Unpacking Knowing Integration: A Practice-based Study in Haute Cuisine

Nous proposons d'analyser l'intégration des connaissances à la source d'un avantage concurrentiel avec une approche pratique des organisations. Alors que la littérature s'est focalisée sur le transfert de connaissances et les relations entre communautés par le biais des objets frontière, nous considérons les relations intra-communauté et la façon dont les acteurs mobilisent, restructurent et créent des connaissances pour l'action. Dans une perspective pratique, la dynamique des connaissances est un phénomène situé dans un contexte social donné. Nous nous appuyons sur une phase empirique qualitative, par l'analyse de l'intégration des connaissances lors de la création de nouveaux plats au sein des équipes de cuisiniers de restaurants tri-étoilés.Apprentissage ; Avantage concurrentiel ; Connaissance ; Créativité ; Gastronomie ; Integration ; Transfert

Unpacking Knowing Integration: A Practice-based Study in Haute Cuisine

Within a practice-based approach of organizations, we explore the knowing integration phenomena at the roots of competitive advantage. While former knowing integration studies have pointed to the importance of boundary objects across occupational communities, knowing integration inside a community to ground competitive advantage remains to be explored. How do individuals integrate their knowing in practice, in complex and important situations in order to contribute to competitive advantage for the firm? We ground our analysis on the ethnographic study of performed tasks in new dishes creation in two gourmet restaurants. We trace individual knowing in this creation to highlight how a new dish emerges from knowing integration, based on our understanding of knowing as processual, social, and situated. We propose a model of knowing integration as a combination of three phenomena: comprehending, interpreting and explicitating. We show that integration leads to the development of new dishes while knowing remains largely individual. We therefore suggest that there exists a clear distinction between knowing integration and knowledge sharing or transfer. We also contribute to a clearer delineation between integration and explicitation, the latter being only one and secondary means to achieve the former. Our study advances practice-based studies of organizations by highlighting the central role of integration in knowing dynamics and by bridging micro and macro perspectives on practice.Combination; Competitive Advantage; Integration; Knowledge; Learning; Restaurants; Transfer

The Social Dimensions of Idea Work in Haute Cuisine: A Bourdieusian Perspective

Nous proposons de définir la production d'idées comme une pratique, c'est-à-dire comme une activité qui prend son sens et sa valeur dans un contexte social, pour analyser le travail créatif dans les cuisines de trois grands restaurants.Créativité ; Gastronomie ; Idées ; Pratique

The Social Dimensions of Idea Work in Haute Cuisine: A Bourdieusian Perspective

This paper analyzes idea work in haute cuisine through three case studies. Mobilizing Bourdieu’s praxeology, we consider idea work as a practice, an activity that takes sense and meaning in the social world. Thus, idea work reflects the position of the agent in the field and the struggles to maintain or improve this position. In grand restaurants, the chefs play a key role in idea work, even if they involve other people. Idea work is rooted in their personal experience, but is also shaped by the restaurant’ style and haute cuisine rules. Idea work relates to chefs’ reflection as well as emotions and feelings.Bourdieu; Creativity; Field; Habitus; Haute Cuisine; Gastronomy; Practice

Strategy emergence as wayfinding

Strategy researchers increasingly recognize that in many organizations strategic coherence can emerge inadvertently from local coping actions and decisions taken "on the hoof". However, how this actually happens in practice has not been sufficiently examined and explained. We draw from the "practice turn" in social theory to show how strategy can emerge through a process of wayfinding involving local adaptive actions taken guided by an internalized habitus or modus operandi. Small iterative changes made oftentimes at operational levels can generate positive unintended consequences that ultimately contribute towards the emergence of a coherent and viable strategy. We empirically investigate the case of a high-end gourmet restaurant in the extremely structured field of haute cuisine, examining everyday practices, actions and ongoing improvisations made in relation to the individuals concerned, their professionally socialized selves, the unique set of organizational circumstances they face, and the institutional and environmental demands placed on them. We show how strategy as a consistent pattern of actions can emerge from this synergistic interweaving of local coping actions and their unintended consequences. We thus contribute to strategy research by proposing a model of strategy emergence as wayfinding that considers the actors' social embeddedness, their internalized habitus and how that predisposes them to respond by itinerantly interweaving seemingly small coping actions to unexpectedly produce a coherent strategy

Strategy emergence as wayfinding

Strategy researchers increasingly recognize that in many organizations strategic coherence can emerge inadvertently from local coping actions and decisions taken "on the hoof". However, how this actually happens in practice has not been sufficiently examined and explained. We draw from the "practice turn" in social theory to show how strategy can emerge through a process of wayfinding involving local adaptive actions taken guided by an internalized habitus or modus operandi. Small iterative changes made oftentimes at operational levels can generate positive unintended consequences that ultimately contribute towards the emergence of a coherent and viable strategy. We empirically investigate the case of a high-end gourmet restaurant in the extremely structured field of haute cuisine, examining everyday practices, actions and ongoing improvisations made in relation to the individuals concerned, their professionally socialized selves, the unique set of organizational circumstances they face, and the institutional and environmental demands placed on them. We show how strategy as a consistent pattern of actions can emerge from this synergistic interweaving of local coping actions and their unintended consequences. We thus contribute to strategy research by proposing a model of strategy emergence as wayfinding that considers the actors' social embeddedness, their internalized habitus and how that predisposes them to respond by itinerantly interweaving seemingly small coping actions to unexpectedly produce a coherent strategy

Organisation professionnelle : la gestion des compétences clés dans les Grands Restaurants.

Pourquoi le meilleur des apprentis ne parviendra-t-il jamais exactement au même niveau de maîtrise que son maître ? La question de l’application et du transfert des compétences est essentielle pour beaucoup d’organisations. Dans les organisations qualifiées de « professionnelles », cette question est véritablement fondamentale, d’autant plus que les compétences clés sont entre les mains d’un nombre restreint d’acteurs, parfois même d’un ou deux individus seulement. C’est le cas dans les grands restaurants, où le problème de la nature des compétences du chef, de son second et du reste de son équipe, est central. Dans ces restaurants, dirigés par des chefs au talent internationalement réputé, les caractéristiques des organisations professionnelles sont exacerbées. Ainsi, il existe un très petit nombre de ces restaurants. La qualité exceptionnelle de leur cuisine est un indicateur de la rareté des compétences au sein du secteur. Ces restaurants présentent des niveaux d’excellence comparables mais leur cuisine sera toujours différente : deux chefs, deux cuisines. Enfin, Ces différences reposent sur les compétences distinctives d’un homme, le chef. Cette communication présente les premiers résultats d'un projet de recherche plus large autour des compétences dans les grands restaurants français (soit la vingtaine d’établissements ayant trois étoiles au guide Michelin). Dans un premier temps, nous présentons notre projet de recherche global (centré autour de l’identification des compétences, leur dynamique et la création collective de valeur autour de compétences personnelles) et notre méthodologie qui s’appuie essentiellement sur des entretiens directs, des observations en cuisine et des données secondaires. Puis, nous identifions les compétences au travers de l’analyse d’un cas, en différenciant les compétences du chef, de son second, et des autres cuisiniers. Nous caractérisons les compétences spécifiques du chef et analysons leur coordination avec les compétences des autres cuisiniers ainsi que leur intégration dans l’activité collective.Compétence; Connaissance; Organisation Professionnelle; Savoir;

“Our flight suits are not just plain blue”: The co-production of coordination and bodies in a military air display squadron

International audienceWhile prior investigations of organizational coordination have mainly focused on cognitive processes, this article brings the physical and symbolic body more centrally into the phenomenon. Mobilizing the ‘strong’ practice programme, we explore how organizational coordination practice and bodies co-produce each other. Our study is an empirical qualitative analysis of Patrouille de France, a military air display squadron. By successively zooming in and out from pilots’ doings and sayings, we reveal three body-related threads (training, sensitizing, and distinguishing) by which organizational coordination and bodies co-produce each other. We especially point to technical and physical capital, proprioception, kinaesthesia, embodied awareness of co-presence, and the symbolic (re)presentation of bodies as embodied aspects of the actors’ habitus structured by and for coordination. Our findings have implications for our understanding of organizational coordination by showing that there is more to bodies in coordination than just embodied cognition or communication. They also further coordination literature by emphasizing that coordination practice includes organizationally structured bodywork aimed at enhancing bodies; bodywork that is not limited to learning the practice but crucial to maintaining actors in that practice