Page 77 - Sustainable Cities and Communities Design Handbook

54 Sustainable Cities and Communities Design Handbook

(Bate, 1984; Meyerson and Martin, 1987; Gullestrup, 1992) and what others
discuss in relation to international communication as an important dimension
in internationalization.
When the actors interact with the foreign actors, they have to interpret and
form an understanding of those actors’ moving pictures of reality and their
way of interpreting reality. They have to construct intersubjectivity, which is
the foundation for further interaction. Their approach is comparative to
researchers’ approach quite in accordance with hermeneutic and qualitative
methodology: the way in which we understand others’ actions and the meaning
of those actions (see Weber, 1964; Goffman, 1959; Garfinkel, 1967; Giddens,
1976; Schutz, 1978; Morgan, 1983).
When the actors act and interpret the situation they try to be sensible. There
is logic in their attempt to be sensible, and they use earlier interpretations that
have worked. When a new uncertainty is confronted with those earlier
enactment’s, not everything is noticed, and others are noticed as well known.
In the same time, the actors experience the world as changing and as unpre-
dictable and therefore that it is something more than what they already know.
The actors try to reach out for those changes through interaction and enact-
ment and act in such a way that those changes could be recognized and that
they could be able to relate themselves to them.
The understanding of action and knowledge processes can be discussed in a
frame of reference based on three areas: the actor’s development capability,
organizing and the organizational paradigm, and the actor’s extension of the
experiential space.

The Actors’ Development Capability
This should be understood as a process and as a result of the actions. The
development is connected with processes of interaction, but where the state of
development depends on the interpretations and the actors’ creation of inter-
action. The actors, with their specific qualifications, experiences, and per-
sonality, are not passive participants in a prefabricated reality; they are
contributors and creators of meanings (see Allaire and Firsirotu, 1984).
Interaction and development are results and process: a situation and an
involvement of something (not necessary a product) in a situation. However,
the process of development does not start with the situation or the involvement
but with a combination of both, based on the actors’ interpretation and
understanding of experiences used in future activities and in processes of
interaction. The firm’s development can thereby be understood as the actors’
development and readjustment capability to change moving pictures of reality
and interpretations and new actions. This can be seen as the capability to
develop knowledge and transform this to actions, realized through the process
of interaction in the organizing space and with actors in the experiential space.