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This paper aims to report on an empirical case study, (single case multi‐site) employing both a “hard” and “soft” method. The tangible, visible component of the study was the production of a database whose fields were to be the source of tacit knowledge emergence.

The proposition was that the possibility for the capture of tacit knowledge was subject to four conditions. The first was the need for a teleological motive and purpose. The second was a bounded environment expressed in this case in terms of the published corporate goals and key business drivers. The third was the production of a controlled vocabulary that made sense to both the respondents in the context of the true nature of the business activity. The fourth and most important condition was the interactive and iterative process that allowed those involved to own the tacit knowledge emerging process.

Results supported the idea that under bounded conditions, a shared sense of purpose and an iterative process where ownership was possible, tacit knowledge could be captured. In the bounded environment tacit knowledge was found to be not haphazard, confirming its “end purpose” for being.

The findings of the research have practical application for organisations wishing to capture the tacit knowledge of their knowledge workers and describes a methodology for emerging and capturing it.

Is of value in presenting a method for emerging tacit knowledge in‐play in a bounded environment.

This paper seeks to bridge a perceived gap in the literature on the methodology of qualitative research. The audience in mind is business and management students who are required to carry out field research as a part of their masters or doctoral degrees. After submitting a research proposal or candidacy, which sets out the research strategy in broad terms, students are characteristically faced with field work involving the collection of data from participants or respondents. Whatever thought and planning has been given to interviewing and questionnaires in theory, it is a necessity in qualitative research to adapt to the situation on the ground which is unique for every research.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate employees' and managers' accounts of interactive learning and what might encourage or inhibit emergent learning.

The approach taken was a constructivist/social constructivist ontology, interpretive epistemology and qualitative methodology, using grounded theory method. Data collection included semi‐structured interview, “complete this sentence” and “scenarios” from 51 respondents: 22 managers and 29 employees in four private sector organisations. As respondents' theories emerged, these informed the next round of data collection, this process named “theoretical sampling”. Managers and employees were asked about perceptions of their own role and the other's roles in learning.

Reciprocity and participative learning involving managers and employees emerged. There was dynamism to the data and evidence of both Billett's notion of affordances and Stacey's patterns of local interactions. Employees encouraged learning through peer discussions, and motivation/personal initiative. Managers encouraged learning through have a go coaching, formal training opportunities and working with company structure and resources. The data support the idea of complex and integrated learning.

The data informed both managers and employees in such a way as to highlight the dynamic and complex interactions around learning processes. One practical implication is employee and manager training in emergence and complexity as learning environments. Ideas of complex responses and patterns of local interaction resonated with the data more than particular typologies of learning.

This paper captures insights, especially from employees, into the dialogue and dynamism of their learning opportunities, whilst supporting existing theories. The need for managers to “learn” employees' local interaction patterns emerged as a future research agenda, alongside the need to penetrate the social space of employee learning more deeply.

To report on an exploratory study on unwritten rules carried out in Australia, place this study in the context of the historical development of thought on rules and discuss implications for management learning.

This paper has three parts. The first part reviews the theoretical scholarly writings on rules as social structures from the early sociology of the nineteenth century to the organizational theory of the present day. Theories of structural functionalism and institutionalism are acknowledged as historical influences on rules and the assumptions likely to be made by managers about compliance and implementation. In the second part, the research is described in which staff members from five organizations were invited to technology‐supported focus groups. The data collection was supported by group support systems technology, which allowed anonymous inputs. Staff were asked, in various ways, about both official rules and unwritten rules. These included the use of scenarios, reported here. In the third part, the findings are discussed and three implications for management learning are suggested.

The research produced evidence that rules exist, are acted upon and require a view of the rule‐implementer as complex and holistic. The findings supported Giddens' theory of structuration which suggests that the individual rule taker draws on rules and also personal sensibility when involved in social encounters.

This paper provides contemporary data on rules as perceived practice which is presented within the context of the historical development of relevant management theory. Attention is drawn to three implications for management learning, which are: what rules mean, assumptions of managers, and deep listening as social responsibility. The future research agenda should be of value to those considering a practical contribution to this original field of institutional inquiry.

Reports the findings and implications of a retail bank marketing study which was conducted in the City of Perth in Western Australia in 1995. More specifically, the study was designed to determine and evaluate the importance of selected patronage motives used by Australian retail bank customers in choosing commercial banks. Also it sets out to determine the perceived usefulness of the variety of services offered by commercial banks to their customers and what these banks can do in order to improve their services to their clients to remain competitive. Using the case of one of the commercial banks cited in the study, a set of core activities (front stage as well as back stage) for banking staff are described and evaluated. Discusses the need for commercial banks to consider more and different marketing strategies, one of which would be internal marketing in addition to consumer‐oriented external marketing activities.

The purpose of this paper is to provide a comprehensive narrative account of supervisory conversations with doctoral students. They include providing knowledge and experience about the nature of qualitative and quantitative approaches and their respective histories and rigour requirements.

An introduction reveals the complexity, debates and dialectics that are engaged with during the doctoral supervisory process. Two design issues are discussed. One is research design; the other is supervisor method.

Rigour in interpretive research is distinctive, linked to its characteristics and the unique role of the researcher as an instrument of data collection, conscious of the need to give voice to respondents and preserve their authentic responses. The audit trail is a centrepiece for both rigour and the reflection, reflexivity necessary to address ongoing biases, decisions and dilemmas.

Supervisory conversations are dynamic but there is a core, a set of initial conditions and these relate to the ethics and integrity of the doctoral student and the supervisor.

The paper penetrates the social space where supervisors and doctoral students interact. Within the text, “advice” and seminal ideas are presented from literature and the supervisor's experience that will inform researchers and demonstrate a supervisor method.

The purpose of this paper is to present adaptive culture structuration, a new approach for theorizing and analyzing culture change and for creating an “adaptive cultural structurated learning environment”.

Incorporating a case study in the financial sector the paper explores 12 employees' narrated accounts of living through a culture change initiative. A constructivist, interpretive, qualitative research study followed grounded theory principles. Organizational documentation provided secondary data. Semi structured interview data were analyzed using content analysis, constant comparison and theoretical sensitivity and were managed by ATLAS.ti software.

Three themes emerged: respondents' investment of self, accepting the culture change initiative and its values; employees' epistemic analyses of the embedded value promises including experiencing a critical incident that interrupted managers' enactment of values; employees' resulting “received practice” which represented the enacted (versus the espoused) values and was not visible to managers.

An adaptive culture structurated learning environment fosters a relationship of “negotiated practice” instead of “received practice” between managers and employees in the constitution of corporate culture change. In this space, employee interpretations and assessments, which may otherwise remain hidden from managers and thereby prevent workplace learning opportunities, can be drawn upon, shared meaning co-produced and psychological contract issues explained.

While much has been written on espoused culture change, this is the first theoretical model to examine the process from an employee perspective through an adaptive culture structurated lens.

In the past 20 years, there has been a growing interest in the workings of Chinese management and organisation. Recent research has also focused on Chinese leadership. This paper examines an emerging issue uniquely important to the Chinese leadership setting – guanxi. A research process was initiated that included a ten‐case preliminary field study followed by a more extensive investigation of guanxi with 40 Chinese business leaders. Results revealed complex differences in the way guanxi is utilised in state‐owned and foreign‐invested enterprises. The differences are conceptualised using Falcione et al.’s notion of structuration, and developed into a “cross model” of guanxi usage.

This paper examines how the findings of a wider research effort, designed to examine the effect of change processes on the waterfront in Fremantle, Western Australia, gave rise to another research project. This second research project is described in full as an action research. The paper presents the objectives, content method and outcomes as well as the processes followed throughout the project. The Enterprise Communication Committee was not created for the action research program yet it was able to define both trust and communication. A home produced mechanism for developing trust and communication was constructed together with a commitment to carry on action learning within the organization. This is the waterfront ‐ with no history of development and no exposure to theory, the group members identified a need, produced a set of working definitions a methodology and an enthusiastic commitment to action.