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Jenny that she also had a bad experience in a previous team assignment because
one of her peers tried to set-her-up by telling the professor in charge that Jenny
was being destructive behind the backs of her team-mates even when this was
not true. Finally, you learn from Scott that while there is a family-job waiting
for him, this is not really what he wants to do and that he is really keen to get a
good degree in order to open his options once he graduates. The next meeting
that the team has is noticeably more productive and the team, at the end of the
semester, comes out with a good grade. The moral of this story is, of course,
that one should not rely too much on second-hand information, especially as it
relates to personalities and dispositions, and also that socializing and getting to
know those with whom one must work can be extremely helpful in setting the
trust context for collaborative work. As the final case in this chapter illustrates,
such socializing might not always be effective, especially if it cannot be sustained
over the duration of the project work, but without it, it is difficult for a team
to go beyond a mechanistic approach to the task which is unlikely to generate
much collective knowledge.

>> CONCLUSIONS

In conclusion, this chapter has demonstrated the centrality of collaboration for
knowledge creation. However, it has also illustrated that putting individuals
with different backgrounds together will not automatically and inevitably gener-
ate the synergy that will result in knowledge creation because there are powerful
knowledge boundaries that exist. Moreover, in certain situations power differen-
tials and conformity pressures will impede the collective so that a false consensus
is generated which is certainly not the result of the collaborative involvement of
individuals with different knowledge sets. In order to overcome these problems
of collaboration, this chapter has emphasized the importance of developing trust
between the various parties involved.
Different types of trust have been identified that help us to consider in more
depth the relationship between trust and knowledge creation. This can be explored
in more detail as you consider the Research Team case next. This case also demon-
strates the difficulty of actually creating trust when there is a lot of heterogeneity.
Where those involved have very different backgrounds and perspectives, consid-
erable time needs to be devoted to providing shared experiences so that some
mutual understanding (knowledge redundancy) and trust can be developed. As
we shall see in the Research Team case, the failure to provide sufficient time in
project plans for the development of trust and to consider obstacles to knowledge
sharing is likely to result in reduced rather than enhanced creativity.
This chapter has focused on the micro-processes of knowledge creation, pro-
viding an overview of the conditions that can facilitate knowledge integration
within a team. In the next chapter we focus on how organizations may exploit
knowledge that is created within a team setting (or more specifically within a
project setting), whether this is within or across organizations.

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