KNOWLEDGE SHARING IN PARTNERING: – REDUNDANCY, BOUNDARY OBJECTS AND BROKERS

This paper adopts practicebased theory for understanding interorganisational knowledge work and extents it with a discussion of the role of redundancy. The paper presents a case study of a project partnership in construction using the partnering concept. The project group responsible for the building design counts members from different companies like architects, engineers, and contractors. The paper discusses three central mechanisms for coordinating knowledge in a complex construction project, redundancy, relations, and governance. The knowledge relations is conceptualised through focusing on arenas (e.g. meetings), brokers (e.g. design manager), and boundary objects (e.g. drawings) . The constellation of firms is interpreted as a multiple configuration of communities of practices, characterised by overlapping practises, multiple memberships and different levels of participation. The diversity and disjunct feature of the practices is a condition of possibility of knowledge handling as it is a prerequisite for the synthesis of various forms of knowledge in the building construct. Here an orchestrated combination of relationbased interaction with boundary objects and brokers, requisite redundancy and governance is necessary.