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This study aims to explore whether hierarchical position and organizational size affect perceptions of a learning organization (LO) during reform implementation.

An electronic survey was distributed in four Norwegian police districts at an early stage of reform implementation. One of the objectives of the reform was to develop the police toward being more knowledge-based, and there had been specific calls for the police to become a LO. The 753 respondents were top managers, middle managers and employees.

Respondents rated their organizations lower than benchmark scores on supportive learning environment, learning processes and practices and leadership that reinforces learning. The perceptions diverged across hierarchical levels: middle managers and top managers gave higher scores to the organization as a learning one than employees did. Respondents from large police districts gave higher scores to their organizational units as LOs than respondents from small police districts.

The study captures perceptions of characteristics of a LO at one point in reform implementation, and further studies are needed to fully understand explanations of diverging views within an organization as to whether it can be characterized as a LO.

Actual differences in local learning practices or different assessments of learning practices within the organization should be considered when developing LOs.

The study contributes to our knowledge of LOs by showing diverging views within the same organization in a context of reform implementation.

This paper aims to contribute to the literature on distributed sensemaking by studying how the police establish and develop their new position as police contacts during the police reform.

The authors studied how the position of police contact, a cornerstone of the recent Norwegian police reform, was interpreted and practised. The authors interviewed police contacts at two different times during reform implementation to explore how they made sense of and practised their job.

The authors identified three interpretations of the position of police contact and describe them as ideal types: an administrative position, a professional position and a strategic position. The ideal types were reinforced rather than developing towards a shared understanding. Our data demonstrate that the sensemaking processes and experimentation to settle into the new position involved local actors internally in the police and externally in relation to local authorities, and reinforced local interpretations.

This study supports the notion of sensemaking as distributed but extends previous research by suggesting that “ideal types” help us understand the content of interpretations. This study also extends the understanding by showing that distributed sensemaking takes place as individuals make sense of more open-ended problems. This challenges the understanding of the term distributed, because unless challenged, distributed sensemaking in isolated pockets of the organization remain local, and the authors suggest that the term local distributed sensemaking captures this phenomenon.

This paper aims to explore what belonging is through the represented experience of people at work. The aim is to investigate employees’ interpretations of belonging at work and its interrelation with the material, aesthetic and emotional aspects associated to the where, the how and the when workplace is inhabited.

In line with the practice turn in social sciences, this study uses the visual method (snaplogs), which includes pictures and texts.

Belonging is situated in and integrated with social interactions, materiality, emotions and aesthetics. Belonging is about being part of something, the process of becoming through constant mediation between material aspects and social components, the process of experiencing boundaries and the attempt to perform, engage and participate (and find spaces for shared practices) in a workplace. Together, they constitute the situatedness, the here and now, of experiences of belonging and the perceived interpretation of being one among equals across organizational boundaries.

Data were only collected at one point in time. The authors also relied on their own interpretations of pictures and texts and did not involve the informants in the analysis.

Being, becoming and belonging comprise material, social and affective dimensions. These dimensions should be addressed for employees to belong at work.

This study contributes to the belonging literature on perceived interpretations of what belonging is at work. The paper is also original in terms of the visual method used to grasp the practice representation of belonging experiences.

This paper aims to investigate whether the formal and informal learning patterns of community health-care nurses changed in the wake of a reform that altered their work by introducing new patient groups, and to explore whether conditions in the new workplaces facilitated or impeded shifts in learning patterns.

Data were collected through interviews with experienced nurses in community health care to learn whether and how they changed their learning patterns and the challenges they experienced in establishing new work practices.

In established learning patterns among nurses, the most experienced nurse passes on the knowledge to novices. These knowledge boundaries were challenged and they created new contexts and tasks calling for more cross-disciplinary cooperation. The informants acknowledged the need for formal and informal learning activities to change their learning pattern in addressing new knowledge challenges. Structural and cultural factors in community health care impeded changes in individual and collective learning patterns.

This paper reports a single case study. Further study is needed on how changes in structural and contextual conditions challenge the established formal and informal learning patterns.

It is crucial that managers facilitate the development of new routines, structures and cultures to support individual initiatives and the growth of necessary changes in established practice to implement a new reform.

This study’s contribution to the literature primarily concerns how changes in structural conditions challenge formal and informal learning patterns, and the structural and cultural conditions for these learning patterns.

The purpose of this study is to investigate the crossing of knowledge and power boundaries within a bureaucratic organization by using enterprise social media (ESM). (Carlile’s 2002) boundary crossing framework is used to guide this research.

This is a qualitative study based on semi-structured interviews and observations in a large Norwegian public sector organization.

The authors find that investigating crossing knowledge and power boundaries by using ESM is problematic at syntactic, semantic and pragmatic levels. ESM is used predominantly for sharing, storing and retrieving explicit knowledge, which is a display of crossing the information-processing boundary. Hence, the possibilities of shifts in formal power positions where all employees can participate on equal terms is not achieved. On the contrary, as shared meaning on how to use EMS, taking the perspective of other on how to share knowledge and thus creating new knowledge practices in EMS by overcoming these knowledge barriers is not evident. Therefore, examples of crossing the semantic and pragmatic knowledge boundaries are rarely found.

The framework could be applied to a variety of contexts to further explore the role of ESM in learning and knowledge sharing and its ability to cross power and knowledge boundaries.

This paper addresses a gap in the literature around discussions of power, trust, boundary crossing and the use of ESM for knowledge sharing and learning.

The aim of this paper is to investigate how organizational socialization tactics affect newcomers' organizational commitment and learning processes.

A survey was conducted using a measurement tool based on Van Maanen and Schein's theory on organizational socialization tactics and Kuvaas' measurement tools of organizational commitment. The respondents were newcomers in two large Norwegian government organizations.

It was found that there was no significant relationship between organizational socialization tactics on the context and content dimensions and affective organizational commitment. That means that facilitating formal training and timetables for career development does not necessarily lead to organizational commitment. The research finds, however, a significant relationship between institutionalized social dimensions and organizational commitment. That means providing newcomers with role models and support and acknowledgement from experienced colleagues, positively affect their organizational commitment. Consequently, the extent that newcomers have the chance to participate in work activities and socially interact with established colleagues, positively affect their affective commitment and learning processes.

The measurement tool was translated into Norwegian, which might affect losing the validity of two out of six dimensions of organizational socialization. Also, the social dimension only explains 25 percent of the factors resulting in organizational commitment. Thus, other factors need further investigation, also to address the complexity in newcomers' learning processes when facilitating organizational socialization.

The paper recognizes the importance of newcomers having access to, and being able to learn from established colleagues through participation and practice in work activities.

There are no previous studies of organizational socialization tactics in Norway, and only limited research combining these tactics with organizational commitment, including recognizing organizational tactics' limitation in sufficiently understanding the complexity of newcomers' learning processes.

The aim of this paper is to investigate the extent to which espoused values among police managers in the Norwegian police force are compatible with those of a learning organization.

A questionnaire was developed and administered to police managers in two police districts in Norway. A set of values was developed to measure police culture and their significant correlation with those of a learning organization. All values were believed to represent cultural dimensions of potential importance to law enforcement performance.

It was found that police managers espoused values of informality and empowerment rather than authority and hierarchical order. These values are the only police values that are found to be significantly correlated with those of a learning organization. Moreover, these findings contradict the previous literature within policing, which describes a police culture of hierarchy, authority and closeness. Also, these values only represent two of the eight values that were found to be crucial for becoming a learning organization.

There is a need for police managers to both espouse and enact values in accordance of those of a learning organization, but this study only investigates espoused values. Hence, further research is needed to investigate the possibilities for the Norwegian police force to become a learning organization.

The paper provides empirical research to generate insights into espoused values of the Norwegian police force and identifies those values that are crucial for their possibilities of becoming a learning organization.

This article aims to address the research question: “What are the characteristics of white‐collar criminals in Norway?”.

The research is based on data from articles in Norwegian financial newspapers for one year where a total of 67 white‐collar criminals convicted to jail sentence were identified. The sample is analysed and presented in comparison with US literature especially on characteristics of white‐collar criminals, which is believed to be both general and limited.

The paper's contribution is important, as studies of white‐collar criminals so far have focused on case studies rather than statistical analysis of a larger sample. The paper finds that the typically white‐collar criminal is male, 46 years old, involved with first time crime of the amount of 30 million US dollars and convicted to three years of imprisonment. As a contradiction to previous literature on white‐collar crime, the paper also finds that they are not part of the upper‐class and highly educated. On the contrary, even though mostly being leaders, they are not highly educated, but have a position that gives them access to money. Consequently, the paper also finds that manipulation and fraud is the most common form of white‐collar crime in Norway.

The results are in opposition to existing literature and offer a fresh perspective on the characteristics of white‐collar criminals in Norway.

The purpose of this paper is to conceptualize a stage model for maturity levels for police oversight agencies.

The paper is based on a literature review covering police oversight organizations and stages of growth models.

As a conceptual paper, the main findings are related to the appropriateness of the stage model, each identified stage, and the characteristics of each stage.

An empirical study of police oversight agencies all over the world would be necessary to verify the proposed stage model.

The managers of police oversight agencies can apply the model in three ways: identify the current status; identify future direction; and evaluate the past progression.

Hitherto, knowledge transfer from police misconduct cases has not been conceptualized as a learning process in police districts and general law enforcement.

The purpose of the study is to investigate the characteristics and interrelations between informal communities of practice and formal networks of practice and its consequences for learning and new knowledge at work.

A case study was conducted in a Norwegian bank using qualitative explorative studies and in-depth interviews with financial advisers and their leaders.

The findings demonstrate that in the absence of integration efforts via a network of practice, multiple communities of practice to ensure knowledge flow is not enough. By the same token, it is possible for new knowledge to be accepted where a community of practice functions cohesively in a singular form in close interrelation with network of practices, but only when both communities of practice and network of practices are supported by a participatory leader.

The total of 30 in-depth interviews might call for further studies. Also, studying a Norway bank alliance does not account for cultural differences between countries.

To the author's knowledge there are no studies that investigate the interrelations between informal communities of practice and formal network of practices.