Abstract
What do you need? With this and similar questions, a local business organization surveys the wishes and needs of its employees before redesigning its office space. The result is a spatial diversity in which there is no uniform spatial concept, but different spaces meet different needs. Even though the focus of the pedagogical doctoral project is on organizational knowledge practices and based on a theoretical framework of tacit as well as explicit knowledge, it has been noticed in the data that knowledge practices are linked to organizational decisions, which in turn are associated with diversity. This can be exemplified by the concept of spatial design mentioned at the beginning of this paper, as different spaces are each designed according to different needs. The connection of knowledge practices and diversity underlines the relevance of the qualitative-reconstructive project, for which narrative interviews, participant observations and supplementary documents are taken into account. All of them are successively analyzed with the documentary method. For the paper, the data from the interviews are particularly relevant, as the analysis reveals a leadership practice in which explicit knowledge of the employees is first obtained and on the basis of which the decision then follows. The study shows how a collective knowledge not only influences organizational decisions, but also diversifies the organization because of its consideration.
Presenters
Lea Clara Frömchen ZwickResearch Assistant, Pedagogical Institute, Organizational Pedagogy/Education, Christian-Albrechts-Universität zu Kiel, Schleswig-Holstein, Germany
Details
Presentation Type
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session
Theme
KEYWORDS
Spacial Diversity, Qualitative Research, Organizational Knowledge, Collective Knowledge
