| Using ethnographic techniques of participant observation, my dissertation investigates how skilled workers develop and distribute knowledge on the factory floor of a semiconductor process equipment manufacturer. The engineers, technicians and assemblers involved in the production process have distinct work practices and occupational cultures, yet must share their knowledge in order to produce a viable product. One difficulty in communication between these occupational groups is the different perspective each takes toward the production process. These perspectives, or interpretive schemes, are developed through people's encounters with the technology in their daily work and have consequences for the communication of knowledge and organizational learning.;Communication across occupational boundaries is contingent on the groups' use of boundary objects and language. Technicians mediate the communication process, because they use the boundary objects and speak the languages of both engineering and manufacturing. Most of the misunderstandings in production occur between engineers and assemblers, who do not share a boundary object or language, and I demonstrate how these miscommunications are resolved. I also investigate the social dynamics of learning in this organization, showing how the encoding and use of engineering drawings is a complex social process affected by the occupational groups' interpretive schemes and their relationships with one another. Finally, I investigate the conditions under which cross-boundary learning occurs in the organization.;This study focuses on several occupations in a high-technology factory setting, thus expanding the tradition of field studies of the social organization of manufacturing work. The theory of organizational communication and learning I develop emerges from detailed observations of the content and social context of learning at work. Based on these observations, I examine not only how learning occurs within occupational communities, but, more importantly, how interactions between members of different occupations affect organization-wide learning. This grounded theory of learning contributes to our understanding of the dynamics of coordination, communication, and knowledge sharing that occur within all organizations. |
