Dishing up Individual and Collective Dimensions in Knowing

This paper investigates the interplay between individual, collective and organizational dimensions in knowing? We consider knowing in practice in the perspective of habitus, practice and field dynamics in Bourdieu’s praxeology. We ground our research in the case of a grand restaurant. During our eight year-observation range, three chefs managed this restaurant while the cook team remained stable. We analyze the dynamics of knowing for these three periods and highlight that some forms of knowing can be neither transferred nor shared. They have to be developed by individuals themselves. The case also stresses the importance of the fit between individuals, groups and the environmental (organizational or institutional) context of practice. 1 Isabelle BOUTY, University of Western Paris at Nanterre la Défense, CEROS, 200 avenue de la République, 92001 NANTERRE, FRANCE; tel. : +33 1 40 97 59 32, [email protected] Marie-Léandre Gomez, ESSEC Business School, avenue Bernard HIRSCH, 95021 CERGY PONTOISE, FRANCE; tel: +33 1 34 43 28 24; fax: +33 1 34 43 28 11; e-mail: [email protected] DISHING UP INDIVIDUAL AND COLLECTIVE DIMENSIONS IN KNOWING Building on an “epistemology of practice” (Cook and Brown 1999), this paper looks at the individual and collective nature of knowing in organizations. It reports a research that seeks to better delineate these two dimensions and understand how they are intertwined in the organization. What is the interplay between individual, collective and organizational dimensions in knowing? The dialogue between the individual and collective dimensions of knowledge and learning has long been and still is a burning issue. In a recent study, Fenwick (2008) outlines that the individual and collective nature of learning has been a recurrent and central concern in research, and that it remains unresolved to date. In a parallel view, Felin and Hesterly (2007) analyze the contribution of past research on the relative importance of individual and collective knowledge in strategic management, to highlight an unsettled dispute. Their view is in coherence with Elkjaer’s (2004) that in both learning and communities of practice approaches, “the individual is made subordinate to the organization, either by ‘choice’, [...] or by dissolving the individual in the communities (Elkjaer 2004: 421). The practice-based and knowing in practice approach (Cook and Brown 1999, Nicolini, Gherardi and Yanow 2003, Antonacopoulou 2007, Chia and MacKay 2007) can help overpass this individual-collective dichotomy. The practice approach grants a special space to knowledge while replacing it in a larger perspective, which is essential to capture the individual/collective question. Knowledge and learning are considered as key to practice, and knowing is further understood as the dynamic creation, mobilization and permanent structuring of knowledge for and in practice (Nicolini, Gherardi and Yanow, 2003). In this paper we mobilize Bourdieu’s work on practice (Bourdieu 1990, 2000) and particularly his concepts of field and habitus to capture knowing and specifically explore the interplay between individual and collective dimensions in knowing. Fields are relatively autonomous social spaces that historically structured by specific rules and stakes. Individuals, as agents, occupy positions in the field that both condition their possibilities for practice and the development of their habitus. Habitus, as a set of dispositions and beliefs, is the driver for practice. It is structured by the context of the field and the experience and position of the agent inside this field. In order to analyze the interplay between individual and collective aspects in knowing, we build on the in-depth study of the case of a gourmet restaurant located in France, which underwent three head chef changes over the past eight years. We center our analysis on the nature and distribution of knowing in the kitchen. We specifically size the role of individual knowing. We show that in our case, some forms of knowing could be transferred from the former chef to his sous-chef, whereas others could not. These forms of knowing were related to different forms of practice, among which the operational practice of managing the kitchen team and the practice of new dish creation are most salient. Our case highlights that some forms of individual knowing can be neither transferred nor shared. They have to be developed by individuals themselves. We thus argue that, when these forms of knowing are crucial for organizations, and particularly when they are linked to competitive advantage, efforts to transfer or share such knowing are useless. Organizations should better focus on and organize the conditions that favor the development of individual knowing. In the following pages, we first situate the individual-collective knowledge debate in research and highlight the fruitfulness of a practice-based approach in this regard. In the second and third sections, we respectively detail our methods and present field study. The article closes with a discussion of our results.