Knowledge that Transforms

The paper discusses some of the main contributions to the theory of communities of practice (COP theory), especially as it relates to organizational learning. The paper does not attempt a full overview but concentrates on the notion of power relations. Early COP theory was formulated as part of situated learning theory, and promised to work on issues of social context and unequal power relations. Foucault’s work and actor‐network theory (ANT) is introduced and forms the basis of a constructive critique of COP theory. The paper argues that COP theory and ANT can enrich each other and together make a stronger contribution to our understanding of organizational learning. Specifically, these perspectives question the value in viewing organizations as formal, canonical entities as far as learning and change are concerned.

Most research on corporate directors has focused on two roles: agency and resource dependence. While these two roles are theoretically and practically distinct, previous research has used the same classification scheme for measuring board composition regardless of role examined. Our paper examines the resource dependence role of directors and posits that the widely used insider/outsider categorizations do not adequately capture this role of directors. A taxonomy of directors is presented specifically for studying the resource dependence role. We then apply the taxonomy to a sample of US airline firms undergoing deregulation, and examine how board composition changes parallel the changing resource dependence needs of the firms. We conclude that the board’s function as a link to the external environment is an important one, and that firms respond to significant changes in their external environment by altering board composition.

The paper reports a study of the post‐acquisition integration process in three foreign acquisitions made by Swedish multinationals. Detailed interview data and questionnaire responses in both acquiring and acquired firms are presented. The sub‐processes of task integration and human integration are separated out and it is shown that effective integration in these cases was achieved through a two‐phase process. In phase one, task integration led to a satisficing solution that limited the interaction between acquired and acquiring units, while human integration proceeded smoothly and led to cultural convergence and mutual respect. In phase two, there was renewed task integration built on the success of the human integration that had been achieved, which led to much greater interdependencies between acquired and acquiring units.