Knowledge development as a social communicative process

Kirsti Booijink-Kemna (most left) got her bachelor's-degree. She did a research on the role of the social and communicative process in knowledge development. A literature study lead her to several factors that play a role in this process. She found factors on the level of the individual (e.g. attitude, care, dialogue), on the team-level (e.g. groupcohesion, shared language) and at the level of the organisation (culture). After this literature study she did case study research in two different organisations (ROC MN and Pemstar). After this empirical study she concluded that the factors found in literature were described on a too detailed level to be meaningful and to do justice to practice. She then reformulated these factors into five more open ones:

1. Creating space
2. Getting and bringing
3. Being personally involved
4. Positive attitude
5. Composition of the group/team

In the discussion after her presentation, we discussed some interesting topics:

• What phases can be distinguished in the social and communicative process? Might that be something like the phases Scharmer describes: 1. Being polite; 2. Debate and discussion; 3. Reflective dialogue; 4. Generative dialogue.
• To what extent are there parallels between the phases of the social and communicative process and the process of knowledge productivity (the actual innovation process)?