Development of Organisational Ability through Team- Based Reconstruction – going from Personal to Shared Contextual Knowledge

Organisations can be interpreted as a collection of actors who produce value for clients. In order for organisations to stay competitive there is a need for organisations to continuously develop their ability. An organisation’s ability is determined by its ability to effectively apply existing knowledge to create new knowledge and to take action that form the basis for achieving competitive advantage from knowledge-based assets. One mean for developing the organisational ability is to establish a mutually accepted understanding of the context in which the actors are acting. One important part of the organisation’s knowledge creation processes is to facilitate the sharing of personal knowledge. A condition for developing the organisational ability is to expand the amount of shared knowledge to an appropriate level. One type of knowledge that needs to be shared among different actors within the organisation is the knowledge about how and in which order actions are performed (contextual knowledge) in order to satisfy client needs. In this paper an approach for team-based reconstruction, used for going from personal to shared contextual knowledge, is presented. The approach bears on the foundation of theories about knowledge management for understanding the process of externalisation and theories about language action for understanding organisations. Experiences from three case studies are presented. Team-based reconstruction can be used for 1) going from personal knowledge to shared contextual knowledge in an efficient way, 2) arriving at a foundation for efficient organisational co-ordination, 3) arriving at a base for development work, as well as 4) organisational learning.