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This study aims to explore how coworkers leverage epistemic objects and guanxi (a Chinese term defining relationships based on mutual dependence) network to promote knowledge integration of “who knows what” in the development of sustainable innovation.

This study used a mixed-methods research approach, including quantitative questionnaires, social network analyses and a qualitative ethnography, all of which were collected from a large enterprise in China.

Epistemic objects can promote knowledge integration of “who knows what” among coworkers during their innovation development process. In addition, structural holes in a coworker network will impede knowledge integration of “who knows what,” but guanxi can turn this impeding effect into a facilitating effect.

First, the focus on the role of epistemic objects in eliciting knowledge generates implications for creating employee identity and coordinating knowledge heterogeneity. Second, by demonstrating how epistemic objects trigger both affective and cognitive trust to promote knowledge integration of “who knows what,” the authors complement existing studies of knowledge management (KM). Third, by presenting how coworkers fill their structural holes in their collaborative innovation, the study reveals the nature of connecting the appropriate resources with the appropriate needs, which generates implications for social capital integration and innovation enhancement. Fourth, by showing how “structural hole controllers” become “structural hole fillers” under different conditions, the authors recognize the different ways in which brokers leverage their structural holes and highlight the unique role of Chinese guanxi culture in triggering a structural hole filling behavior, thereby contributing to the literature of structural hole theory and culture management. Fifth, by creating a full picture of how coworkers strategically leverage their knowledge of “who knows what” in the development of sustainable innovation, the authors identify the influential factor that stimulates innovation, adding to the literature on the interaction between KM and innovation. Sixth, the emphasis on the independent role of epistemic objects produces an implication for the interplay between object-control and human-control in innovation work.

This study supports organizational leaders to make optimal decisions in their innovation development process by suggesting them to invest in developing an integrated knowledge of “who knows what.” To achieve it, the authors suggest managers make good use of non-human artifacts to gain the identification with the knowledge of not only themselves but also the whole team, and award the “integrator” an honor for filling structural holes that may trigger the creation of more structural hole fillers. Furthermore, the focus on the independent role of epistemic objects as knowledge elicitors and trust triggers in innovation work generates another practical implication for managers to rethink the controlling role of objects and humans in the organization and modify their managerial practices accordingly.

By exploring how coworkers leverage epistemic objects and guanxi network to promote knowledge integration of “who knows what” in the development of sustainable innovation, this study reveals the role of object-control and human-control in facilitating knowledge practices for stimulating innovation, thereby contributing to the literature of KM and innovation.

This paper aims to develop a conceptual framework for tracing the cognitive and affective micro-processes management accountants can draw upon to construct themselves as reflective practitioners within organizational context.

Drawing on pragmatic constructivism and Heron’s (1992) theory of learning and personhood, the framework provides a methodology for tracing the way management accountants can construct themselves as reflective practitioners by enactig epistemic practices (Cetina, 2001). Furthermore, we enquire into the epistemological requirements for creating trustworthy knowledge and the processes through which actors can diminish the proactive-pragmatic truth gap.

The framework shows how the participatory function of the mind, deeply rooted in affective processes, is implicated in creating empathic engagement with epistemic objects. Besides the affective dimension, there is the need for logical inferences to link facts and reveal possibilities for helping actors to pursue their value system. Coupling affective and logical processes fosters passionate humility, which helps actors create clear communicative acts with whom other actors can resonate, leading to the development of functioning practices.

Providing a framework for tracing the micro-processes of epistemic practices can serve as a tool for researchers to acquire a more detailed account of the practice and. By looking into the epistemological aspect of practice, researchers could be able to go beyond describing practice and suggest improvements from a pragmatic point of view.

The paper provides a novel insight into the analysis of management accounting practice by showing the interplay between affective and cognitive processes in sustaining epistemic practice. Additionally, it opens up the dialogue on trustworthiness of knowledge generated through epistemic practices.

Clinical supervision is a crucial workplace practice for professional learning and development. Research is needed to investigate in detail what happens in supervision to understand how this practice contributes to learning. This paper aims to examine how professionals work with knowledge and navigate epistemic challenges in working with problems of practice.

Three pairs of psychologists audio-recorded five consecutive supervision sessions and were interviewed twice during that time. Analysis considered supervision as a site of emergent learning, focusing on what was discussed and how problems were worked on, whether as epistemic objects (open-ended, aimed at generating new insights) or by using an approach to knowledge objects that focused more directly on what to do next.

One pair consistently adopted an epistemic object approach, while another was consistently more action-oriented, focused on knowledge objects. The third pair used both approaches, sometimes expanding the object with a view to gaining insight and understanding, while at other times focusing on next steps and future action.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is the first to study clinical supervision in terms of how knowledge work is done. Foregrounding the epistemic dimensions of supervision, it reveals previously unexplored but consequential differences in how knowledge is worked with and produced as supervisory pairs discuss complex issues of practice.

This paper draws on the case of a multinational energy company to explore the role played by management control systems (MCSs) in enacting governance policies at the local (subsidiary) level.

This research mobilizes the literature on governmentality to interpret MCSs as technologies of government that can be drawn upon to translate governance policies into practice. In particular, the authors discuss this process by interpreting “governance” as an epistemic object, that is an object that generates knowledge because of its inherent incompleteness and abstract nature.

The paper shows how MCSs act as technical objects insofar they attract, bind and engage local subsidiary managers in the generation of knowledge about governance policies (i.e. the epistemic object) set at the global level, thereby enacting these policies locally.

The findings have practical implications by showing how subsidiary managers engage with MCSs to translate and implement broader governance policies in their daily activities.

This research contributes to the accounting literature on governmentality by showing the role of MCSs as technologies that enact governance at the local level through the process of knowledge generation that these technologies enable. Such knowledge is triggered by the engagement between different participating subjects, attracted by MCSs in the attempt to define governance in practice.

This paper aims to improve the understanding of individual transdisciplinary PhD research in a developing country context, focusing on three individual PhD case studies in South Africa.

Multiple-case method was used, and three completed transdisciplinary PhD research efforts undertaken at the Stellenbosch University were selected. They were coordinated through the TsamaHub, an inter-faculty platform at the University which organises educational modules for transdisciplinary research. Using actual research experiences and reflections of the three individual PhDs, the paper evaluates their work in terms of ontological, epistemological, methodological and methodical/methods aspects.

The central challenge to individual PhD researchers is engagement with non-academic actors to enable joint problem formulation, analysis and transformation. To overcome this, the paper suggests that developing individual epistemic relationships to build “transdisciplinary epistemic communities” should be considered for inclusion as an intentional aspect of transdisciplinary research design.

“Transdisciplinary epistemic communities” is still a concept in its infancy and needs more work before it may be theoretically and practically useful.

Continuously guiding the individual transdisciplinary research process in a reflexive, recursive, transparent and equal manner is absolutely critical because transdisciplinary research cannot be done successfully if dominated by overly methods-driven approaches.

The discourse around transdisciplinary methodology has major implications for the design of individual PhD research. The paper provides recommendations to enhance the theory and practice of individual transdisciplinary PhD research.

This paper aims to better understand how an accounting information system (AIS), working as a multidimensional knowledge object, engages users in a new round of knowledge development which allows them to explore new managerial directions. Drawing on the concept of the knowledge object and the knowing in practice perspective, this study considers the relationships between subjects and objects in the explication of accounting practice, underlining how AIS could become a knowledge object that can assume a variety of forms, starting from such contradictions emerging from practice.

Theoretical argumentations are applied to a case study at a global logistics provider in the South of Italy, which manages the supply chain from origin to destination, offering a multitude of services in the transport and distribution sector.

The case study shows that the process of knowledge accumulation promotes the mutation of AIS into a knowledge object that, in its variety of forms, allows managers to explore new managerial directions such as the reorganization of warehouse activities.

The paper seeks to enrich the interpretation of AIS as a multidimensional knowledge object becoming a catalyst of new managerial directions through knowing. That helps to understand the role of accounting tools as a social practice supporting decision-making and how accounting systems’ openness and questioning nature makes them objects of enquiry able to support the identification of new managerial directions and lead the AIS to continually explode and mutate into something else.

Objects are produced within, and simultaneously affect, the process of organizing as a consequence of their interaction within social collectives. This paper discusses the impact and influences of the growth of post‐social relations, between human and technological objects, on social and organisational arrangements. The paper presents a discussion largely at the conceptual level and draws from a variety of literatures, including the burgeoning sociology of science literature. The discussion in this paper is based on a view that posits the growth of intimate links with epistemic objects within organisations and society. Organising through networks of post‐social relations increasingly comes to affect the manner in which differing groups of organisational participants, and particularly various categories of knowledge workers, experience time and spatial arrangements within organisations.

In an increasingly competitive field of socially mediated information and knowledge available online, the public library's traditional services are increasingly questioned for relevancy. Drawing on the core premises of contemporary practice theory to ground the methodological and theoretical perspectives, the aim of this paper is to provide the initial “inside” view of traditional public library face‐to‐face reference work from a practice‐based perspective.

The paper includes an ethnographic case study of face‐to‐face reference service in four branches of one urban public library involving 170 hours of participant observation, 24 hours of unobtrusive observation, 480 reference interactions, and 28 participant interviews and analysis of policy documents.

This analysis highlights the structuring and mediating role of objects in the enactment of reference work. A practice‐based typology of reference interactions is introduced which characterizes the types of questions asked, knowledge processes in action, interpersonal communication style and mode of practice. The collective organizing actions of reference work are unpackaged in a non‐hierarchical or flattened plane that recognizes the key actors and dynamics of the practice as it endures across time and space.

Evidence and an approach are introduced to support re‐conceptualizing public library reference work as an epistemic practice.

The study refers to a health-care organization engaged in adopting “home health care” as a new object of activity. This study aims to explore how the reconfiguration of the object influences the transformative perspective, affecting not just a service but a broader approach and meaning behind patient care. It also investigates the main contradictions at play and the levers to support inter-organizational learning while facing the new challenges and change processes.

The work is based on a qualitative and ethnographic methodology directed to examine cultural, practical and socio-material aspects. The activity theory is assumed as a powerful approach to understand collective learning and distributed agency processes.

The renewal of the new object of work is analyzed as a trigger for shifts in representations, cultural processes and collective support implemented by the organization. Three agentic trajectories – technical, dialogical and collaborative agency – were cultivated by the management to deliver home health care through joint exercises of coordination and control, dialogical spaces and collaborative process.

The data collection was disrupted by the pandemic. A follow-up study would be beneficial to inquire how the learning processes shifted or were influenced by the contextual changes.

This contribution provides a practical framework for health-care organizations aiming to navigate and explore the physiological tensions and contradictions emerging when the object of work is changed.

The paper develops the field of intra- and inter-organizational learning by presenting an intertwined and structural connection between these processes and the renewing of the object of work. It advises that processes of transformation must be handled with attention to the critical and collective dynamics that accompany sustainable and situated changes.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the aptness of “information literacy”, conceptualized as a socially contextualized phenomenon, for analyses of interdisciplinary scholarly communication.

The paper presents a conceptual analysis. Two influential representatives of the social turn in the information literacy literature are taken as starting points: Annemaree Lloyd’s conceptualization of “information literacy practice”, and Jack Andersen’s conceptualization of information literacy as “genre knowledge”. Their positioning of information literacy as a socially contextualized phenomenon – by use of practice theories and rhetorical genre theory, respectively, – is analysed against an illustrative example of interdisciplinary scholarly communication.

Conceptualizations by Lloyd and Andersen explain information literacy as socially contextualized in terms of stable norms and understandings shared in social communities. Their concepts have the potential of explaining changes and innovations in social practices including scholarly communication. If we combine genre-theoretical and practice-theoretical concepts – and accentuate the open-endedness of social practices and of genres – we can enhance the understanding of information literacy in settings of interdisciplinary scholarly communication where the actors involved lack shared conventions and assumptions.

The paper suggests that the fluid features of social contexts should be accounted for in the information literacy literature. By combining genre-theoretical and practice-theoretical concepts in a novel way it offers such an account. It provides a useful framework for understanding the phenomenon of information literacy in interdisciplinary scholarly communication.