Organisational Memory and Innovation Across Projects: Integrated Service Provision in Engineering Design Firms

This paper provides an exploration of the dynamics of organisational remembering in firms operating through projects. The paper focuses in particular on the deliberate use of experience accumulated in the past in order to sustain innovation in the provision of services. It relies on the notions of boundary objects and brokers to empirically explore how a common memory crossing occupational and organisational boundaries is built. In so doing, it highlights how a boundary object as memory device in a project environment operates at different levels, i.e. personal, project-specific, organisational-specific and occupational specific, and how it takes different formats to perform its roles at each level. Finally, the paper highlights the role of specific communities, beyond that of specific individuals, as boundary brokers.project development, innovation processes, organisational memory, boundary brokers

Exploring inter-organizational paradoxes: Methodological lessons from a study of a grand challenge

In this paper we outline a methodological framework for studying the inter-organizational aspects of paradoxes and specify this in relation to grand challenges. Grand challenges are large-scale, complex, enduring problems that affect large populations, have a strong social component, and appear intractable. Our methodological insights draw from our study of the insurance protection gap, a grand challenge that arises when economic losses from largescale disaster significantly exceed the insured loss, leading to economic and social hardship for the affected communities. We provide insights into collecting data to uncover the paradoxical elements inherent in grand challenges and then propose three analytical techniques for studying inter-organizational paradoxes: zooming in and out, tracking problematization, and tracking boundaries and boundary organizations. These techniques can be used to identify and follow how contradictions and interdependences emerge and dynamically persist within inter-organizational interactions and how these shape and are shaped by the unfolding dynamics of the grand challenge. Our techniques and associated research design help advance paradox theorizing by moving it to the inter-organizational and systemic level. This paper also illustrates paradox as a powerful lens through which to further our understanding of grand challenges

Who talks to whom about what? How interdisciplinary communication and knowledge of expertise distribution improves in integrated R&D labs

Although several studies have examined the impact of open workspaces, there is still an on-going debate about its advantages and disadvantages. Our paper contributes to this debate by shedding light on three issues: the effect of open workspaces on (1) the flow of communication along and across hierarchical lines; (2) the content of communication; and (3) the specificities of open integrated laboratories. Our findings derive from a longitudinal case in a large pharmaceutical company that has relocated some R&D teams from enclosed to multi-space offices and labs. The relocation has resulted in (a) increased interdisciplinary communication, particularly at lower hierarchical levels, (b) a shift of the location of discussions and the content of conversations and (c) an improved knowledge about expertise distribution. Practitioner Summary Communication is essential in knowledge-driven organisations. This article examines the impact of a relocation of R&D employees from enclosed to multi-space offices and labs on communication patterns. We explain how the new environment fosters interdisciplinary communication, shifts the location of discussions and increases the knowledge of expertise distribution

Total recall? : organisational memory and innovation in project-based firms

EThOS - Electronic Theses Online ServiceGBUnited Kingdo

ORGANISATIONAL MEMORY AND INNOVATION ACROSS PROJECTS INTEGRATED SERVICE PROVISION IN ENGINEERING DESIGN FIRMS

projects: integrated service provision i

Memory objects in project environments: Storing, retrieving and adapting learning in project-based firms

This paper investigates the role of objects holding representations of knowledge in the transfer of learning across projects. On the basis of an in-depth case study, this paper shows that the way in which relatively simple artifacts, such as Excel workbooks, represent knowledge enables them to act as boundary objects across occupations and as memory devices across projects. It is the temporal capacity of these boundary objects that makes them points of juncture in a widely distributed memory system, enabling project-based firms to balance preservation and adaptation of knowledge. The mechanisms for the preservation of learning are not missing from project environments, rather they are less visible and less direct than in other settings, and therefore less docile in the face of managerial action.

The international AIDS vaccine initiative (IAVI) in a changing landscape of vaccine development: a public/private partnership as knowledge broker and integrator

Vaccine production is now at the heart of the debate on development. This paper argues that, as well as economic policies to address market failures, development policies aimed at fostering vaccine innovation should also consider the institutional and organisational uncertainties. The International Aids Vaccine Initiative (IAVI), a product development PPP, is attempting to increase vaccine production for neglected diseases by acting both as a broker and integrator of knowledge. Within IAVI and perhaps other PPPs there is a related tension between an emphasis on private pharmaceutical sector efficiency and sustainable development activities that requires understanding and managing if PPPs are to successfully reach their goals

The International AIDS Vaccine Initiative (IAVI) in a changing landscape of vaccine development

About the book: Development and the ending of mass poverty require a massive increase in productive capabilities and production in developing countries. Some countries, notably in Asia, are achieving this. Yet ‘pro-poor’ aid policies, especially for the least developed countries, operate largely without reference to policy thinking on the promotion of innovation for productivity growth. Conversely, policy-makers and researchers on innovation and industrial policies tend to know little about the potential for social protection to support innovation and productivity improvement. This book aims to focus attention on this gulf between research on innovation and on poverty reduction and to identify some of its policy consequences; to set out some ways in which this gulf can be bridged, analytically and empirically; and to contribute to the creation of an agenda for further research and an understanding of the urgency of the implied rethinking