The paper draws on an empirical study and examines how new multidisciplinary groups interact to create a shared context for knowledge work. Within the context of the campus-wide commitment to transform into a モCreative Universityヤ, Luleå University of Technology explores new ways to further collaborative multidisciplinary knowledge creation. Multidisciplinary knowledge areas, such as ムMedia, Music and Technologyメ, have been defined, with origins in multifaceted and complex problems. New knowledge will be created through enabling environmental processes created among participants committed to realizing the full potential of the organizational commitment. Enabling the development of organizational knowledge implies that people from different disciplines - e.g., engineering and social sciences - cooperate and thereby share and use information which they convert into knowledge. The fact that these groups work in partnership in a logical, not physical, organization leads to questions about how they organize their work, how they communicate, and interact, and where they meet physically, mentally and virtually, and for what purposes. With the intention of learning from group members in a new multidisciplinary organizational project, the authors conducted semi-structured interviews with selected employees. Interview data were analysed in terms of Ba elements. Ba is a perception of a place - which can be virtual, mental or physical - with a shared purpose. Ba provides guidance on ムmaking senseメ of how an organisation works and why it works the way it does in relation to knowledge creation. Predicated on grounded theory about crossfunctional work transcending traditional boundaries, Ba can also serve as a framework for designing sustainable new processes that create organizational learning, where information and communication technology are driving forces.
Godkänd; 2004; 20070629 (anita_g)