Copertina di Anna De Dominicis
Sezione ricerche
In the management literature, projects are considered as a way to achieve novel objectives by reducing uncertainty. In many complex projects, problems emerge and are identified and solved by use of appropriate tools or through a web of interactions across organisational and disciplinary boundaries. Project teams have access to different knowledge bases but must also solve integration problems arising from multiple perspectives. To manage sources of uncertainty requires also close attention to interactional aspects. Managing meetings and deploying soft tools to enhance socialisation around technical issues may be crucial. There is a clear trade-off between reducing complexity of knowledge transfer and integration through standardisation and more time-consuming issues of cooperation among participants requiring time and effort. When the work of specialists is achieved by converging efforts towards the goal, rather than joint actions, then studies based on an epistemology of possession may be better able to explain the final state of knowledge integration. This text draws on an extensive research trajectory undertaken in the last twelve years on the complementary topics of knowledge creation and integration in project-oriented, innovation driven domains. These themes represent nowadays a major research concern for the scientific community of organizational studies. They are solidly rooted within the work of prominent scholars that have established theories of knowledge and control.