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In the contemporary society, new digital media play a key role in organizing both companies and the public sector, as well as public transportation systems in metropolitan areas and similar technological macro‐systems. Humans are encountering digital media through the screen but the underlying mechanisms and structure of the screen, their screenness, remain relatively poorly explored in organization theory. Literature on new media, visual studies, and studies of financial trading is used with the aim of presenting a case in favour of a more integrated understanding of the role of screens in organizing, unearthing screens and portraying them not as insignificant elements of a dull infrastructure but as key components in the day‐to‐day organizing of firms and social space.

The paper draws on secondary literature addressing the role of screens and screenness in everyday organizing.

Drawing on a study of financial trading, screens are envisaged as the surfaces on which the financial traders' life‐worlds present themselves and are enacted, rendering the abstract flows of capital and innumerable financial transactions meaningful and tangible through the use of certain aesthetics and geometries of representation.

The conceptual paper combines literature from a number of disciplines and theoretical perspectives.

All workplace learning takes place under specific temporal conditions. In fact, one learns in order to be better equipped to deal with future challenges. At the same time, learning is always embedded in previous experiences. Thus, the notion of time needs to be theoretically integrated into organization and workplace learning. This paper seeks to investigate the temporal aspects of organization and workplace learning by discussing the notion of virtuality as examined by the French philosopher Henri Bergson.

A study of organization learning among construction workers is used as an empirical illustration of the virtual as a specific form of temporality inherent in all organization learning.

In construction work, learning takes place through practical engagements and through sharing know‐how and experiences with peers. In these interactions between peers, practical concerns are woven into a temporal texture integrating past, present and future. Learning thus draws on its virtuality in terms of binding temporality and practical undertakings together in a coherent, seamless framework.

The paper seeks to bridge organization and workplace learning theory and temporality, here expressed in terms of theories of virtuality, and more specifically the philosophy of Henri Bergson. When examining workplace learning, temporality needs to be recognized, and therefore theories of virtuality are of relevance.

The paper provides a review of the writing on virtuality in Bergson's work, to date little exploited in the workplace learning literature, and offers an empirical illustration of the conceptual thinking.

Any reasonably advanced practice is a blend of rational thinking, thinking structured by concepts and numerical representations rendering the world static and immovable, and intuitive thinking, a mode of knowing operating “in‐between” concepts and representations and, therefore, are apprehending the fluid and fleeting nature of being. When moving from being a novice to an expert practitioner, the actor must both appropriate rational thinking and increasingly, as experience is acquired, draw on intuitive thinking. For the novice, the concern is however that intuitive thinking is complicated to articulate or represent but is primarily acquired through years of experience and practice. The paper seeks to discuss practice as a term that includes both these two elements of thinking.

The paper uses empirical examples from nursing work, financial trading, and scientific research to further develop the concept of practice.

The paper suggests that “skilled coping” of expert practitioners are examined as a gradual appropriation and combining of rational and intuitive thinking. The difficulty of becoming a skilled practitioner is, inter alia, to acquire inarticulate know‐how through collaboration with experienced peers.

The paper seeks to discuss the concept of practice based on process philosophy underlining the distinction between rational and intuitive thinking, yet emphasizing their mutual constitution in the domain of practice. The concept of practice is thus anchored in a solid theoretical framework capable of exploring some of the difficulties involved in acquiring expert skills.

The purpose of this paper is to explore university‐industry collaboration in research centres.

The paper builds on an explorative study of three research centres at a technical university in Sweden, using in‐depth interviews. The three research centres, Alpha, Beta and Gamma, have various degrees of involvement with industry.

A total of four broad forms of collaboration are suggested: distanced, translational, specified and developed collaboration.

The paper shows that the different institutional logics of academic actors, industry actors and funding agencies can be present in collaborations in (at least) four different ways resulting in four different types of research processes. Since not all actors are likely to be equally satisfied in all types of collaborations, the continued development of the research centres will be at risk.

If the role of the research centre is to be a forum for collaboration, the research centre has to be a good mediator between the actors in order to ensure their satisfaction with the research centre within and between projects. If, in contrast, the role of the research centre is to be a facilitator of collaboration, the research centre needs to enable the actors to learn how to interact with each other in order for the distanced, translational, specified collaboration to evolve into developed collaboration.

Few studies have focused on the collaborations per se in research centres, taking the different institutional logics of the actors involved in the collaboration into account.

Organizations are sites where identities are constructed and maintained and a substantial literature points at identity work as being of central importance for managerial practice. Identities are often fragile and contingent constructs, shifting over time and as the actor moves between assignments, being bound up with professional and occupational ideologies, norm and beliefs. The purpose of this paper is to report a study of how construction workers build their occupational identities on the basis of a combination of identification with their work and the quality they deliver benefitting the end‐user and what Elsbach and Bhattacharya call disidentification, i.e. a critique of the construction industry.

A study of identity work in the construction industry suggests that identities are based on three interrelated processes, the enactment of normative beliefs of ideal selves, the recognition of the accomplishments in the present construction project work, and the disidentification with the construction industry articulated in storytelling practices.

Construction workers’ identities are thus a patchwork, stitching together a variety of heterogeneous resources. This makes identity work an ongoing social process influenced by both the material conditions of the actual work and norms, beliefs, and aspirations.

The paper contributes to the identity literature by emphasizing that identities are irreducible to either material conditions, norm and beliefs, or narrative accounts but are simultaneously drawing on all these resources.

The purpose of this paper is to look into the knowledge‐intensive work that entangles the use of various visual representations such as drawings, CAD images, and scale models. Rather than assuming that knowledge is exclusively residing in the human cognitive capacities, most knowledge‐intensive work integrates a variety of perceptual skills and the use of language.

A case study of a Scandinavian architect bureau, including semi‐structured interviews with architects, design engineers and managers, was conducted.

The study shows that architects mobilize and use a variety of visual representations in their day‐to‐day work. Such visual representations serve a variety of roles and purposes but actually more generally enhance communication between colleagues and external stakeholders. The paper concludes that visuality and visual representations deserve a more adequate analysis in the knowledge management literature.

The paper contributes to an understanding of how visual representations are constitutive of knowledge and central to architect work. Rather than residing in language or being embodied, knowledge is developed through the use of a variety of tools and aids.

Research on innovation and knowledge management practice would benefit from examining science‐based innovation work, that is, innovations derived from the ability to exploit scientific know‐how, in greater detail. While much engineering innovation work may be predetermined through rational breakdown analysis, there is always a factor of chance and luck in scientific work. Scientific work is never linear and predictable but must always be envisaged as the outcome of a combination of rule‐governed activities and a certain degree of unconditioned discoveries. The purpose of this paper is to report on how practicing laboratory researchers in a major pharmaceutical company regard their innovation work as being what is always of necessity inherently indeterminate and therefore put demands on top management to allow for a reasonable amount of risk‐taking.

Case study methodology based on interviews with 36 laboratory scientists and managers in a major pharmaceutical company.

The paper concludes that innovation research and knowledge management studies need to regard science‐based innovation as a specific form of innovation not wholly capable of being managed through rationalist management control systems.

The paper bridges studies of innovation work in pharmaceutical industry with the perception of risk‐taking among the practicing researchers.

Ethnographic studies of, for instance, laboratory work show that practices never reach a full closure but are always open to contingencies and ambiguities, making it possible to accommodate new empirical findings. The aim of the paper is to demonstrate that this is true also for less “high‐brow” work in, for example, the construction industry

A case study of a Swedish rock construction company is reported.

The study suggests that activities accruing less prestige than scientific laboratory work also share this basic openness. In rock construction work, there is always uncertainty involved when engaging material resources such as equipment, tools and technologies and when exploring literary previously unknown ground. Practice is therefore what is of necessity and is simultaneously enclosed in terms of drawing on a relatively stable specific set of know‐how, routines, beliefs, and norms, while remaining attentive to emerging events.

Any practice must be regarded as resting on detailed know‐how and experience and therefore the management of seemingly “low‐skilled work” needs to be reconsidered as what is demanding informed vocabularies and insight in to the domain of practice.

In theoretical terms the paper bridges practice theory, science and laboratory studies, and theory about construction work. In addition, the empirical study reported calls for a revaluation of the term “low‐skilled work”.

A dominating view in the literature of organizational creativity is to treat the creativity as an ex post facto construct rather than a process that may be subject to systematic and thoughtful managerial practices. Drawing on Alfred North Whitehead's writing, the paper seeks to examine how creativity is conceptualized in the pharmaceutical industry.

This study is based on a series of interviews with managers and scientists in three pharmaceutical companies.

Although researchers and managers designate the role of organizational creativity as the most important strategic capability of the firm, there is almost no communication about it. The respondents point out a gap between understanding and action in the innovation process, i.e. what precedes it in new drug development. This gap is clearly illustrated – creativity is what makes the difference for the companies – but hardly anyone talks about it.

From a management perspective this paper concludes that organizational creativity in new drug development can become a more actionable concept by capturing images and narratives relevant to the organizational reality.

In contrast to the dominated individualistic centered view of creativity, this paper argues that creativity does not occur at a single point in time but is rather the outcome from a series of interconnected events and undertakings. A process‐based view of creativity can thus escape the misplaced concreteness that the mythology of creativity postulates. Whitehead's process philosophy may form a fruitful foundation from which organizational creativity can be understood and exploited.

Institutional theorists treat law and regulations as external factors that is part of the organization’s environment. While institutional theory has been criticized for its inability to recognize the role of agents and to theorize agency, the growing literature on institutional work and institutional entrepreneurship, partially informed by and co-produced with practice theory, advances a more dynamic view of processes of institutionalization. In order to cope with legal and regulatory frameworks, constituting the legal environment of the organization, there are evidence of organizational responses in the form of bargaining, political negotiations, and decoupling of organizational units and processes. The purpose of this paper is to report how legal and regulatory frameworks both shape clinical practices while at the same time they are also informed by the activities and interests of professional communities and commercial clinics.

This paper reports an empirical study of the Swedish-assisted conception industry and is based on a case study methodology including the use of interviews and formal documents and reports issues by governmental agencies.

The empirical material demonstrates how scientists in reproductive medicine and clinicians regard the legal and regulatory framework as what ensures and reinforces the quality of the therapies. At the same time, they actively engage to modify the legal and regulatory framework in the case when they believe it would benefit the patients. The data reported presents one successful case of how PGD/PGS can be used to develop the efficacy of the therapy, and one unsuccessful case of regulatory change in the case of patient interest groups advocating a legalization of commercial gestational surrogacy. In the former case, scientific know-how and medicinal benefits served to “push” the new clinical practice, while in the latter case, the “demand-pull” of patient interest groups fails to get recognition in regulatory and policy-making quarters.

The study contributes to the literature on agency in institutional theory (e.g. the emerging literature on institutional work) by emphasizing how legal and regulatory frameworks are in a constant process of being modified and negotiated in the face of novel technoscientific practices and social demands. More specifically, this process include many scientific, technological, economic, political and social relations and resources, making the legal environment of organizations what is the outcome from joint negotiations and agreements across organizational and professional boundaries.