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MANAGING KNOWLEDGE CREATION IN TEAMS 103

>> QUESTIONS
1. What knowledge boundaries existed between the members of Research Team?
2. How did interaction affect the development of trust in this project team? Was
this different among the PI and RO groups?
3. What impact did integration mechanisms have on the development of trust?
4. How did power and conformity affect knowledge creation within this project
team?
5. What does the Research Team case teach us about knowledge creation in multi-
disciplinary/transdisciplinary contexts?

Summary of key learning points

>> Knowledge creation within organizations, leading to the development of new products,
services or processes, typically occurs within teams and projects.

>> Both the intellectual and social capital of team members is important.
>> The process of knowledge creation within teams depends on achieving a synergy between
members so that, through ‘creative abrasion’, something new and useful will emerge.

>> Knowledge sharing within a team will only be successful if there is some shared under-
standing or knowledge redundancy among team members such that the team develops an
absorptive capacity for new ideas – this is not always easy to achieve in practice.
>> Syntactic, semantic and pragmatic knowledge boundaries exist between people from dif-
ferent backgrounds and these boundaries make it increasingly difficult to share knowledge,
so that knowledge needs to be either transferred, translated or transformed depending
on the type of boundary that exists.

>> Boundary objects (concrete objects or abstract concepts) play an important role in help-
ing to overcome knowledge boundaries but the boundaries are often multiple and so
difficult to overcome in practice.
>> Teams should not, therefore, be seen as a panacea for all organizational problems; nor
should the problems of enabling effective team-working be underestimated.

>> Teams essentially consist of individuals, each of whom has his or her own agenda, and
individuals may use their power to attempt to satisfy personal goals. Some individuals,
however, have more power than others and so can more easily persuade the team to
work in a way that satisfies their agendas.
>> Teams thus suffer from many potential problems, including a propensity to conformity,
groupthink, social loafing and group polarization effects.
>> To overcome some of these problems there is a need to consider implementing
integration mechanisms and in particular encouraging the development of trust between
team members.

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