Architecture of Social Learning and Knowing: Using Social Learning and Knowing Perspectives and Design Thinking to Frame and Create Change in a Workplace Redesign Project (original) (raw)
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Doctoral dissertation, Northcentral University] ProQuest 13812733, 2019
Organizational success is dependent on innovation, which is dependent upon the creation of new knowledge, and thus was an important area for new research. Architectural designers and environmental psychologists identified a causal relationship between a physical environment and the behavior of its occupants. The general problem was the absence of evidence-based guidance to plan employee workspace in organizational strategic decisions to support knowledge creation, organizational learning, and innovation. The specific problem for this research effort was to reduce the theoretical uncertainty concerning a wide range of physical space attributes and spatial arrangements, which enable or hinder knowledge functions. The concept of architectural determinism indicated architectural design affected human behavior as an independent variable of cause and effect. This study integrated the focused results of previous researchers on the separate features of the physical environment. This study gathered technical information about workspaces in various building structures for architects, organizational managers, and knowledge-workers to consider in construction projects for the selection of physical space attributes to enhance results as ideation and knowledge sharing. The theoretical lens included the organizational knowledge creation (OKC) theory and the socio-technical systems (STS) theory. This study explored the physical space attributes where 11 knowledge workers created new knowledge and shared their new knowledge with others. The participants contributed to both radical and incremental innovations, 64% and 36% respectively. This research followed the biographical narrative interpretive method open narrative interview style. Coding protocols separated the data for the actual physical space attributes experienced by knowledge creators and knowledge workers. The findings included, access, indoor environment quality (air quality, lighting, noise, thermal comfort), room characteristics (colors, condition, shape, type, andceilings), biophilics, furnishings, pictures, technology, and windows (daylight and views). This study found how stimulation outside of ideation spaces, windows in ideation spaces, and standing and walking in collaboration spaces contributed to knowledge creation and sharing. Further, this study found why: windows, standing and walking, isolation and quiet rooms, pictures, daylight spectrum lighting, standing desks, and thermal comfort contributed to knowledge creation; and why soundproof collaboration spaces and thermal comfort contributed to knowledge sharing. Specific contributions of this research study expanded the understanding of how knowledge creators use window views to expand their mind space for new thoughts, and recommended future research on substitutions for the stimulation of window views. Furthermore, the role of isolation and quiet spaces to prevent the loss of knowledge creators’ train of thought requires future research when the knowledge creator is out walking to experience sensory stimulation while thinking. Future researchers should also explore use of the proposed triangulation instrument for a virtual focus group as a modified nominal group technique to expand use of triangulation to increase transparency and the usefulness of any qualitative research findings. Keywords: architectural determinism, collaborative spaces, creativity, disruptive innovation, environmental psychology, front-end of innovation, ideation, incremental innovation, innovative continuum, knowledge creation, knowledge sharing, organizational knowledge creation, physical space, radical innovation, service sector, socio-technical systems, strategic innovation, workplace design https://www.proquest.com/dissertations-theses/knowledge-creation-within-boundaries-physical/docview/2203580022/se-2
… Conference of Flexible …, 1995
Companies are seeking new ways to manage learning and competence in order to improve company performance and competitiveness. Researchers and practitioners alike appear to be reaching a consensus that organizational learning is a key strategic variable in order to cope with this shift. In this paper the organizational issues are also viewed in a technical and spatial context. According to earlier experience we looked for more complex interactions between the use of space, technical systems and the organization of work. Methods used are interviews, a questionnaire and a collective design process resulting in an actual redesign of the premises. The design activity was a learning process that led to better understanding and ability to continually manage and redesign organization, space and technical systems in order to reach the most appropriate combination between these dynamically dependent production factors. Learning Quality Productivity QWL Buildings Space Human Factors Technology
Proceedings of the 46th Annual Meeting of the International Society for the System Sciences , 2002
We propose a framework for designers of business organizations and designers of information systems that portrays three forms of "space" that mediate social interactions: physical space, social space and informatic space. The framework aids organizational designers and information technology designers to understand some of the complexities of enabling knowledge work, by contrasting the properties of the spaces and their interactions: Social interaction enabled by physical spaces is the focus of architects of buildings and urban planners, managers locating individuals and team who work together, and conference organizers who plan events to encourage networking. Social interaction enabled by social spaces is the focus of organizational designers who develop supporting social structures such as centers of excellence or practitioner support networks. Social interaction enabled by informatic spaces is the focus of knowledge architects and process analysts, who administer and moderate groupware and workflow applications. In addition, Informatic spaces hosted in physical spaces are the focus of Information Technology architects, who ensure appropriate geographical coverage, performance, availability and security through appropriate computer hardware and software (e.g. servers, access points and networks). Since the ways in which knowledge work can be carried out vary from person to person across a community, and innovations are naturally introduced over time, an enabling infrastructure should be capable of adaptation to those changed needs. We draw on research in general systems theory, architectural theory, and social theory to inform our practices in advising on business design, and methods and tools for information modeling.
Designing space to support knowledge work
Environment and Behavior, 2007
Based on spatial analysis, network analysis, self-assessment questionnaires, field discussions and accounting documents, the authors discuss how workplace design and spatial layout support productivity in a communication design organization. The authors suggest that the impact of design goes beyond supporting more intense patterns of interaction and smoother flows of information. Workplace design and layout provide an intelligible framework within which collective knowledge is continuously explored, represented, interpreted, and transformed in relation to ongoing projects. Thus, the structure of space supports an organizational culture with cognitive functions.
Learning to Change Together: The Social Context of Architectural Learning
The International Journal of Arts Education, 2014
In architectural education learning is often structured to inform and support change to sustainable design and behaviour. The built and natural contexts in which this learning takes place is considered an important element in informing the new ways of seeing and knowing our environments required for change. Yet the social context of learning also affects the opportunities for such transformative learning experiences. This paper discusses how this social context can influence the way in which the learner interacts with the built and natural environment and how this in turn can support transformation. Recent experiences of different models of learning in the US, New Zealand and Australia are used to demonstrate the contexts-social, natural and built-in which learning about the environment in general, and architecture specifically, takes place. An ethnomethodological approach has been taken to develop an understanding of how meaning is made through learning experiences, and how this influences behaviour. Through observations and documentation the nature of social interchange, the role of the natural and built environments and the effect on the learning experiences, both formal and informal, on behaviour are explored. Findings from this investigation will inform the development of a framework for architectural education.
2010
Theories of space and the physical reality of organisations have been widely ignored by organisational theory, as Clegg and Kornberger asserted in their 2006 edited volume on „Space, Organisations and Management Theory‟. To contribute to the understanding of the spatiality of organisations and the organisational implications of space, this paper suggests investigating the multiple networks in which people engage. Considering that an organisation can be described as a „social unit with some particular purposes‟ (Shafritz et al. 2005) the basic phenomenon to investigate in organisational theory could be seen as humans and their relationships, aiming to achieve certain goals. Those relationships between people can either be governed by spatial rules, such as proximity or visibility, but also by transpatial rules, which includes conceptual closeness between people such as common preferences, attitudes or behaviours. Drawing on an overview of network related theories of social form, i.e....
Computers in Human Behavior, 2014
This is a theoretical paper about artifacts that have been designed to enable processes of collaborative knowledge creation and innovation. We refer to these artifacts as Enabling Spaces, and they comprise architectural, technological (ICT), social, cognitive, organizational, cultural, as well as emotional dimensions. The paper claims that innovation is a highly challenging social and epistemological process which needs to be facilitated and enabled through supporting (infra-)structures. Our starting point is that innovation can no longer be understood as a mechanistic knowledge creation process. The process of enabling is introduced as an alternative to such traditional approaches of innovation. Enabling is the main design principle that underpins Enabling Spaces and ICT plays an important role in it. These concepts will be illustrated by a case study and concrete examples. The paper culminates in the derivation of a set of design principles, ICT based and otherwise, for Enabling Spaces.
Envisioning the future architecture of knowledge creation
11th EAD Conference Proceedings: The Value of Design Research, 2016
The process of knowledge production deeply depends on often tacit and inexplicable experiences deeply rooted in the material world in such a way that it becomes a computational medium .
THE SOCIAL CONSTRUCTION OF KNOWLEDGE IN ARCHITECTURAL DESIGN STUDIO
This paper discusses the experience of the First Design Studio in the undergraduate program of the School of Architecture and Urbanism, Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Our practice is based on the theory of the social construction of knowledge - a process of transformation of the reality that: (a) starts from practice (syncrisis), (b) theorizes from this practice (analysis), and (c) returns to the initial practice in order to transform it (synthesis). Complemented by architectural programming methods and techniques, the partial results of the work suggest new promising perspectives for the practice of teaching architecture design, stimulating students to assure their condition of “social-historical-cultural” subjects in the act of perceiving.