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Short abstract:

Reflecting on our transdisciplinary co-creation project with SMEs we raise questions about (un)intended effects of how technology is embedded in organisational knowledge cultures. What happens to organisations, workers and researchers, when informal knowledge work is made explicit by STS research?

Long abstract:

How do digital systems of knowledge management transform the practical expertise of craft work in small manufacturing companies? Together with transdisciplinary partners (software, design, manufacturing) we addressed this problem through a co-laborative ethnographic study.

While we expected our epistemic challenge to be researching ways to make tacit knowledge explicable, in our efforts to co-create digital knowledge management we inadvertently raised new problems for our partner organisations. Observing means of storing and making available knowledge of manual and organisational processes, we encountered well-established practices of individual knowledge work. However, such knowledge work was not understood as part of the actual work, carried out informally and by analogue means, partly during leisure or sick leave. Knowledge production and transfer were not institutionalised, rather considered responsibilities of the individual employee.

Our own empirical work uncovered how digitalisation re-distributes responsibilites by infrastructuring and interfacing knowledge. This raised questions (inside the organisations) about (un)intended effects: What does it mean to open “intimate” knowledge practices in the context of (industrial) workplaces? Does it promote appreciation for learning or lead to new forms of control? Who is allowed to contribute to such a new “public” knowledge culture? Who certifies, legitimises and governs knowledge work, how is this re-negotiated through digital technology? In this talk, we reflect on the effects of making knowledge work explicit - for organisations, workers and our own role as researchers.