Knowledge Integration in Profession-Oriented Work: a Cross-Case Analysis

Knowledge is an important resource in many work practices, not at least within professionoriented work. Cooperating and social working environments are promoting creation, coordination, distribution and integration of knowledge that will be used by the individuals in organizations (Sambamurthy and Subramani, 2005). Professionals’ ongoing engagement in work practice means a reproduction of the knowledge and knowing generated in those practices. How people socially create and understand knowledge has a great impact on how their knowing might be improved by processes of integration, distribution and application of knowledge in their work practice. For that purpose, the role of information systems (IS) has been critically discussed. Our assumption is that IS has a great potential for supporting such knowledge processes, but it is needed to be further explored. In creating knowledge management systems and tools, both the technical and the social aspects need to be considered (Lundh Snis, 2002). However, prevailing approaches to studying knowledge management tend to focus on the importance of knowledge transfer across boundaries, and the value of generating a set of best practices that can be propagated through dispersed work activities (Orlikowski, 2002; Mathiassen, 2003). Focusing on knowledge as a process, i.e. knowing (see for example Orlikowski, 2002; Cook and Brown, 1999; Boland and Tenkasi, 1995) means that we pay special attention to how people do when integrating and coordinating the knowledgeable actions. These processes are argued as the most important ones as they are the sources to developing peoples’ capacity to act knowledgeable in specific situations in order to achieve a skillful, professional practice.