Design representations in user-centered design serve intentions for directing design process and communication functions for enlisting interdisciplinary participation. To disentangle these two factors, a vocabulary for identifying communication functions in design is proposed. This vocabulary, drawn from a selective review of empirical studies of design activity in architecture and engineering, is then applied to three design cases from user-centered design. This analysis shows how representational use is subject to adaptive pressure from the communication demands in interdisciplinary teams. The consequences of this pressure for understanding the nature of design are discussed. ACM Classification: K.6.1 [Management of Computing

The current interest in the tacit aspects of knowledge has diverted attention from the economic significance of its converse, explicit or articulated knowledge, and, by implication, the importance of articulation—the process through which tacit skills and knowledge are made explicit—and codification—the process of rendering articulated knowledge in fixed, standardized and easily replicable form. In partial alignment with the literature on "distributed cognition" the article outlines a general model of articulation as a process involving the interplay of three elements: "theory," "codes," and "tools" in communities ranging in size from small groups to entire industries. The costs and benefits of articulation are discussed, drawing attention to how these may be affected by institutional and organizational design.

Government Affairs and Policy This paper explores the dynamics of trust, collaboration, and knowledge sharing in the context of a multigovernmental, interorganizational project to design and implement a new information system. Drawing on research and a case study of a successful project, the authors construct a system dynamics model and simulate a base case scenario. They then explore several scenarios in which trust, knowledge of other agencies ’ work, and skill in meeting facilitation are varied, and they theorize about why certain facilitation attributes and objects can effectively build cross-boundary trust and collaboration. 1.

Governments around the world are moving toward a more global perspective in their efforts to address complex social, political, and economic issues. New requirements for international cross-boundary collaboration, driven by this global view, demand a new understanding about how individual nations respond to public problems and how nations work together in response to transnational problems. In addition, new forms of government enabled by information technologies and made possible through new models of collaboration are emerging. The future of public administration is clearly linked to the development and management of new forms of collaborative governance and the use of information technologies. Globalization is also contributing to the internationalization of the public sector, in which cross-boundary collaboration and information sharing will happen not only within a country, but between nations. This paper contributes to the exchange of knowledge about the future of public administration by presenting a view that considers important trends in public management and public service around the world. As a backdrop we first present a discussion about the emergence in public administration toward post-bureaucratic organizations and interorganizational networks. E-government and cross boundary information sharing are then introduced as part of the new context of public administration. We then draw

An increasing number of global organizations have adopted knowledge management practices and implemented worldwide knowledge management systems utilizing global communication networks and collaborative technology. The existing literature on knowledge management has focused on a common, firm-wide approach to knowledge sharing. Substantial differences exist, however, among the sub-units within many global organizations in terms of strategic, operational, and socio-cultural contexts. Such differences in the environments lead to internal differences in knowledge sharing practices. A field study at four offices of a large, global management consulting firm revealed that knowledge sharing practices at local offices were shaped by the unique strategic roles of the offices. The results suggest that global organizations must, contrary to the frequently-suggested uniform approach, understand the the strategic roles of the local units, and consider these in designing knowledge management support tools and practices.

All knowledge is context dependent. The relevant context is the social community where it resides, i.e. the ‘epistemic community ’ formed as groups of people define and legitimize the knowledge they possess. In the mutual engagement in a common enterprise, epistemic communities develop, maintain and nurture the codes, tools and theories that provide the basis of their practice. Commonalities of code, tools and theory facilitate both voluntary transfer and involuntary imitation of knowledge within communities, also ones spanning organizational boundaries. Conversely, knowledge transfer between different epistemic communities, whether desired or unintended, is often cumbersome and fraught with difficulties. In order to achieve effective integration and cooperation between its various professional communities and subcultures, firms must therefore undertake investments in boundary-spanning mechanisms. Since these investments are specific to the context in which they take place and to the transactions that they enable, they cannot easily be organized through arm’s length contracts. Firms exist because they have a relative advantage over markets in the integration of diverse knowledge. However, the associated capabilities need not translate into a relative advantage also in the transfer of knowledge, i.e. knowledge exchanged between members of the same epistemic community. Within communities, knowledge disseminates with relative ease both intentionally and through emulation. Knowledge thus acquired can generally be applied also outside the context of the exchange and the effort or investment expended in its acquisition is not transaction specific. The governance mode applied in such exchanges is therefore determined by strategic and contextual factors, including those of traditional transaction cost logic.

Community of practice theory is inherently a social theory. As such it is distinct from more individualist accounts of human behavior, such as main-stream economics. It is, then, unsurprising that community of practice theory and economics tend to favor quite different accounts of knowledge. Taking a community of practice perspective, this paper challenges economists ' attempts to reduce knowledge to information and to reject tacit knowledge as no more than uncodified explicit knowledge. The essay argues that Polanyi's notion of a tacit dimension had a profound affect on numerous disciplines (including economics) because it addressed aspects of learning and identity that the conventional social sciences had overlooked. The paper situates the core of knowledge, identity, and learning within communities and points to ethical and epistemic entailments of community practice. So doing it attempts to limit, rather than expand, the scope of community of practice analysis and to stress the difference, rather than the commonalities, between this kind of analysis and other apparently congenial forms of social analysis.

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At what level is new value created, or, put differently, what is the locus of knowledge? While knowledge and capabilities-based researchers argue that the locus of new value and knowledge lies at the firm level, we challenge this conceptualization and theoretically build toward more individualist foundations. We explicate the underlying philosophical assumptions of extant knowledge and capabilities-based work and discuss attributional problems. Nested (individual-level, a priori) heterogeneity may provide a better explanation of collective heterogeneity. There is really no need for the firm to be the fundamental unit of organization in invention; there is plenty of reason to suppose that individual talents count for a good deal more than the firm as an organization (Arrow, 1962: 624). The knowledge and capabilities-based views (KBV) in strategy have largely extended resource-based reasoning by suggesting that knowledge is the primary resource underlying new value creation, heterogeneity, and competitive advantage (Barney, 1991; Grant, 1996; Kogut & Zander, 1992). However, despite the recent proliferation of research into knowledge-based arguments, a number of fundamental constructs and questions have yet to be clearly defined and explored (e.g., see Kaplan, Schenkel, von Krogh, & Weber, 2001, for a recent overview). A critical, implicit debate underlying much knowledge and capabilities-based work is whether the individual or the collective is the source of new