapidly assisted professionals in making explicit, and developing, tacit knowledge. It has also been successfully used in analyses in several papers, including studies of sustainability and process management.Originality/value: The implications of the framework are in line with existing research, yet we believe that the graphical model adds both scientific and practical dimensions. This is partly due to the framework making it easier to differentiate between complex concepts that are often confused.
Highlights
Organisations continuously renew themselves by absorbing andcreating new ideas (Alänge and Steiber, 2011). This can happen independently of management, but is often the result of a strategic decision to ‘implement’ or ‘adopt’ a certain concept and the ideas related to it. The application of such concepts in change projects often does not give the intended results (Keating et al, 1999; Beer, 2001), as associated ideas are not naturalized as part of a process leading to genuine change and improvement (Book, 2006)
One reason is the inertia of knowledge and competence (Alänge, Jacobsson and Jarnehammar, 1998), though it depends on the way improvement projects are carried through (Nadler and Tushman, 1997). Another reason, raised by Book (2006), is the risk of focusing on work ‘in theory’ that is not sufficiently connected to improvement ‘in action’. An example of this is focusing too much on process maps and procedures as opposed to cultivating change in behaviour
This paper presents a conceptual framework which can be used to facilitate the understanding of how explicit and tacit ideas interact with behaviour in organisations in ways that have practical relevance in organisational development and improvement
Summary
Organisations continuously renew themselves by absorbing and (re)creating new ideas (Alänge and Steiber, 2011). One reason is the inertia of knowledge and competence (Alänge, Jacobsson and Jarnehammar, 1998), though it depends on the way improvement projects are carried through (Nadler and Tushman, 1997) Another reason, raised by Book (2006), is the risk of focusing on work ‘in theory’ that is not sufficiently connected to improvement ‘in action’. The framework can act as a ‘sensitising device’ (Weick, 1976, p.2) to provide a better understanding and new perspectives on organisational change, as well as to clarify related terminology. It can function as a communication and planning tool for ongoing change and learning processes. The framework will be described, and its usefulness analysed and illustrated through practical cases
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