Qualitative Research in Organizations and Management: An

International Journal
Between the hand and the head : How things get done, and how in doing the ways of
doing are discovered
Silvia Gherardi Manuela Perrotta
Article information:
To cite this document:
Silvia Gherardi Manuela Perrotta , (2014),"Between the hand and the head ", Qualitative Research in
Organizations and Management: An International Journal, Vol. 9 Iss 2 pp. 134 - 150
Permanent link to this document:
Downloaded by University of Sussex Library At 19:28 17 May 2016 (PT)

http://dx.doi.org/10.1108/QROM-06-2012-1079
Downloaded on: 17 May 2016, At: 19:28 (PT)
References: this document contains references to 61 other documents.
To copy this document: permissions@emeraldinsight.com
The fulltext of this document has been downloaded 250 times since 2014*
Users who downloaded this article also downloaded:
(2014),"Organizational anonymity and the negotiation of research access", Qualitative Research in
Organizations and Management: An International Journal, Vol. 9 Iss 2 pp. 98-109 http://dx.doi.org/10.1108/
QROM-10-2012-1104
(2009),"Knowing and learning in practice-based studies: an introduction", The Learning Organization, Vol.
16 Iss 5 pp. 352-359 http://dx.doi.org/10.1108/09696470910974144
(2014),"Beyond projection: using collaborative visualization to conduct qualitative interviews", Qualitative
Research in Organizations and Management: An International Journal, Vol. 9 Iss 2 pp. 110-133 http://
dx.doi.org/10.1108/QROM-05-2012-1074

Access to this document was granted through an Emerald subscription provided by emerald-srm:573577 []
For Authors
If you would like to write for this, or any other Emerald publication, then please use our Emerald for
Authors service information about how to choose which publication to write for and submission guidelines
are available for all. Please visit www.emeraldinsight.com/authors for more information.
About Emerald www.emeraldinsight.com
Emerald is a global publisher linking research and practice to the benefit of society. The company
manages a portfolio of more than 290 journals and over 2,350 books and book series volumes, as well as
providing an extensive range of online products and additional customer resources and services.
Emerald is both COUNTER 4 and TRANSFER compliant. The organization is a partner of the Committee
on Publication Ethics (COPE) and also works with Portico and the LOCKSS initiative for digital archive
preservation.

*Related content and download information correct at time of download.

 The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available at
www.emeraldinsight.com/1746-5648.htm

QROM
9,2
Between the hand and the head
How things get done, and how in doing the
ways of doing are discovered
134 Silvia Gherardi
Department of Sociology and Social Research,
University of Trento, Trento, Italy, and
Manuela Perrotta
School of Business and Management,
Queen Mary University of London, London, UK
Downloaded by University of Sussex Library At 19:28 17 May 2016 (PT)

Abstract
Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to add a new term to the vocabulary of practice-based
studies: “formativeness”, which denotes the kind of knowledge that is generated in the process of
realizing the object of the practice and that is discovered while the form of the object is being
shaped. This term focuses the analysis on how the elements of a practice are held together, rather
than on what elements are involved in a practice.
Design/methodology/approach – Inspired by grounded theory, an empirical research study on
craftswomen and their practical creativity (between the hand and the head) was designed. Storytelling
was used in order to elicit the verbalization of the craftswomen’s ways of knowing/doing, and the
episodic interview was the technique employed to access and present the data.
Findings – Formativeness can be described and interpreted as the effect of the following dimensions:
the emergence of the object, the golden rule of realization, forming by hybridization, experimentation,
playfulness, attachment to matter, and proper realization.
Originality/value – The study’s contribution may be evaluated in relation to how a vocabulary
for describing and interpreting knowing-in-practice is constructed. Formativeness makes it
possible to name the process by which ways of doing are discovered while activities are being
performed. It contributes to a critique of representational knowledge, while offering an alternative
line of inquiry.
Keywords Crafts knowledge, Formativeness, Knowing-in-practice,
Practical creativity, Practice-based theorizing
Paper type Research paper

Qualitative Research in Organizations
and Management: An International
Journal
Vol. 9 No. 2, 2014
pp. 134-150
r Emerald Group Publishing Limited
1746-5648
DOI 10.1108/QROM-06-2012-1079
1. Introduction
In recent years, several scholars have sought to develop novel insights into the
relationship between knowing and doing from a non-rationalist and non-cognitivist
perspective. Practice has been the figure of discourse that has led to rediscovery of old
themes within a new framework where knowledge is no longer conceived as an object
of possession nor as something that pre-exists action, nor a substance to be applied
when and where needed. The so-called “re-turn” to practice (Miettinen et al., 2009)
both signals the “practice turn” in social science (Schatzki, 2001) and suggests that
a re-examination of the concept which draws on more recent theories of practice
The research benefited from a financial contribution made by the Autonomous Province of
Trento and the Commission for Scientific Research of the University of Trento. The present paper
is the outcome of joint and indivisible work by the authors; however, if for academic reasons
individual authorship is to be assigned, Dr Silvia Gherardi wrote the introduction, Section 1 and
the conclusions, and Dr Manuela Perrotta wrote the other sections.
 is necessary. Under the umbrella label of “practice-based theorizing”, several authors Between the
have challenged the traditional representational theory of knowledge and taken an hand and
approach that considers knowing to be a situated activity, i.e. something that people do
together (Gergen, 1985; Shotter, 2012) while they are engaged in everyday social and the head
working practices.
From this point of view, the distinction between knowing and doing collapses and
the term “knowing-in-practice” puts forward the idea that knowing is a practical 135
accomplishment situated in the historical, social, and cultural context in which it
unfolds (Lave and Wenger, 1991; Blackler, 1995; Gherardi, 2000; Orlikowski, 2002;
Tsoukas, 2005; Fox, 2006). Practices have therefore been studied as the loci where the
close relationship among knowing, working, organizing, and innovating (Brown and
Duguid, 1991; Østerlund and Carlile, 2005) can be investigated empirically. At the same
time, practice has become the standpoint from which to try and develop a practice
Downloaded by University of Sussex Library At 19:28 17 May 2016 (PT)

theory of organizing. However, a practice theory of organizing is still in its infancy,

both because there is no unified theory of practice and because the relationship
between practicing and knowing has been theorized differently within different
streams of practice-based studies.
In fact we can identify three relationships between knowing and practicing
(Gherardi, 2006): containment, mutual constitution, and equivalence. We can find a
relationship of containment in the literature on communities of practices which
conceives knowledge as located within the relationships among people participating in
specific practices socially sustained through shared understanding of what should be
done. A second stream of practice-based studies elaborates a relationship of mutual
constitution of knowing and practicing. It does so mainly by relying on Giddens’
structuration theory, in which knowing and practicing are not two distinct and
detached phenomena, but rather interact with each other and produce each other.
A third and more radical stream, which we want to advance here, posits an equivalence
relationship between knowing and practicing, denying any ontological priority to
knowledge that exists prior to its performance (Suchman, 2000; Gherardi and Nicolini,
2002; Latour, 2005; Nicolini, 2011).
While the intuition that a practice theory of organizing can generate rich views of
organizing as a situated process of knowing, its realization has been hampered by the
difficulty of developing a vocabulary able to illustrate and interpret the practice
phenomena that are addressed. Accordingly, our aim in this article is to contribute to
the refinement of practice vocabulary by proposing the concept of formativeness as a
way to talk about knowledge in transition (Wittgenstein, 1953) and to analyse practices
by focusing the attention to those processes of knowing that are discovered while
doing and through the act of doing.
The term “formativeness” denotes the process by which phenomena (for
instance, an object or a work of art) acquire form within working practices. At the
same time, formativeness qualifies a specific knowing process realized through a
doing that while it does invents the “way of doing” (Pareyson, 1960). In order to
ground the concept we shall introduce first the epistemology of practice as an
epistemology of becoming (Clegg et al., 2005) in order to justify the entanglement of
knowing and doing. We shall then illustrate the origin of the term “formativeness”
within aesthetic theory. Finally, we shall describe an empirical research study, the
purpose being to discuss how formativeness may inform a practice-based
methodology and produce new insights in the art of doing while the way of doing is
being invented.
 QROM 2. The epistemology of practice
9,2 To gain better understanding of the epistemology of practice – and therefore move
away from analysis that privileges action as the product of actors in a given
context – it is useful to recall how Ira Cohen (1996) distinguishes between theories of
action and theories of practice. We may say that whilst the former theories privilege
the intentionality of actors, from which derives meaningful action (in the tradition of
136 Weber and Parsons), the latter locate the source of significant patterns in how
conduct is enacted, performed, or produced (in the tradition of Schütz, Dewey, Mead,
Garfinkel, and Giddens). Hence theories of practice assume an ecological model in
which agency is distributed between humans and non-humans and in which the
entanglement between the social world and materiality can be subjected to inquiry.
Whilst theories of action start from individuals and from their intentionality in
pursuing courses of action, theories of practice view actions as “taking place” or
Downloaded by University of Sussex Library At 19:28 17 May 2016 (PT)

“happening”, as being performed through a network of connections-in-action, as

life-world, and dwelling (as the phenomenological legacy names them, see Sandberg
and Dall’Alba, 2009).
The adoption of an ecological model that gives ontological priority to neither
humans nor non-humans nor discursive practices constitutes the fundamental
difference between theories of action and of practice. It is in this interpretative
framework that the difference can be grasped between the study of practice as an
empirical object and the use of practice as epistemology. The difference is based on the
attribution to practice of a realist ontology (that objectifies practices as primary
units of the social) and a social constructionist conception that does not distinguish
between the production of knowledge and construction of the object of knowledge
(between ontology and epistemology). In this sense the epistemology of practice has
been defined as an epistemology of becoming (Clegg et al., 2005) in order to stress
impermanence and the tentative and ongoing process of knowledge production, or an
epistemology of transformation (Gherardi, 2011) in order to point to how knowledge
changes through its use, or in the Wittgenstein (1953) tradition as knowledge in
transition, an expression intended to capture the difficulties that we face “in trying to
make sense of activities that are still incomplete, still unfolding in relation to their
actual surroundings” (Shotter, 2012, p. 247).
In this article we adopt a social constructionist perspective inspired by an
actor-network sensibility. Our intention is to show that a renewed theory of knowledge,
the fruit of the “practice turn” in organizational studies, contributes to a re-reading of
the relation between knowing and doing as situated in work practices; that is, in ways
of operating within practices. Central to the paradigm of situated action (Licoppe, 2008)
is a recasting of the concept of context. This is no longer a container for action but a
situation in which the interests of the actors and the opportunities furnished by the
environment meet and are reciprocally defined. Of central importance in practical
knowledge, therefore, are interactions with others, situated communication, the
construction of situations, the relationship with the physical environment, and the
objects in it, but above all the idea that these elements are “held together” and express a
logic of practice (Sandberg and Tsoukas, 2011) contextual to the situation.
Accordingly, we join the critiques brought against the representational theory of
knowledge and those theorizations that still carry the imprint of a certain cognitivist
orientation which attributes agency only to humans, in that they come to know
the world primarily through thinking about it (Tsoukas and Vladimirou, 2001; Yanow
and Tsoukas, 2009). A corrective to this notion is provided by considering the
 embeddedness of the mind in social practices through the activity of reflection-in- Between the
action, in the tradition of Donald Schön. However, also the conception of knowledge hand and
that underpins reflective practice is still tied to the exercise of human judgement,
according to which “an individual is knowledgeable by the extent to which she has the the head
capacity to exercise judgement, which is either based on an appreciation of context or
is derived from theory, or both” (Tsoukas, 2009, p. 952).
The “practice turn” has led to the more radical claim (Schatzki, 2001, pp. 10-14) that 137
the prioritization of practice over mind gives rise to a transformed conception of
knowledge along the following lines:
. knowledge and truth are no longer possessions of mind;
. are mediated both by interactions between people and by arrangements in the
world;
Downloaded by University of Sussex Library At 19:28 17 May 2016 (PT)

. no longer property of individuals, but a feature of groups together with their

material setups;
. practical understanding, ways of proceedings, and setups of material
environment represent forms of knowledge; and
. practices are the sources and carriers of meanings, language, and normativity.
One of the most important directions taken by the practice-based studies which use
this transformed theory of knowledge is the study of the practical organization of
knowledge, in the form of situated methods of seeing, reasoning, and acting in
association with human and non-human elements. In fact, objects and their material
world can be construed as materialized knowledge and matter which interrogate
humans and interact with them. This aspect of practice offers organization studies
a conception of organization as “a mangle of practices” (Pickering, 1995) or
“a practice-order bundle” (Schatzki, 2005), or a “texture of practices” (Gherardi, 2006).
These concepts, which are similar to each other, direct attention to knowing as a
practical accomplishment within interconnected practices. Consequently, a key
question becomes the following: how are all the elements – material and semiotic –
which make up a practice assembled, held together, and interrelated? How does the
object of the practice emerge and become stabilized?
Very similar answers have been given to those questions through concepts such
as sociotechnical ensemble (Bijker, 1995), sociomaterial assemblage (Suchman, 2007),
sociomaterial practices (Orlikowski, 2007). The purpose of these concepts is to
emphasize that “materiality is integral to organizing, positing that the social and the
material are constitutively entangled (italics in the original) in everyday life”
(Orlikowski, 2007, p. 1437). A position of constitutive entanglement privileges neither
humans nor technologies, neither knowing nor doing; nor does it link them in a form of
mutual interdependence (as in two-way interactions).
Our aim in what follows is to add a new concept to the above framework by
focusing theoretically and empirically on the activity of forming within practices
and on the concept of formativeness as that process of knowing that is generated in
and through practicing. While to date the specific concern has been to identify what
sociomaterial elements constitute a practice, less consideration has been made of how
these elements assume a form in being connected. The attention therefore moves from
what is connected to how it is connected, to the process by which the form appears and
the object of the practice becomes momentarily stabilized.
 QROM The description of the object of a practice – or in the vocabulary of activity theory,
9,2 the object of activity – is aptly captured by Engeström (1999, p. 65) when he defines the
object of activity as:
[y] a project under construction, moving from potential raw material to a meaningful shape
and to a result or outcome. In this sense the object determines the horizon of possible goals
and actions. But it is truly a horizon: as soon as an intermediate goal is reached, the object
138 escapes and must be reconstructed by means of new intermediate goals and actions.
In the next two sections we illustrate an empirical research in which the object of the
practice – and in the case the object is the material product of a craft – emerges and we
describe how formativeness happens.

3. Research design
Downloaded by University of Sussex Library At 19:28 17 May 2016 (PT)

Research context
In order to explore empirically how craft knowledge is performed and situationally
invented in the course of working practices we looked for access to how it is narrated,
and how in being narrated it acquires an intersubjective meaning.
Organization studies have witnessed considerable interest in stories and narratives,
especially as they are linked to issues of knowledge, sensemaking, communication,
power, identities, gender, and gendered politics (Czarniawska, 1997; Gabriel, 2000;
Gherardi and Poggio, 2007; Rhodes and Pullen, 2009). Today, narrative inquiry has
multiple strands and there are no hard and fast rules for distinguishing between stories
and narratives or storytelling and narrativization (Brown et al., 2009). To furnish an
overall framework, we may say that stories and narratives are “accounts of sequenced
events, with plots that weave together complex occurrences into unified wholes that
reveal something of significance” (Gabriel, 2008, p. 195). This definition guided our
interest in empirical research which investigated how practical knowledge – an elusive
phenomenon difficult to narrate – was recounted, and in being recounted was
performed for the researcher. In fact, we were surprised to discover how the limits of
language for narrating something elusive were overcome through the use of physical
artefacts that could be used in order to show differences. The artefacts “dwelling” in
the craftswomen’s workplaces were mobilized in order to guide the interviewer’s eye
in appreciating the similarities and differences between an object well done and
another just acceptable. The craftswomen’s narratives were populated with material
intermediaries giving meaning to the relationship and anchoring it in a sociomaterial
context.

Data collection
The study was conducted between July 2007 and December 2009 on the
“knowing-how” of craftswomen belonging to the same association in all sectors of
activity and in the same geographical area (northern Italy). The research design
followed the logic of grounded theory (Glaser and Strauss, 1967; Turner, 1981; Clark,
2003). Without entering into detailed discussion of how to conduct a grounded theory,
we may broadly define it as an approach that makes it possible to develop theory from
data and offers a way to make detailed consideration of qualitative materials in order
to develop systematic interpretations about the phenomena that have been observed.
As we conducted the interviewees, we roughly analysed them and wrote memos in
order to coordinate and share a common view of the research process among the
five persons engaged in the fieldwork[1]. All the interviews were conducted in the
 artisans’ workplaces, which were visited and whose production processes were Between the
discussed with the respondents. Used for the first round of interviews was an open hand and
protocol (Poggio, 2004) which invited the interviewees to recount how they had learned
their crafts, what they considered their most important skills to be, how the idea came the head
to them to make a product, and if they remembered significant episodes in their
learning processes. Their willingness and interest in taking part in a participative
research process were critical for collecting interviews where “reflection” and not 139
“information” was a common and explicit goal[2]. All the interviews, which lasted
between 90 and 180 minutes, were audio taped and professionally transcribed.
In the first round, 110 narrative interviews were conducted, from which 60 were
subsequently selected for a second round of interviews with only those craftswoman
whose work involved the direct and manual production of an object. This choice was
also made because we wanted to narrow our focus on those accounts that we called
Downloaded by University of Sussex Library At 19:28 17 May 2016 (PT)

“between the hand and the head”, since this was our main interpretive category at that
stage of the research.
The second round of interviews used the “episodic interview” technique (Flick,
2000), which returns to certain episodes – narrated in the previous encounter – in order
to explore them further by eliciting more details. These interviews were shorter, since
an interpersonal relationship had already been established, and they lasted 30 minutes
on average.
The challenge in eliciting narratives is putting into words a knowing-how which
the literature regards as ineffable or personal knowledge (Polanyi, 1958) and therefore as
eminently tacit, but not unsayable. We encountered the limitations of language in
expressing what is taken for granted. For this reason, we assume that the narrators
regarded their narrating as a process of retrospective sensemaking; but we also believe
that the main limitations were due to the difficulty of expressing sensible knowledge
in words. During the narrations, in order to explain a difference to the interviewer – for
instance between a well-accomplished job and one only acceptable – the narrators
resorted to objects and showed examples able “to give the idea”. It was this experience
in the field, where objects, materials, and samples were used to sustain stories and a
language rich with metaphors and sensations that directed our attention to aesthetic
philosophy. As we collected stories of craft knowledge, we realized that what was being
told us was a polyphonic story of formativeness, of how material encounters ideas and
how objects acquire form, and once they have been formed cancel the history of their
formation, of previous failed attempts, experiments, and trial-and-error procedures.

Data analysis
For the analysis of narratives we used a double strategy. We accessed narratives and
analysed their mimetic content, that is, what the stories said about knowing-in-practice
and in relation to materiality, leaving aside the diegetic form of stories (i.e. how the
story is told). This approach drew on the social constructionist assumption that
language is creative in giving form to reality (Davidson, 1984) and on a reflexive
assumption that narratives are co-created within narrative discourse with others
(Cunliffe, 2001). The researchers were in a sense co-authors of the narratives because
they shared with their interviewees (co-researchers) a single discursive space in which
reciprocal understanding occurred as a way to connect and create meaning at the
moment of storytelling.
Nevertheless while we were collecting narratives we were also analysing them as
text, through the use of the ATLAS.ti software programme, which enabled us to
 QROM identify the common emergent themes systematically. In analytical terms we identified
9,2 the following analytical categories making up the cluster of formativeness, and which
we will use in the presentation of the data: the emergence of the object, the golden
rule of realization, forming by hybridization, experimentation, playfulness, attachment
to matter, and proper realization.

140 Data presentation

While the use of textual analysis software provided us with a means to control the
contents of the texts (what was said), we subsequently returned our attention to how it
was said, to how the narration was performed through the language, and how certain
“episodes” were selected from the flow of the account. It is for this reason that we
provide rather long quotations, which largely reproduced the episode representing
and illustrating knowing-in-practice and how the knowing process developed in the
Downloaded by University of Sussex Library At 19:28 17 May 2016 (PT)

account and in the action recounted. This decision to represent for the reader the
episodes that gave rise to our interpretation entailed a second decision: to restrict
the stories reported only to those that we regarded as representative of other similar
ones which, for reasons of space we cannot report here, and which would anyway have
been repetitive.

4. Knowledgeable doing and formativeness

The emergence of the object
We shall describe the process of forming in relation to the object of the practice, and
within the process of forming we shall highlight how the knowledge necessary for its
production is discovered while the object emerges from the process.
Activity theory conceptualizes collective intent and distributed agency by means
of the term “object of activity”. As used in activity theory, the object of a practice (be it
material, like a manufactured product, or human like a patient in a hospital, or
epistemic like in science) is the thing, or project, that people are working to transform,
while the objectives of an activity are the intended outcomes of that process. Objects
of activity are simultaneously (Blackler and Regan, 2009, p. 164) given, socially
constructed, contested, and emergent.
The difference between the craft product (the objective) and the object of the
practice is well narrated by Elisabetta[3], a tailoress:
Dressing impossible women, that’s a real mission impossible! Dressing imperfect
bodies, that’s my great satisfaction! Dressing well someone who’s got nothing shapely
about her, that’s the real challenge! Dressing a manikin is the easiest thing in the
world; dressing a normal person is the easiest thing in the world; dressing defective
bodies, that’s an achievement, and when you’re successful it’s a challenge [defeated],
because you have to disguise flaws, you have to emphasise the beautiful part, so the
dress must be deceptive, it must hide what is wrong, enhance it at the correct point [y]
The eye must fall on the beautiful part, the tailoress doesn’t just make the dress, she
must make [y] a miracle, well perhaps not “a miracle”, but she must play with the bodily
forms [y].
The tailoress’s sensory abilities, taste, and aesthetic judgement are summarized in this
excerpt, which evocatively recounts success (a dress made to measure), not as a simple
“manual” activity but as a miracle. A ludic dimension is at the core of the narrative:
playing with materiality, experimenting with it on a body, and inventing technical
solutions – these are all elements that express a knowledgeable modus operandi, i.e. a
knowledgeable way of doing.
 This extract illustrates another aspect crucial to the entanglement of knowing, Between the
doing and identity aptly expressed by the words: “the artist makes the work and the hand and
work makes the artist” (Pareyson, 1960, p. 63). In the case of craftsmanship we may say
that “the craftswoman makes the product but it is her knowing-how that makes the the head
craftswoman”. In her narrative, in fact, Elisabetta shifts attention away from the
“garment as product” to “knowing how to dress someone as a practical activity”, a
competence distinctive of craftsmanship. The realization of the product is not 141
separable from the performativity of the knowing-how to realize it. We want to stress
this idea through what we empirically identified as the golden rule of the modus
operandi. In fact we were told several times and by people working in different crafts
that in order to test the validity of an idea or an intuition or a wish to innovate, the only
viable solution is its realization. The following example illustrates this “golden rule”.
Downloaded by University of Sussex Library At 19:28 17 May 2016 (PT)

The golden rule of crafts knowledge: to see whether an idea works, you have to realize it
The idea of the creative process as a linear one which moves through distinct stages –
ideation, experimentation, and realization – is unsatisfactory, and it may also be
misleading. There is not an idea and then its realization; rather, both become connected
as a form emerges. An example is provided by Emma, a fashion designer:
So this idea comes to me, and the only thing that I want to do is rush over here and take a
piece of cloth or paper or the paper-pattern, and do it over and over again [y] I get it just
right “Wow, you’re a genius!” But many times it’s crap, so it can’t be said that an idea is
always a stroke of genius. But in this job to see whether an idea works, you have to realize it,
the only way is to take a gamble and not be afraid of ruining a piece of fabric, not being afraid
of wasting days of work, because if you have these fears it’s better to do a job where you have
everything guaranteed. Ideas may come from the fabric, from something that I’ve seen
around, and then all that’s needed is the stitching that I like, because then it changes into
something completely different, there is not just one way, there are so many ways.
Practical creativeness develops in action, through the material realization of the object.
There is no guarantee that a certain inspiration will prove appropriate when realized.
The rule is “to see whether an idea works, you have to realize it”, but this realization
requires taking a gamble and being willing to make repeated attempts until idea and
material reciprocally take form. Emma emphasizes the tentative and experimental
nature of forming when she points out that in her work one should not be afraid of
wasting time and materials, because it is tentativeness that characterizes the becoming
of the form and determines the success (or otherwise) of the formative process.
We have brought into focus the phase of the formative process in which the form is
anticipated and encounters the material. We now present an episode in which the form
emerges from the creative use of the material and which exemplifies a process of
forming by hybridization and by translation.

Forming by hybridization
In the episodes that follow we highlight the role of materiality in the process of
practical creativeness. Material is neither opaque nor inert; on the contrary, it actively
addresses the subject, suggesting both opportunities for action and constraints upon it.
One may therefore speak of the materialization of an idea, but also of the ideation
of a material – as shown by this episode, which illustrates a process of forming by
hybridization.
The example illustrates the complex path pursued by two craftswomen, one
working with glass and the other with chocolate, who were looking for an innovative
 QROM way to merge their two materials into a product and create an original business idea.
9,2 Medea, the glassworker, narrates how the idea of the product and the slogan “taste and
wear a chocolate” was born:
I and a friend of mine thought we’d get together, but she works with chocolate and me with
glass, so we had to create a bridge. We were helped by the mental map that we had used with
Professor X [on a course], and so we asked our clients to react to “glass – chocolate”. I wrote
142 the word “glass” on a sheet of paper and we wrote everything that came to our minds; then on
the other sheet of paper we wrote “chocolate”. Obviously we put in a few months, and we saw
that the most frequent words for “glass” were: “cold”, “transparent”, “movement”, “blue”,
“neutral”. From there I worked on my material and with the chocolate. There were some
correlations between the two mental maps, both materials originate from powder, from
fusions and then heating, both are given as gifts, both are tempered. I also looked at some
programmes, and so the chocolate-drop necklaces were born. Chocolate melts, it would be
nice to wear a chocolate drop, non-fattening chocolate, and so this was a point in common.
Downloaded by University of Sussex Library At 19:28 17 May 2016 (PT)

We made a multi-sensorial track which hit the five senses, the glass to touch, the glass to feel,
the glass to see, leaves of glass attached to the branches, and a glass to taste, and using the
characteristics of the mental map we created a cocktail. Cold, neutral, a beautiful azure colour,
and this cocktail was drunk at the chocolate tasting because it could wipe away the taste of
the previous chocolate. It was a beautiful experience. And I understood from these notes that
cold is still perceived negatively, and from there I began to work with other colours. I began to
insert form, to give a sense of warmth to the glass, because here [she works in a mountainous
area] people love wood. You must make glass that gives the same sensation as wood, even if
the azure glass is always present. For example, there are little bubbles where you can’t tell
whether they are the sky or the sea. My friend sells them with the slogan, “taste and wear a
chocolate”. It’s a cute idea, a particular one.
In this case the hybridization of materials follows a business logic: to create a “cute”
and “particular” idea, which caters to a certain segment of the market, on the basis of
a creative process which involves the clients of the two craftswomen. The narrative
oscillates between an instrumental dimension tied to production for the market and a
more creative one to do with the evocative-sensorial characteristics of materiality.
Transforming the cold, transparent, blue, neutral, and moving glass into something
warm reminiscent of wood, through the fusion of colours and alternative materials,
is at once a material hybridization and a marketing strategy embedded in a
non-distinguishable formative process, and a process that follows a creative practice.
The chocolate necklace, which does not melt and does not fatten, is the shaped form of
this process.
This episode illustrates the role of materiality in the process that leads to the
production of the object and simultaneously relates to the modus operandi, which not
only proceeds through the hybridization of materials, but more in general involves
experimentation. We now illustrate three modes of the discovery of the way of doing:
experimentation, playfulness, and attachment to matter.

Experimentation, playfulness, and attachment to matter

Experimenting with materiality is an activity closely bound up with learning and
forming. The idea itself of experimentation is intrinsically tied to the discovery of
materials, techniques, and tools. The story of Katia, a ceramicist, illustrates the
indissolubility of experimentation and learning:
It takes a lot to do ceramics properly. You must know just about everything to do with
techniques: enamels, glazes, slips, you have to know how to do all these things. Even the
kneading of the clay, with all the procedures that follow, you have to understand the correct
 components to make enamels with certain colours [y] I manipulate the clay and from that Between the
I get, and behold, a thing like this [shows a clay figurine], completely transformed. With the
white, with the dyes, with the enamels. I must understand the enamels to make a complete hand and
product [y], I have to manipulate, that’s the most beautiful thing! the head
In Katia’s narrative, manipulating the clay and turning it into ceramic objects is a
process with two aspects: on the one hand, the narrative extols the aesthetic dimension,
together with the passionate and ludic nature of experimentation (“manipulating is the 143
most beautiful thing”); on the other, it emphasizes the non-randomness of the process
and the learning by trial and error that makes it possible to foresee what the final effect
of an enamel or a dye will be.
In regard to this episode we start by noting how sensible knowledge, feeling as a
modality of relating with the world, underpins the aesthetic judgment that expresses a
feeling of pleasure or displeasure. Sensible knowledge “is a form of knowing and
Downloaded by University of Sussex Library At 19:28 17 May 2016 (PT)

acting directed towards ‘sensible’ worlds; it concerns what is perceived through the
senses and is judged, produced, and reproduced through them. It is profoundly
different from the knowledge produced through the ratiocinative faculty directed
towards ‘intelligible’ worlds” (Strati, 2007, p. 62).
We come to know the world not only through the head but also through the senses,
and in experimenting we are able to see how the knowledge that is mobilized “on the
spot” rests on an “inherited background” (Wittgenstein, 1953; Shotter and Katz, 1996)
against which practitioners make sense of the task at hand. Experimentation in Katia’s
case is the formalization of knowledge through the systematization of accumulated
experience with different enamels, materialized in samples.
Experimenting may be seen as a creative combination and re-combination of
modes of doing in the light of an anticipated and emergent form. It is linked more to
playfulness, tentativeness, and emotionality than to rationality, as we shall see.
We now examine how realization comes about between playfulness and
tentativeness in the narrative of the goldsmith Marta:
It all began from an experiment like a game. [y] From nothing, yes, from nothing. I make a
series of chromatic matches, I play around with the colours [y] I often see matches,
likenesses, and I say “right, look, according to me, I could do this, I could do that, or this
time I’ll make a scale of colours, I’ll contrast them, so I’ll play around” There’s no
inspiration like when you say “Gotcha!”. Or there may have been, or it might come to you,
but most of the time you go ahead by trial and error [y] I like this, I like that, you take
the colours and you say “beautiful, this with this, transparent with non-transparent,
opaline mixed with non-opaline, mixed like this [y] it’s an alchemy, you stand there, you
try things out.
Marta refers to the creative experience realized through experimentation by using the
evocative expression “it’s an alchemy”, which evokes an almost magical equilibrium
not possible to explain with standardized rules, but which springs from her passion for
her work and her search for innovative results through experimentation. The idea of
experimentation as play is crucial. As Marta says, it is not a matter of sudden and
brilliant inspiration, but rather of following a series of suggestions that arise in the
course of the formative activity itself and prompt the mixing of colours, letting oneself
be led by taste in a ludic dimension where emotions, sensible knowledge, and aesthetic
judgement lead the process.
When narrating episodes of practical creativity, the craftswomen referred to
a visceral relationship with the material which could not be expressed with
logical-formal language but was represented through an evocative narrative style in
 QROM which the belly appears as the place of the knowing body. An example is provided by
9,2 Marta, a goldsmith who makes jewels using unusual materials like resin:
We make a lot of things, and very different things, in the sense that we don’t repeat things
in series, we make things felt with the belly, we make them because we like them and realize
them.
In this case, the relationship with the object is described as being “felt with the belly”:
144 the narration draws on a corporeal and pre-reflexive dimension expressly associated
with pleasure. In this excerpt in particular, pleasure is narrated as the desire to realize
only pieces that are liked, and which are therefore not produced in series.
Another example of the viscerality of the relation with material is described by
Claudia, a fashion designer, who recounted her relationship with cloth as follows:
I can be inspired by the fabric. I’m there, I sniff the fabrics, I touch them, I have visceral
Downloaded by University of Sussex Library At 19:28 17 May 2016 (PT)

relationships with the things, so that I can be inspired by the cloth, I go and look at it, and
I say “Gosh, this fabric is just right for a coat I’m working on, with the neck like this [y]”.
The relationship with the fabric is described through sensory perceptions: sniffing,
touching, and looking are the verbs used to convey this physical and bodily
relationship. At the same time, however, sensoriality and the visceral relationship with
materiality are identified as the real sources of inspiration: not only does the fabric
arouse corporeal and sensorial reactions but it is so indissolubly embedded in the
formative process that it is at once a stimulus and the matter to be shaped. The
craftswoman associates the material (the fabric) with the accomplished form (“a coat
that I’m working on, with the neck like this”), discursively representing how sensible
knowledge and matter are entangled within the forming process.
Realization moves forwards and backwards, as we just illustrated, but has its
momentum in the judgement of “a job done comme il faut”. We shall now discuss how
the judgement of what constitutes a proper realization is internal to the forming
process and to formativeness.

A proper realization
The question of personal satisfaction with “a proper realization” emerges even more
evidently from the story recounted by Sara, an art restorer:
I’ve done a small piece, but I’m not satisfied with it yet [y] I can see that the quality is
different, because retouching is a gut thing, it’s emotion, you must feel it here [points to her
abdomen], if you have an off day there’s nothing you can do [y].
The success itself of the restoration is inextricably bound up with the emotional
aspects of the work. Sara’s assertion that retouching is a “gut thing”, an emotion, and
that it must be felt, highlights the visceral relationship with the matter, the work of
giving form to an object and its successful outcome. Sara continues:
You can’t do things because you’ve learned a technique; you must do things because you’ve
understood the picture. You must see and feel the painting.
Pareyson’s (1960) dictum that “the work is successful only if it is done as if it were
done by itself” (p. 74) acquires more meaningfulness in light of Sara’s explanation: one
must understand the work to be able to restore it; and understanding the work entails
not only knowing the techniques but understanding the painting and knowing the
historical period to which it belongs (not all eighteenth-century paintings can be
treated in the same way).
 A work is “accomplished” in so far as its doing comprises the way in which it must Between the
be done. And this is both the emotion of whoever contemplates a well-accomplished hand and
work and the sense of the expression “a job done comme il faut”.
the head
5. Discussion and conclusion
Per-forming creativity
The study of creativeness has been predominantly concerned with the realization of 145
works of art and with the unique abilities of artists. Aesthetic philosophy and psychology
have been the disciplines most concerned with the study of individual creativity. Also in
the field of science and the production of new ideas, the creativeness of scientists has
been set more in relation to individuals (and therefore in the idealist tradition of thought)
than to the practical and material context in which innovation practices take place
(Mialet, 1999). Only recently have creativeness, the creative industries, and the creatives
Downloaded by University of Sussex Library At 19:28 17 May 2016 (PT)

of the knowledge economy attracted the attention of organization studies because of the
apparent oxymoron between inventive activity and the standardized and organized
activity typical of bureaucracies (Rickards et al., 2009; Mumford, 2012).
We may say that in any working practice there is an intrinsic tension and union
between production and invention. Nevertheless, why and how an individual is
constituted as creative or inventive is the outcome of a discursive practice that frames
creativity within art, science, or organization. If creativity is made to descend from its
pedestal of exceptionality, and if one considers practical creativity and the practices of
creativity – as we did in our empirical research – another discursive space can be
framed, one in which creativity is an eminently practical, collective, and material
process. Creativeness therefore is not contained in the psyches of particular individuals
but rather in the objects, techniques, and materials that those individuals manipulate
to produce ideas or objects that materialize creativity. Creative practices thus become
“a way of ordering imaginative relations to social or physical environments in a
manner that is organized, and thus routine” (Brown et al., 2010, p. 527).
We have defined and empirically investigated practical creativity as a process,
situated within working practices, which establishes connections-in action between the
material and immaterial elements that constitute a practice so that they are bound
together within a form. It is therefore a process of forming and a situated “doing” which
invents its way of doing as it proceeds towards realization of the object. Formativeness
is defined as a “doing” such that while it does, it invents the “way of doing”.

Formativeness
In both art and industriousness there is the tentative feature of intrinsic tension and
union between production and invention. Simultaneously invented in doing is the “way
of doing”: realization is only achieved by proceeding by tentativeness, playfulness, and
experimentation to the result, thus producing works that are “forms”. Forming also
requires a relationship with materiality, because forming means forming a material,
and the work is nothing other than formed material. In the process of formation of
matter, the work also acts as a formant even before it exists as formed.
In order to discuss the process whereby doing and knowing unite into a form, we
have borrowed the concept of formativeness from the aesthetic philosophy of
Pareyson[4], rediscovered within organizational aesthetics (Strati, 1999).
Pareyson’s aesthetic theory is an aesthetics of production – as opposed to an
aesthetics of contemplation – and it concerns the becoming of the form, i.e. the outcome
of a formation process. Pareyson is fascinated by the idea of human life as the
 QROM invention of forms which acquire lives of their own: they detach themselves from their
9,2 creators and become models, engendering styles. There is hence a formative character
in the whole of human industriousness, and art is a specific domain of this
formativeness: it is more a “doing” than an expressing or a contemplating (Pareyson,
1960, p. v). Pareyson proposes that a work of art be regarded as pure formativeness,
and the topic of his book on aesthetics is the work of art in its process of forming and
146 being formed. But he also writes: “if all spiritual life is formative, behold the possibility
of beauty possessed by every work, be it speculative, practical or utilitarian [y] and
formative, too, is the sensible knowledge that grasps every ‘thing’, producing it, and
‘forming thereof’ the image, so that this is ‘accomplished’ and reveals and captures,
indeed is the thing” (Pareyson, 1960, p. vii).
The realization of the object of a practice (as we discussed in relation to Elisabetta,
the tailoress) therefore emerges from a formative process in which an attempt is made
Downloaded by University of Sussex Library At 19:28 17 May 2016 (PT)

to produce the image that renders the “thing”, and the outcome of knowing is seeing
the “thing” formed. Particularly evident in the production of objects is the performative
and creative aspect that characterizes every “doing”, even when it consists in thinking
or acting: “one does not operate without completing, performing, producing, realizing”
(Pareyson, 1960, p. 6). A work is “accomplished” in so far as its doing comprises the
way in which it must be done.

Formativeness as discovery and invention

In the doing that invents its way of doing there is the sense of progressing towards the
final result, attempting, and correcting and re-doing; there is the inspiration and the
elaboration of an intuition; there is improvisation and exercise; there is domination over
the material that opposes resistance and enjoys obedience; there is technique and the
language of style.
We have illustrated empirically how the object of practice emerges from a texture of
connections established in tentative form by experimenting, playing, and transferring
from one field to another a form or a material through hybridizations or translations.
It can therefore be said that formativeness is what leads to the realization process along
a tortuous path and according to a logical (i.e. contingent but repeatable) practice.
The doing which invents the way of doing comprises improvisation (Weick, 1999) and
reflection in action (Schön, 1983); but unlike the manner in which these responses
have been analysed by Weick and Schön (as well as many other authors in the
phenomenological tradition), these do not arise from a breakdown or from a suspension
of the action to introduce distance and therefore reflection. Instead, they are
constitutive of the emergence of a course of action that tends towards realization.
Doing and knowing are not separate; neither does the one follow the other, nor does the
one constitute an application of the other. With the concept of formativeness, one fully
grasps the co-emergence of production and invention, of materiality and formativeness,
of the knowledge produced and the process of its production.
Through the golden rule of craft knowledge, moreover, we can see two other aspects
of formativeness: one relative to discursive practices as the work proceeds, the other to
how the work is realized. First, the limits of language in expressing practical
knowledge have been interpreted in various ways, as tacit knowledge and personal
knowledge (Polanyi, 1958; Collins, 2001) or as pre-reflexive and embodied knowledge
(Merleau-Ponty, 1945). To these two ways of understanding tacitness we must now
add a further two, which we have discussed in relation to sensible knowledge.
Knowing through the senses requires the mediation of a vocabulary and a language
 if it is to be expressed in abstract and decontextualized form, while showing, making Between the
seen, and comparing, ground the sense and the possibility of an intersubjective hand and
understanding on materiality. Secondly, the tacitness of contextual knowledge makes
us consider that what is opaque and difficult to express through direct language is the the head
embedding of knowledge and action in a social context and in shared social rules. This
consideration, which we now make explicit as we discuss our empirical data, was
illustrated on several occasions in the passages selected from the narratives, and it is 147
for this reason that we have presented the data seeking to conserve the sense of the
episode that the narrator has chosen in order to illustrate a point in her discourse. The
episode recreates the sense of a situation and uses a richness of language subjectively
intended to put the listener in the situation and simultaneously to position (Davies and
Harré, 1990) the ego narrating and performing a narrative identity. The episode, in fact,
presents the context, which serves as the background to the logic of the practice and
Downloaded by University of Sussex Library At 19:28 17 May 2016 (PT)

which contains the “inherited knowledge” with which craftswomen make sense of the
task at hand. Unlike the artist, whose work is pure performativity, the craftsperson
works within practices of creativity that contemporize a network of other actors, a
market and a reproducibility of works which take account of criteria of economy and
not only aesthetic ones. Negotiated within this texture of relations are the criteria used
to evaluate practices and their objects.
The addition of the term “formativeness” to the vocabulary of practice-based
studies contributes a concept able to qualify knowledge as a situated activity and
therefore to make visible that process of creating knowledge while the object of the
practice is realized.
Notes
1. We are grateful to our four co-interviewers (Attila Bruni, Francesca Gennai, Michela
Giampietro, and Linda Musacchio Adorisio) in the first round of interviews. The second
author was the main interviewer for the second round of interviews.
2. We were helped in our intention by the local Artisan Association and by the presentation of
our research project to each interviewed person by two of its members – Anita Da Col and
Elisa Armeni – to whom we are grateful.
3. In order to protect the craftwomen’s privacy have we changed their names.
4. Luigi Pareyson (1954-1971) was an Italian hermeneutic and existentialist philosopher. In his
book Estetica he “formulated the problem of dealing with inexhaustible processes of
irreducible differences that concern aesthetics by stating that reality is completely independent
of thought. [y] Pareyson describes interpretation as reconstruction of the process underlying
the text to be interpreted” (Strati, 1999, p. 78). Forming means giving shape, and it involves the
interpretative activity of the person and the re-proposing of difference.

References
Bijker, W.E. (1995), Of Bicycles, Bakelites and Bulbs. Toward a Theory of Sociotechnical Change,
MIT Press, Cambridge, MA.
Blackler, F. (1995), “Knowledge, knowledge work and organizations: an overview and
interpretation”, Organization Studies, Vol. 16, pp. 1021-1046.
Blackler, F. and Regan, S. (2009), “Intentionality, agency, change: practice theory and
management”, Management Learning, Vol. 40 No. 2, pp. 161-176.
Brown, J. and Duguid, P. (1991), “Organizational learning and communities of practice: toward
a unified view of working, learning and bureaucratization”, Organization Science, No. 2,
pp. 40-57.
 QROM Brown, A.D., Gabriel, Y. and Gherardi, S. (2009), “Storytelling and change: an unfolding story”,
Organization, Vol. 16 No. 3, pp. 323-333.
9,2 Brown, A.D., Kornberger, M., Clegg, S.R. and Carter, C. (2010), “Invisible walls’ and ‘silent
hierarchies’: a case study of power relations in an architecture firm”, Human Relations,
Vol. 63 No. 4, pp. 525-549.
Clark, A. (2003), “Situational analysis: grounded theory mapping after postmodern turn”,
148 Symbolic Interaction, Vol. 26 No. 4, pp. 553-576.
Clegg, S.R., Kornberger, M. and Rhodes, C. (2005), “Learning/becoming/organizing”,
Organization, Vol. 12 No. 2, pp. 147-167.
Cohen, I.J. (1996), “Theories of action and praxis”, in Turner, B.S. (Ed.), The Blackwell Companion
to Social Theory, Blackwell Publishers, Cambridge, MA, pp. 111-142.
Collins, H.M. (2001), “What is tacit knowledge?”, in Schatzki, T.R., Knorr-Cetina, K. and
von Savigny, E. (Eds), The Practice Turn in Contemporary Theory, Routledge, London,
Downloaded by University of Sussex Library At 19:28 17 May 2016 (PT)

pp. 115-128.
Cunliffe, A.L. (2001), “Managers as practical authors: reconstructing our understanding of
management practice”, Journal of Management Studies, Vol. 38 No. 3, pp. 351-371.
Czarniawska, B. (1997), Narrating the Organization, Dramas of Institutional Identity, University
of Chicago Press, Chicago, IL.
Davidson, D. (1984), Inquiries into Truth and Interpretations, Oxford University Press, Oxford.
Davies, B. and Harré, R. (1990), “Positioning: the discursive production of selves”, Journal for the
Theory of Social Behaviour, Vol. 20 No. 1, pp. 43-63.
Engeström, Y. (1999), “Expansive visibilization of work: an activity theoretical perspective”,
Computer Supported Cooperative Work, Vol. 8, pp. 63-93.
Flick, U. (2000), “Episodic interviewing”, in Bauer, M.W. and Gaskell, G. (Eds), Qualitative
Researching with Text, Image and Sound, SAGE, London, pp. 75-92.
Fox, S. (2006), “Inquiries of every imaginable kind: ethnomethodology, practical action and the
new socially situated learning theory”, The Sociological Review, Vol. 54 No. 3, pp. 426-445.
Gabriel, Y. (2000), Storytelling in Organizations. Facts, Fictions and Fantasies, Oxford University
Press, Oxford.
Gabriel, Y. (2008), Organizing Words, a Critical Thesaurus for Social and Organization Studies,
Oxford University Press, Oxford.
Gergen, K. (1985), “The social constructionist movement in modern psychology”, American
Psychologist, Vol. 4 No. 3, pp. 266-275.
Gherardi, S. (2000), “Practice-based theorizing on learning and knowing in organizations: an
introduction”, Organization, Vol. 7 No. 2, pp. 211-223.
Gherardi, S. (2006), Organizational Knowledge: The Texture of Workplace Learning, Blackwell,
Oxford.
Gherardi, S. (2011), “Organizational learning: the sociology of practice”, in Easterby-Smith, M.
and Lyles, M. (Eds), The Blackwell Handbook of Organizational Learning and Knowledge
Management, Blackwell, Oxford, Melbourne, Berlin and Malden, MA, pp. 43-65.
Gherardi, S. and Nicolini, D. (2002), “Learning in a constellation of interconnected practices:
canon or dissonance?”, Journal of Management Studies, Vol. 39 No. 4, pp. 419-436.
Gherardi, S. and Poggio, B. (2007), Gender telling in Organizations: Narratives from
Male-Dominated Environments, Liber, Stockholm and Malmö.
Glaser, B.G. and Strauss, A. (1967), The Discovery of Grounded Theory. Strategies for Qualitative
Research, Weindenfeld and Nicolson, London.
Latour, B. (2005), Reassembling the Social. An Introduction to Actor Network Theory, Oxford
University Press, Oxford.
 Lave, J. and Wenger, E. (1991), Situated Learning: Legitimate Peripheral Participation, University Between the
Press, Cambridge, MA.
hand and
Licoppe, C. (2008), “Dans le ‘carre de l’activite’: perspectives internationales sur le travail et
l’activite”, Sociologie du Travail, Vol. 50 No. 3, pp. 287-302. the head
Merleau-Ponty, M. (1945), Fénomenologie de la Perception, Edition Gallimard, Paris.
Mialet, H. (1999), “Do angels have bodies? Two stories about subjectivity in science: the case of
William X and Mister H”, Social Studies of Science, Vol. 29 No. 4, pp. 551-581. 149
Miettinen, R., Samra-Fredericks, D. and Yanow, D. (2009), “Re-turn to practice: an introductory
essay”, Organization Studies, Vol. 30 No. 12, pp. 1309-1327.
Mumford, M. (Ed.) (2012), Handbook of Organizational Creativity, Elsevier, London.
Nicolini, D. (2011), “Practice as the site of knowing. Insights from the field of telemedicine”,
Organization Science, Vol. 22, pp. 602-620.
Downloaded by University of Sussex Library At 19:28 17 May 2016 (PT)

Orlikowski, W.J. (2002), “Knowing in practice: enacting a collective capability in distributed

organizing”, Organization Science, Vol. 13, pp. 249-273.
Orlikowski, W.J. (2007), “Sociomaterial practices: exploring technology at work”, Organization
Studies, Vol. 28 No. 9, pp. 1435-1448.
Østerlund, C. and Carlile, P. (2005), “Relations in practice: sorting through practice theories on
knowledge sharing in complex organizations”, The Information Society, Vol. 21, pp. 91-107.
Pareyson, L. (1960), Estetica: Teoria della Formatività, Zanichelli, Bologna.
Pickering, A. (1995), The Mangle of Practice: Time, Agency, and Science, University of Chicago
Press, Chicago, IL.
Poggio, B. (2004), Il Metodo Narrativo nelle Scienze Sociali, Carocci, Roma.
Polanyi, M. (1958), Personal Knowledge. Towards a Post-Critical Philosophy, University of Chicago
Press, Chicago, IL.
Rhodes, C. and Pullen, A. (2009), “Narrative and stories in organizational research: an exploration
of gendered politics in research methodology”, in Buchanan, D. and Bryman, A. (Eds), The
Sage Handbook of Organizational Research Methods, Sage, London, pp. 583-601.
Rickards, T., Runco, M. and Moger, S. (2009), The Routledge Companion to Creativity, Routledge,
London.
Sandberg, J. and Dall’Alba, G. (2009), “Returning to practice anew: a life-world perspective”,
Organization Studies, Vol. 30 No. 12, pp. 1349-1368.
Sandberg, J. and Tsoukas, H. (2011), “Grasping the logic of practice: theorizing through practical
rationality”, Academy of Management Review, Vol. 36 No. 2, pp. 338-360.
Schatzki, T.R. (2001), “Introduction. Practice theory”, in Schatzki, T.R., Knorr-Cetina, K. and
von Savigny, E. (Eds), The Practice Turn in Contemporary Theory, Routledge, London,
pp. 1-14.
Schatzki, T.R. (2005), “Peripheral vision. The sites of organizations”, Organization Studies,
Vol. 26 No. 3, pp. 465-484.
Schön, D. (1983), The Reflective Practitioner. How Professionals Think in Action, Basic Books,
New York, NY.
Shotter, J. (2012), “Knowledge in transition: the role of prospective, descriptive concepts in a
practice-situated, hermeneutical-phronetic social science”, Management Learning, Vol. 43
No. 3, pp. 245-260.
Shotter, J. and Katz, A.M. (1996), “Articulating a practice from within the practice itself:
establishing formative dialogues by the use of a ‘social poetics’”, Concepts and
Transformation, Vol. 1 Nos 2/3, pp. 213-237.
Strati, A. (1999), Organization and Aesthetics, Sage, London.
 QROM Strati, A. (2007), “Sensible knowledge and practice-based learning”, Management Learning,
Vol. 38 No. 1, pp. 61-77.
9,2
Suchman, L. (2000), “Organizing alignment: a case of bridge-building”, Organization, Vol. 7 No. 2,
pp. 311-328.
Suchman, L. (2007), Human-Machine Reconfigurations: Plans and Situated Actions, 2nd ed.,
Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.
150 Tsoukas, H. (2005), Complex Knowledge. Studies in Organizational Epistemology, Oxford
University Press, Oxford.
Tsoukas, H. (2009), “A dialogical approach to the creation of new knowledge in organizations”,
Organization Science, Vol. 20 No. 6, pp. 941-957.
Tsoukas, H. and Vladimirou, E. (2001), “What is organizational knowledge?”, Journal of
Management Studies, Vol. 38 No. 7, pp. 973-993.
Turner, B.A. (1981), “Some practical aspects of qualitative data analysis: one way of organizing
Downloaded by University of Sussex Library At 19:28 17 May 2016 (PT)

the cognitive processes associated with the generation of grounded theory”, Quality and
Quantity, Vol. 15 No. 3, pp. 225-247.
Weick, K.E. (1999), “The aesthetic of imperfection in orchestras and organizations”, in Cuhnam, M.P.
and Marques, C.A. (Eds), Readings in Organization Science, Instituto Superior de Psicologia
Aplicada, Lisboa, pp. 541-563.
Wittgenstein, L. (1953), Philosophical Investigations, (Trans by GEM Anscombe) Blackwell, Oxford.
Yanow, D. and Tsoukas, H. (2009), “What is reflection-in-action? A phenomenological account”,
Journal of Management Studies, Vol. 46 No. 8, pp. 1349-1364.

About the authors

Dr Silvia Gherardi is a Full-Time Professor of Sociology of Work at the Faculty of Sociology
of the University of Trento, Italy, where she has been the Director of the Research Unit on
Communication, Organizational Learning, and Aesthetics (www.unitn.it/rucola) since 1993.
She has a degree in Sociology and has been trained in Sociology of Organization at the Faculty of
Sociology of the University of Exeter (UK). In 2005 she was named Doctor Honoris Causa by the
Roskilde University (DK), in 2008 Honorary Member of the European Group for Organizational
Studies (EGOS), and in 2010 she was named Doctor Honoris Causa by the Kuopio University (FI).
Areas of interest include the exploration of different “soft” aspects of knowing at work and
in organizations, with a peculiar emphasis for cognitive, emotional, symbolic, and linguistic
aspects of organizational process. At present she is studying the problem of knowledge
management from a practice-based perspective and finalized a collection of papers on the topic.
Dr Silvia Gherardi is the corresponding author and can be contacted at: silvia.gherardi@unitn.it
Dr Manuela Perrotta is currently a Post-doctoral Fellow at the Department of Interdisciplinary
Studies of Culture, Faculty of Humanities, Norwegian University of Science and Technology
(Norway). She received a PhD in Information Systems and Organizations, in 2008, Faculty of
Sociology of the University of Trento (Italy). Her main research interests concern the relation
among learning, work and innovation in organizations, and qualitative methodologies for
organizational research.

To purchase reprints of this article please e-mail: reprints@emeraldinsight.com

Or visit our web site for further details: www.emeraldinsight.com/reprints
 This article has been cited by:

1. Michelle A. Kelly, Elizabeth Berragan, Sissel Eikeland Husebø, Fiona Orr. 2016. Simulation in Nursing
Education-International Perspectives and Contemporary Scope of Practice. Journal of Nursing Scholarship
48:3, 312-321. [CrossRef]
2. Donna Rooney, Nick Hopwood, David Boud, Michelle Kelly. 2015. The Role of Simulation in Pedagogies
of Higher Education for the Health Professions: Through a Practice-Based Lens. Vocations and Learning
8:3, 269-285. [CrossRef]
3. Prof. Barry O'Mahoney Marc Stierand Ecole hôtelière de Lausanne, Lausanne, Switzerland and University
of Applied Sciences Western Switzerland (HES-SO), Delémont, Switzerland Laura Zizka Ecole hôtelière
de Lausanne, Lausanne, Switzerland and University of Applied Sciences Western Switzerland (HES-SO),
Delémont, Switzerland . 2015. Reflecting on hospitality management education through a practice lens.
Quality Assurance in Education 23:4, 353-363. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]
Downloaded by University of Sussex Library At 19:28 17 May 2016 (PT)

4. 2015. United by formativeness. Strategic Direction 31:1, 9-11. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]