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INTRODUCTION 15

This example shows how the particular interests and interpretations of actors
within and across different social and institutional contexts come to bear in
reproducing and legitimating particular forms of knowledge and innovation.
The process approach also highlights the central role of social networks in trans-
lating (not just transferring) knowledge across groups and contexts.
Knowing is not a static embedded capability or stable disposition of actors, but rather
an ongoing social accomplishment, constituted and reconstituted as actors engage the
world in practice.
(Orlikowski, 2002, p. 249)
Managing knowledge work, then, is less about converting, capturing and
transferring different forms of knowledge and more about building an
enabling context that connects different social groups and interests, identities
and perspectives to accomplish specific tasks or purposes (Boland and Tenkasi,
1995). Management initiatives aimed at building so-called ‘communities of
practice’ (Thompson, 2005; Wenger and Snyder, 2000) or social networks
(Cross and Sproull, 2004) reflect such a view. These will be explored in
Chapter 8.

Practice perspectives
In the last decade there has been a surge of interest in ‘practice perspectives’ as
a way of studying and analysing social and organizational life (Schatzki et al.,
2001). In terms of managing knowledge work, however, practice perspectives
have had less attention. Even advocates of the so-called ‘communities of practice’
approach (see Chapter 8) to managing knowledge within firms have emphasized
the importance of communities and networks for improving knowledge flows
but have left ‘practice’ relatively untouched (Beth, 2003).
Practice and process perspectives have more in common than not – both see
knowing as a social activity and address process, context and purpose, for exam-
ple. However, practice perspectives emphasize in particular the links between
knowledge and action, or practice. In short, knowledge is inextricably linked to
practice – it flows where practice is shared (e.g. within specialist or functional
groups) and sticks where practice is not shared (e.g. across functional depart-
ments). It is useful for us to look at practice perspectives more closely because
they help us to pay attention to aspects of managing knowledge work that have
not been so commonly addressed to date.
Many different kinds of theorists have influenced practice perspectives, includ-
ing social philosophers (e.g. Dreyfuss, 1991; Wittgenstein, 1958), social theorists
(e.g. Bourdieu, 1990), cultural theorists (e.g. Lyotard, 1988) and ethnomethod-
ologists (e.g. Garfinkel, 1967). It is impossible to do them justice here. Defini-
tions of ‘practice’ include ‘action informed by meaning drawn from a particular
group context’ (Cook and Brown, 1999) and ‘socially recognized forms of activ-
ity, done on the basis of what members learn from others, and capable of being
done well or badly, correctly or incorrectly’ (Barnes, 2001, p. 19). However, we

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