Paul M. Leonardi

Samantha Meyer

Knowledge stickiness often impedes knowledge transfer. When knowledge is complex and the knowledge seeker lacks intimacy with the knowledge source, knowledge sticks in its point of origin because the knowledge seeker faces ambiguity about the best way to acquire the needed knowledge. We theorize that, given the extent of that ambiguity, knowledge seekers will make a choice: to ask for knowledge now, or later. We hypothesize that when knowledge is sticky, knowledge seekers will delay asking for knowledge and in the interim period use an enterprise social networking site to gather information that can lubricate stuck knowledge, such as how, when, and in what way to ask for the desired knowledge. We propose that by doing this knowledge seekers can increase their ultimate satisfaction with the knowledge once they ask for it. Data describing specific instances of knowledge transfer occurring in a large telecommunications firm supported these hypotheses, showing that knowledge transfer is made easier by the fact that enterprise social networking sites make other peoples' communications visible to casual observers such that knowledge seekers can gather information about the knowledge and its source simply by watching his or her actions through the technology, even if they never interacted with the source directly themselves. The findings show that simple awareness of others' communications (what we call ambient awareness) played a pivotal role in helping knowledge seekers to obtain interpersonal and knowledge-related material with which to lubricate their interactions with knowledge sources.

How Ambient Awareness Eases Knowledge Transfer

Social Media as Social Lubricant

Jeffrey W. Treem

Expertise is an intriguing construct. Though it is highly desired, it is commonly characterized by exclusivity or being something esoteric making it both seemingly difficult to acquire and understand. This opaqueness surrounding the nature of expertise in organizational contexts is coupled with greater demands for specialized work and employees' increased reliance on communication technologies to complete tasks - trends that further complicate the evaluation of workers' knowledge and abilities. This volume draws upon original works, from scholars of diverse backgrounds, to explore how recent changes in the structure of organizational life have altered the nature of expertise. Specifically, this book aims to challenge the perspective that organizational expertise exists to be recognized and utilized, and offers an alternative lens that views expertise as emergent and constituted in communication among organizing actors. Examining the intersection of communication and expertise, within and across different contexts of organizing, offers new insights into the discursive, material, and structural influences that contribute to an understanding of expertise. This book offers a comprehensive view of organizational expertise by presenting theoretical frameworks for the study of expertise, providing reviews of how the study of expertise has evolved, applying perspectives on expertise to different domains of organizational practice, and presenting new directions for the study of the intersection of expertise, communication, and organizing. The result is a treatment that considers expertise in diverse forms and across a variety of contexts of organizing, and in doing so provides valuable content to researchers from multiple disciplinary backgrounds.

Expertise, Communication, and Organizing

Diane E. Bailey

An analysis of the occupational factors that shape the technology choices made by people who perform the same type of work. Why do people who perform largely the same type of work make different technology choices in the workplace? An automotive design engineer working in India, for example, finds advanced information and communication technologies essential, allowing him to work with far-flung colleagues; a structural engineer in California relies more on paper-based technologies for her everyday work; and a software engineer in Silicon Valley operates on multiple digital levels simultaneously all day, continuing after hours on a company-supplied home computer and network connection. In Technology Choices, Diane Bailey and Paul Leonardi argue that occupational factors—rather than personal preference or purely technological concerns—strongly shape workers' technology choices. Drawing on extensive field work—a decade's worth of observations and interviews in seven engineering firms in eight countries—Bailey and Leonardi challenge the traditional views of technology choices: technological determinism and social constructivism. Their innovative occupational perspective allows them to explore how external forces shape ideas, beliefs, and norms in ways that steer individuals to particular technology choices—albeit in somewhat predictable and generalizable ways. They examine three relationships at the heart of technology choices: human to technology, technology to technology, and human to human. An occupational perspective, they argue, helps us not only to understand past technology choices, but also to predict future ones.

Why Occupations Differ in Their Embrace of New Technology

Technology Choices

Bonnie A. Nardi

Jannis Kallinikos

This edited collection brings together leading academics in the field to explore the ways in which digital and non-digital artifacts shape how groups and collectives organize. It focuses on the idea of materiality and the interactions between the social and the technical in organizations, at work, and in technologies

Paul M. Leonardi

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