Boundaries

471926
2013
MLQ45310.1177/1350507612471926Management LearningContu
Article
Management Learning
On boundaries and 2014, Vol. 45(3) 289–316

© The Author(s) 2013
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DOI: 10.1177/1350507612471926
of practice and power relations mlq.sagepub.com
in creative work
Alessia Contu
The University of Warwick, UK
Abstract
Tensions and struggles are a usual occurrence when knowledge ‘to get the job done’ needs to be produced
at the boundaries of different disciplines and skills. Yet, power struggles have been often overlooked,
and a deeper understanding of power dynamics in, and between, communities of practice is needed. An
ethnographic study of the work practices of a digital media agency is utilised as a basis for the conceptual
work of addressing tensions and struggles evident in creative design work. The approach developed here
reactivates the critical and relational perspectives of communities of practice theory rearticulating it with the
insights of Laclau and Mouffe’s site ontology. This study offers a transformative redefinition of communities
of practice’s existing theoretical kit. It also shows how creative abrasions are situated in the broader politics
of management and organisation of creative design work.
Keywords
Communities of practice, conflict, knowledge creation, learning, power, practice
Introduction
Leonard-Barton (1995) defines creative abrasions as sparks igniting a conflict among individuals
who work together but have different signature-skills, ideas and ways of seeing a particular task/
problem. As such, creative abrasions may appear to be a universal functional process proper to
knowledge-creation work. However, an attention to abrasions during creative and innovative prac-
tice-based studies of work has indicated that semantic, interpretative and epistemic differences
may affect knowledge creation and sharing and that issues of power and politics should also be
addressed (Carlile, 2004; Contu and Willmott, 2003; Wenger, 1998).
Organisational theorists have, indeed, developed an attention to power dynamics, but, as
Heinzmann (2011) suggests, many studies of power consider it as a ‘thing’, a resource (p. 381).
Knowledge in such studies is a scarce, valuable and heterogeneously distributed resource that
Corresponding author:
Alessia Contu, IROB, Warwick Business School, The University of Warwick, Coventry CV5, UK.
Email: alessia.contu@wbs.ac.uk
Downloaded from mlq.sagepub.com at UNIV MASSACHUSETTS BOSTON on November 3, 2015

290 Management Learning 45(3)
provides a key source of intra-organisational power and status (Bunderson and Reagans, 2011:
1188). Viewing power as the ability to mobilise a resource (such as knowledge) by pursuing per-
sonal and/or collective interests is ill at ease with practice-based theorising. As Feldman and
Orlikowski (2011) consider, this is because it neglects how a resource is enacted as such, that is, as
a resource in a complex web where knowledge, power relations and interests are mutually and
relationally constituted. Many practice-based studies have advanced the understanding of power
dynamics, but ‘this is still a significant research gap’ (Heinzmann, 2011: 381; Roberts, 2006). As
Levina and Orlikowski (2009) indicate, the organisational literature does not offer a deep under-
standing of power dynamics within and across communities and organisations, and there is no clear
articulation of how power relations are negotiated in the everyday practical accomplishments when
there are members with different status claims (p. 672). The aim of this article is to contribute such
a deep understanding of power dynamics in creative abrasions where differences (of skills, ideas
and ways of seeing a task/problem, communities and status, etc.) are significant. Specifically, a
deep understanding of power dynamics here means, first, to offer an understanding that is faithful
to the main tenets of knowing-in-practice and community of practice (CoP) theorising (e.g.
Gherardi, 2006; Wenger, 1998). This is achieved by showing how power dynamics in creative
abrasions can be studied in a way that does not revert to an understanding of knowledge and power
as a ‘thing’ or a ‘disposition’ but maintains an understanding of power (and knowledge) as a practi-
cal accomplishment embedded in practices (Orlikowski, 2002). Second, the suggestion is that in
such a perspective, a deep understanding of power dynamics also means to avoid reproducing
uncritically the duality between the macro-institutional structure and the micro-dynamics where
the creative practice is situated and its political dynamics is played up (e.g. Handley et al., 2006;
Wenger, 1998). The point, to use a metaphor, is that these should not be seen as the ‘container’ (the
macro-structure) and the ‘contained’ (the micro-political dynamics of the participation in the prac-
tice). Rather, to maintain rigour and consistency with the ontological assumptions of knowing-in-
practice and CoP theorising, one needs to problematise the duality between macro/micro
individualism and societism, therefore being faithful to what I call, like Schatzki (2005), the ‘site
ontology’ of this perspective. This is achieved here in two ways. First, by making explicit the onto-
logical assumptions and how this site ontology ‘reactivates’ (Laclau, 1990: 34) the relational and
critical vein of knowing-in-practice and CoP theorising (Lave, 2008; Lave and Wenger, 1991). This
contributes a revised set of conceptual tools for those working, or willing to work, with(in) this
perspective. Second, by showing how power not only can be usefully studied as a ‘thing’, that is,
a resource individuals use to further their want, but also can be considered ontologically as what
makes possible the constitutions/maintenance of difference and boundaries where a practice
becomes intelligible. As such, power is intertwined with the identity1 constitution of the subjects
participating in the practice and, more broadly, the constitution and reproduction of the practice
under study. This is something others have also suggested, particularly from a Foucauldian per-
spective (Fox, 2000; Heinzmann, 2011). The gap in Foucauldian-inspired studies of knowing-in-
practice is the neglect of the affective dimension that is important in knowledge-creation and other
organisational processes (e.g. Vince, 2001). It is this affective dimension that is also elaborated in
this article. The final contribution of this article is to recast creative abrasions. Such abrasions not
only offer an insight into what may, at first glance, appear as a functional process necessary for
creation of knowledge to occur at the boundaries where signature-skills are needed to accomplish
the task at hand but also offer an insight into a political process played at boundaries that is repro-
duced and reproduces a specific social fabric, a working order.
An ethnographic case study of the work practices of a digital media agency, called AML (a
pseudonym), is utilised as a basis for the conceptual work of addressing participation in creative

Contu 291
design work. The focus is on the vicissitudes of a team of ‘no-collars’ (Ross, 2004) while they
design a digital media solution. These professionals operate, as noted by De Fillippi et al. (2007),
between art and commerce, working at the boundaries of different practices, for example, technical
and creative, art and commerce, and so on. Given the theoretical stance depicted in this ‘Introduction’
section, the three research questions guiding the analysis are as follows: first, as suggested by Lave
(2008: 291, 293), (1) what is the complex practice under production? (2) what are the trajectories
of participation in the practices of the different subjects? and, additionally, given the attention to
power, (3) what are the power dynamics these trajectories enable us to ascertain?
What follows first lays out the building blocks of knowing-in-practice and CoP theory. Then, I
propose a perspective that provides the key theoretical coordinates for a version of CoP theory that
strengthens its critical and relational aspects. The methodology of the empirical research precedes
the analysis and reflections on the tensions and abrasions evident in the creative practice. The
results are summarised, and then, a discussion ensues where I reflect on the key contributions this
article offers, as outlined above: (a) a refined relational and critical knowing-in-practice and CoP
perspective that offers a deep understanding of power dynamics in knowledge-creation work inter-
twined with issues of identity and affect and (b) the politics of creative abrasions in digital media
design work.
Knowledge, power and CoP theory

As knowledge is recognised as a source of competitive advantage (Davenport and Prusak, 1998),
attention has been paid to the definition of knowledge (Tsoukas, 1996). Research has shown the
increasing importance of the tacit, diffuse and social dimension of knowledge embedded in prac-
tices individuals participate in (Nonaka and Takeuchi, 1995; Wenger, 1998) rather than it being
seen simply as a thing or individual disposition. This research heralds CoPs as sites for the creation
and transformation of knowledge and as potential sources of organisational innovation (Brown and
Duguid, 1991; Wenger et al., 2002). Lave and Wenger (1991) and Wenger (1998) elaborated this
view. A shaping, emerging CoP uses shared repertoires, language and artefacts in a process of
increasing mutual engagement where learning is an integral and inseparable aspect of social prac-
tice and involves the construction of identity through changing forms of participation in CoPs
(Handley et al., 2006: 643; Lave and Wenger, 1991: 52–53). CoPs, however, ‘cannot be seen in
isolation [ … ] or understood independently of other practices’ (Wenger, 1998: 103). There is
always a ‘nexus of practices’ (Nicolini, 2012) where boundaries are fundamental aspects of the
ways CoPs operate (Thompson, 2005). Boundaries mark a difference as they ‘refer to discontinui-
ties, to lines of distinctions between inside/outside, membership and non-membership, inclusion
and exclusion’ (Wenger, 1998: 120). It is at the boundaries that knowledge creation is often found
and where innovation often occurs or is thwarted (e.g. Carlile, 2002, 2004). Creative abrasions,
defined in the ‘Introduction’ section, are interesting because they offer a cue to creative work that
is done at the boundaries of different practices where clashes and tensions are evident, particularly
in the elaboration of boundary objects, abstract or concrete as they may be. Boundary objects
facilitate negotiation and are a means of translation, linking different identities, histories and prac-
tices (Wenger, 1998: 105–112).
Star and Griesemer (1989) define boundary objects as ‘an analytic concept of those objects
which both inhabit several intersecting social worlds and satisfy the informational requirements of
each of them’ (p. 393). As they remind us, at such points of heterogeneity and difference (i.e. at a
boundary), that consensus is not a given, and tensions are regular occurrences. These tensions are
addressed in the study of digital media designers. Rather than taking professional signature-skills

and status as ‘things’, that is, as given resources, practice-based students question what is evident
and focus on power dynamics by showing if and how signature-skills and status are enacted in the
participation in the practice as powerful resources, and following Lave and Wenger (1991: 42),
investigate what make such enactment (and participation) possible and what conditions it.
In attending to power dynamics in CoPs, I build on one of the versions (the one indebted to
Laclau and Mouffe’s work) of site ontology ‘according to which social life is tied to a context (site)
of which it is inherently a part’ (Schatzki, 2005: 465). This enables faithfulness to the main tenets
of knowing-in-practice in its critical and relational vein, which understands the world as ‘socially
constituted, [where] objective forms and systems of activity, on the one hand, and agents’ subjec-
tive and inter-subjective understanding of them on the other mutually constitute both the world and
its experience of it’ (Lave and Wenger, 1991: 51, emphasis added). To return to the metaphor of
container and contained, the ‘world’, the ‘context’ in such a practice-based relational perspective
cannot be simply seen as ‘the container’ (such as capitalist employment relations) where the micro-
power dynamics of CoPs are played up (cf. Handley et al., 2006: 644). One needs to attend to the
mutual co-constitution ‘of the world and the experience of it’. In this relational perspective, the
co-constitutive features of knowing, power and identity (Lave and Wenger, 1991: 47–58) have
been explored, and an interest in meaning (and, more broadly, discourse) has given significant
access to such co-constitution (Contu and Willmott, 2003, 2006; Gherardi, 2006; Oborn and
Dawson, 2010; Orlikowski, 2002; Wenger, 1998). I now provide the elements of the site ontology
that, articulating with the original intuitions of Lave and Wenger (1991), reactivate the critical
and relational view of CoP studies and indicate the sensitising concepts2 for the analysis of the
empirical material.
Situating our study: A site ontology

‘Site ontology’ is the name Schatzki (2005) gives to theoretical contributions to social and political
research, which are characterised by an attempt ‘to steer between individualism and societism’
(p. 469) by focusing on practice. Taylor, Bourdieu and Giddens are some of the authors who have
elaborated a practice theory where ‘the social is a contingent and perpetually metamorphosing
array of manifolds of human activity’ (Schatzki, 1997: 284). Unsurprisingly, these authors are
often cited in knowing-in-practice theorising (Gherardi, 2006). Site ontology specifies the onto-
logical shift needed to apprehend fully the potentials of the change in the ontic content in this field
of social and organisational research, that is, the focus on practice (Feldman and Orlikowski, 2011).
Site ontology is born out of the critique of (and limits in) analytical philosophy, phenomenology
and structuralism, that is, the crisis of representation and the breaking of the ‘illusion of immediacy
of a non-discursively mediated access to the things themselves – the referent, the phenomenon and
the sign’ (Laclau and Mouffe, 2001: xi). Site ontology, Schatzki (2005) explains in Heideggerian
terms, sees the space, the ontological opening or clearing, as the condition of possibility of the
social in which intelligibility emerges, therefore constituting the horizon of what is possible (p.
470). There are no different levels (or container and contained) but only one, the field of intelligi-
bility and what becomes intelligible as ‘this’ rather than ‘that’. Laclau and Mouffe, as Schatzki
(2005: 471) indicates, conceived of this horizon of what is possible as a field of discursivity, which
is inherently political.
Nicolini (2012), in his book on social practice, for example, signals the importance of Laclau
and Mouffe on a number of occasions, but does not delve into their significance. I, instead, think
with Laclau and Mouffe’s site ontology because, first, this gives prominence to the co-constitution
of power, meaning and identity, which, as indicated above, is key for those interested in

Contu 293
investigating organising and knowing-in-practice. There is a contiguity of thought. Second, it is a

novel and under-explored theoretical terrain for the field of practice-based theorising. Moreover, as
I aim to show in the discussion, the ‘articulation’ of Laclau and Mouffe’s (2001: 105) insights with
the concrete observations of innovative practices of design work is pregnant with consequences for
the study of CoP and knowing-in-practice. I now consider the key conceptual elements – practice,
power and identity – suggested as fundamental by Lave and Wenger (1991: 49–58) and articulate
them with the site ontology of Laclau and Mouffe.
Reactivating a relational and critical CoPs theory

The unit of analysis in knowing-in-practice and CoPs theory is situated practice. As Lave
(2008: 190) puts it, the fundamental research question in this field is always ‘what is the com-
plex practice under production’? As others in organisation studies have pointed out, when it
comes to studying knowing-in-practice, practice is qualified as a ‘discursive practice’
(Gherardi, 2006: 39, 154–159; Levina and Orlikowski, 2009: 673; Oborn and Dawson, 2010:
4, emphasis added). Any reference to practice, from now on, means ‘discursive practice’
because such a discursive shift bears witness to the site ontology indicated above. Discourse,
in Laclau’s site ontology, could be replaced by the word ‘practice’ (Bhaskar and Laclau, 2002:
81), and it is defined as a meaningful and structured system of difference (Laclau and Mouffe,
2001: 105–109). This is significant because ‘difference’ is a condition of the emergence of
what we comprehend and speak about. This emergence is a relational matter, entailing the
constitution of social relations and a meaningful way of life. ‘Discursive practices’ make sense
and, therefore, can be talked of exactly because asymmetries and differences constitute what
intelligible things one grasps/understands/talks about. For example, the meaning of the prac-
tice under study and its intelligible moments (Laclau and Mouffe, 2001: 106) suture the prac-
tice at once as being creative web design, teamwork, a job, a commercial activity, a passion
and so on. What becomes intelligible, such as social relations and the specific identities of the
subjects participating in it (e.g. expert/learner, technical/creative professional, manager/
worker), are the results of a sedimented yet continuous hegemonic struggle. This is defined as
the never-ending process of articulating and maintaining distinctions (the specific differences
between ‘this’ rather than ‘that’). Such articulation and sedimentation of differences never
entirely dispel negativity because it excludes, disavows and marginalises other possibilities
(Laclau, 1990: 27–28). This is why a hegemonic struggle is an exercise of power (Clegg et al.,
2006; Dyberg, 1997; Laclau, 1990).
I now theorise in more detail power and power relations in this site ontology. To clarify, there is
no direct value judgment directly associated with power. As for other contributors to knowing-in-
practice and CoP theory (Blacker and McDonald, 2000; Fox, 2000; Oborn and Dawson, 2010;
Vince, 2001), power is positive as far as it results in the constitution and reproduction of specific
intelligible identities and their relations (e.g. managers/workers and creative designers/developers).
It also retroactively effects the reproduction of broader relational meaningful configurations, for
example, digital solution, organisation and capitalist relations. Importantly, the very difference
between social identities (e.g. how an ‘expert content designer’ is different from a ‘novice content
designer’ or a ‘manager’ from a ‘worker’) can be constituted as sustaining (or not) unequal rela-
tions. Such social relations, as Laclau and Mouffe (2001: 153) suggest, where differences are dis-
cursively produced as constituting unequal relations that perpetuate subordination (one decides
over another) and oppression (where injustice is voiced) are identified here as ‘relations of power’
(see also Brown et al., 2010; Dyberg, 2006).

The meaning of ‘practice’ and ‘power’ has been articulated with the site ontology forwarded
here because these are key moments that, according to Lave and Wenger (1991), are to be deci-
phered in knowing-in-practice theory (pp. 52–59). The final element that needs to be articulated
is that of ‘identity’. Such conception of identity needs to be congruent with the critical and rela-
tional perspective discussed thus far. To be clear, identity here refers to the identity of the sub-
jects participating in the situated practice because, as seen earlier, ‘participation’ is the primary
moment in which knowing-in-practice and learning occur (Handley et al., 2006; Lave and
Wenger, 1991). Subjects are understood as speaking beings who become intelligible through
processes of identification with/in discourses (Alvesson and Willmott, 2002; Handley et al.,
2006; Heinzmann, 2011). Specifically, the identity of subjects participating in the practice
becomes intelligible when they reflect on themselves and their conditions of existence. In such
reflections, they position themselves and others as ‘this’ rather than ‘that’ (this is where their
discursive position emerges). In so doing, they form and revise their sense of self and that of
others (see also Alvesson and Willmott, 2000; Handley et al., 2006; Heinzmann, 2011). Yet,
importantly, these subjects are never determined by their discursive identifications nor are they
at one with them (Laclau, 1990).
This is for two reasons. The first is that discourses are not all. Discourses have limits and dislo-
cations that infect their stability and closeness (Glynos and Stavrakakis, 2004: 203–206; Laclau,
1990: 40). This point is similar to what, for example, Foucauldian-inspired authors have suggested
(Fox, 2000; Heinzmann, 2011: 382). However, the second related point signals a discontinuity with
this existing work and points towards a dimension that such studies do not consider, that is, dis-
courses are not all also in a positive sense. There is not only a form of the investment in an identi-
fication with a discourse but also a force, a quality, to the investment. This can be thought of as the
force of insisting in, embodying, such identification(s). This quality, which here is called enjoy-
ment, brings to the fore the affective dimension recognised as significant in situated learning and
other organisational processes (Grant et al., 2009: 225; Kofman and Senge, 1993; Vince, 2001).
Carlile, for example, refers to the notion of knowledge ‘at stake’ to gesture towards such a dimen-
sion. I specify this by suggesting that knowledge (and therefore a certain identity, competence and
way of being) is ‘at stake’ because it involves such affect. It is the enjoyment for, and in, what
matters that make knowledge ‘at stake’. In other words, meanings (i.e. specific, sutured signifying
chains of differences) are invested with a quality, a force of a desire that is of, and for, ‘this’ rather
than ‘that’. It circumscribes and directs a way of life that matters and is ‘at stake’ because it is
meaningful/significant for the subjects participating in the practice. To be clear, as Laclau (2005)
puts it,
affect is not something that exists on its own, independently of language; it constitutes itself only through
the differential cathexes of a signifying chain [ … ]. Hegemonic or discursive formations would be
unintelligible without the affective component. (p. 111)
A fantasy is the way in which the speaking being relates to such enjoyment (Stavrakakis, 2008;
Žižek, 1997). It is a scenario that furnishes solidity and homogeneity to the diverse and often con-
tradictory identifications qualifying the meaningful construction of what is at stake. For example,
Brown et al. (2010) show how this works in relation to architects’ identifications and their creative
power. Contu and Willmott (2006: 56) investigate this in the boundary work of the Xerox techni-
cians with their fantasmatic scenario of the hero. Having articulated the key elements – discursive
practice, power and identity – of situated learning theory with Laclau and Mouffe’s site ontology,
it is now possible to move on to the methodology of the empirical study.

Contu 295
Methodology
The empirical material referred to in this article was produced during an empirical study of work-
ing and managing practices in the digital industry conducted between 2000 and 2003. As often in
studies of situated practice of work (e.g. Orr, 1996; Szymanski and Whalen, 2011), the focus was
an ethnographic fieldwork in AML, a digital media agency. The setting and issues of access are
discussed before describing the empirical material utilised in this article. Then, the analytical pro-
cess and presentation strategy are clarified.
Research setting and access

AML is a small, independent company (of 30 staff) with offices in Manchester and London, UK.
AML’s client list includes companies such as Intel, Fujitsu/Siemens and Cisco. AML was founded
in England in 1994 by four directors, each with an expertise in the complementary practices (con-
tent design, creative design and software development), which is said to provide ‘successful new
media solutions’ (company website document 1). Most employees were recruited from mid-1999
to early 2000. Access was requested by letter to the managing director (MD) followed by a meeting
with the MD and the artistic director where the key issue of the researcher and the type of access
needed were discussed and negotiated. A report and a workshop were provided in return for access
to the site.
AML’s main office is in the loft of an old Victorian building and is reachable either via a tired-
looking lift or grubby stairs. The reception area has armchairs, magazines and a television that
regularly shows a children’s programme in the morning. The distinct bright colour of the company
and its logo decorate the walls. The open-plan office is visible through the main door. White walls
and exposed bricks and columns are interspersed in the room providing clustered areas for work-
stations furnished with computers, telephones, gadgets, pictures and photos. There is a football
table outside the kitchen.
Data production
During the initial stage of the fieldwork, I realised that ‘content design work’, the name given by
AML members to one of their practices of work, was not only new to me but it was also opaque to
AML newcomers. As is often the case in ethnographic fieldwork, the analysis is not a final stage of
the research process, but it is an iterative part of a constant process of reflection (Hammersley and
Atkinson, 2010). It was in the early stages of the fieldwork that I reflected on the fact that I (the
researcher) was learning about this design practice, but some of the AML members (the newcom-
ers) were learning it too. In other words, this was not a canonical practice (Brown and Duguid,
1998) that one would find neatly described in internal guidelines or even more generally in design
books with processes and artefacts clear to all involved. It was a situated practice where learning
was part of it, not only because by definition for Lave and Wenger the participation in a situated
practice is a process of learning but also because learning was used in the speech of the participants
to identify themselves and what they were doing. I also observed that in the content design prac-
tice, there were clashes and conflicts. These alerted me, on the one hand, to the concept of creative
abrasion and, on the other hand, to the exercise of what is traditionally theorised as episodic power,
that is, where power is what is evident in the conflict of individuals mobilising different resources
and clash over opposite wants (Clegg et al., 2006: 241; Lawrence et al., 2005: 182). However, by
treating ‘obvious actions’ as potentially remarkable (Alvesson and Deetz, 2000; Silverman, 2007),

I continue to investigate such tensions in the practice of content design. I therefore also aimed to
study the meanings that participants produced from such tensions by interviewing participants and
listening to the way they reflected on their practice. To clarify, ‘creative abrasions’ was not a ter-
minology AML participants used in practice, but in their reflections, it became clear that, at least
partially, the tensions could be considered creative abrasions as indicated later. All the participants,
however, discussed openly with me the clashes/conflicts/tensions they experienced in doing design
practice.
Analytical process
The analysis was based on an iterative process of reading and scrutinising the material and a con-
stant reflection on what emerged as intelligible in the field for those participating in it and for me
as a researcher, as suggested by Hammersley and Atkinson (2010), Madden (2010) and Alvesson
and Deetz (2001). Given the focus on discursive practices mentioned earlier, I identified key names
used to identify the practice and investigated the different ways the practice was constituted as
something meaningful and intelligible. I reflected therefore on what this meant for those in the
field and more generally for me as a researcher of working and organising practices. The aim was
not only to gather a set of descriptions but also to grasp what was engendered/posited in this dis-
cursive practice and what it was therein constituted and performed (e.g. specific identities, specific
artefacts and processes). As indicated earlier, identity is important for practice-based theorising;
therefore, our questioning and reflection on the material also addressed analytically the identities
(or better identifications) subjects had with the design practice and the subjects’ trajectory of par-
ticipation in the practice under production. Therefore, the analytical process was also to interrogate
the material produced, asking, how are the participants reflecting on themselves and their own
condition of existence? how, if at all, are the differences/boundaries drawn and by whom? and how,
are similarities, if at all, maintained by those participating in practice? In this article, using a
vignette as a way to introduce and unravel this complex practice of detailed content design for the
readers, I present the key points of these reflections and therefore the key results as summarised in
Table 1.
The choice of the vignette

There is no one best way to present ethnographic work. A vignette may give a false sense of imper-
sonal and neutral representation, as if the author was not participating in such a representation
(Clifford and Marcus, 1986). I do not wish to convey such neutrality. The vignette is based on a
choice made that, as with every methodological choice, leaves out other possible ways of repre-
senting field material. The justification for choosing to construct the vignette to present the empiri-
cal material in this article is threefold. First, the vignette achieves the descriptive strength of
ethnographic work, giving readers an impression and a feel for the setting and the people involved
and what they were doing. Second, vignettes are commonly used in books on CoP theory (Lave and
Wenger, 1991; Orr, 1996) and also as a pragmatic strategy for presenting data in journal articles
with tight word-count restrictions (see Carlile, 2004; Orlikowski, 2002). Finally, the vignette pro-
vides a ‘situational focus’ (Alvesson and Deetz, 2001: 202) as it conveys the layered, complex
practice under production in a way that is congruent with the themes and issues that emerged from
the analysis, therefore enabling the contribution to the study of situated practice discussed later in
the article. In this sense, it represents a good cross section of the nexus of practices at hand (Nicolini,
2012). Table 2 includes information on the material used in this article.

Table 1. Key research questions, analytical questions and findings.
Contu
Abrasions/CoP key Abrasion 1 Abrasion 2 Abrasion 3 Abrasion 4

research questions
Key analytical Traditional creative abrasion Client and AML Amber and the rest of the John and Laura
questions team
Participants: Participants: Participants: Participants:
Amber: MD, founder, expert Amber: MD, founder, Amber: MD, founder, Laura: newcomer (2
content designer expert content designer expert content designer months with AML)
content designer, just
finished college, few
projects as freelancer
Laura: newcomer (2 months Mark: director of Laura: newcomer (2 John: relative newcomer (6
with AML) content designer, production, expert months with AML) content months with AML), expert
just finished college, few developer, founder designer, just finished developer, master degree
projects as freelancer college, few projects as and years of experience in
freelancer MNC as developer
Teresa: old-timer (one of the Simon: commercial Teresa: old-timer (one
first employees to join the director, expert developer of the first employees to
company), expert content and producer, founder join the company), expert
designer, account manager content designer, account
manager
John: relative newcomer (6 Laura: newcomer (2 John: relative newcomer (6
months with AML), expert months with AML) content months with AML), expert
developer, master degree and designer, just finished developer, master degree
years of experience in MNC college, few projects as and years of experience in
as developer freelancer MNC as developer

John: relative newcomer (6
months with AML), expert
developer, master degree
and years of experience in
MNC as developer
What is the complex Name of the practice: design Name of the practice: Name of the practice: Name of the practice:
practice under of digital solution (AML) digital design practice digital media design as digital media practice as a
production? commercial practice dream job
297
(Continued)
Table 1. (Continued).
298
Abrasions/CoP key Abrasion 1 Abrasion 2 Abrasion 3 Abrasion 4

research questions
What, if at all, are Positivities, features/issues: Positivities, features/issues: Positivities, features/issues: Positivities, features/issues:
the differences/ team-based work at the boundary with the client digital media design as exploitation through work
boundaries drawn? boundaries of skills and capitalist process of value intensification
How? By whom? expertise; boundary object creation
What similarities and
overlapping were
maintained, if at all,
by those participating
in the content design
practice?
What are the Laura (newcomer), Identity shaping/ Identity shaping/ Fantasy of sameness in the
trajectories of Teresa (support), Amber reinforcing; learning reproducing: founders/ community of practitioners
participation? (intervention) and John opportunity and dressage of experts/managers and manufacturing
(Techie) knowledgeability workers/newcomers; commitment: learning,
autonomous responsibility
For example, how Fantasy of sameness
are the participants in the community of
reflecting on themselves practitioners
and their own
condition of existence,
specifically in relation to
their practice of design
work?
What are the power Creative/technical boundary Boundary/asymmetry of Expertise/learning Ownership and

dynamics these recognised competency of boundary/asymmetry; management/subordinate
trajectories enable us AML practice ownership and work boundary/
to ascertain? management/subordinate asymmetry; continuity/
work boundary/ discontinuity work flow/
asymmetry; continuity/ participation
discontinuity
CoP: community of practice; MNC: multinational corporation; MD: managing director.

Management Learning 45(3)
Contu 299
Table 2. Empirical material.

Material to construct (a) Observations of two meetings of content design for a project called S4,
the vignette (b) shadowing of Laura’s (a newcomer to AML) individual working time and
impromptu discussions during a workday on S4 and (c) a conversation with
the account manager for the project.
In total, this amounts to 11 A4 pages of notes, font size 10 and single space.
Additional material Ten interviews with all the AML content designers and those directly
directly used for/in this involved with S4’s design. Six of them are cited in this article. The
article interviews were professionally transcribed and varied in time from 1
to 2 hours. Half of them were held in the office, half in nearby bars and
restaurants depending on interviewees’ availability and preference. They
were four content designers (including the MD), four founders of AML
(including the MD), one assistant producer and one technical developer.
Archival material: website homepage, document circulated in the first
meeting and content design document of another project.
MD: managing director.
The vignette details the content design practice for a messaging system that is part of a portal of
a project called S4. The client is a software company and spin-off from a well-known multinational
firm. The client develops wireless value-added systems, mobile commerce solutions and enhanced
SMS messaging. The portal is a showcase for its mobile software. At the time of this research, the
software was at the cutting edge of technology and design, bringing together the latest mobile and
web technologies. All the participants constantly expressed their love for working on this and simi-
lar ‘elite projects’ (Skilton, 2008) in contrast to everyday ‘bread and butter’ project work. Such
‘bread and butter’ project work was how the participants referred to, for example, most of AML’s
Intel work. Such work includes maintenance, new graphics or navigation and functionality changes
to existing solutions and does not involve pushing the boundaries of AML’s creativity.
I now present the vignette and then show key abrasions, exploring/reflecting on the practice and
power dynamics in learning creative design work. The reflections are developed via interplay with
the theoretical stimuli from relevant literature. Referring to the literature at this stage maybe unu-
sual but it demonstrates in practice the iteration and articulation between concrete empirical mate-
rial and theoretical abstractions, as suggested by Van Maanen et al. (2007). Moreover, following
Nicolini’s (2012) suggestion, I ‘zoom in’ on the practice for a thick description of what is happen-
ing. I also ‘zoom out’ to reflect on what this complex practice under production is, how it came
about and what it is performing and making intelligible.
Vignette
In AML, on Monday morning in early summer of 2000, I join a meeting with Laura, junior content
designer; Teresa, the account manager/producer and John, a technical developer. They are discuss-
ing a document that Laura has produced over the weekend. They had a series of email exchanges
over the weekend, and they are now going through the amendments of the document that Laura has
written.
Laura reads the document aloud. The discussion is rather careful and specific. Teresa is sup-
portive of Laura’s suggestions. And John asks Laura whether it is possible to explain in detail what
the boxes are and also whether she can explain better the ‘folder view’.

John is a developer in his late 20s. He is helpful in proposing changes, such as a drop down
folder. These are well received by Laura and Teresa. However, John is also rather distant and
annoyed. He twice leaves the meeting without explanation, just excusing himself. He is clearly
irritated by the fact that Laura has not followed faithfully the brief they had discussed and decided
on Friday. John asks Laura, ‘have you got Friday’s notes? They are very important, have you taken
them home?’
The question of how to design the messaging application has been at the centre of an on-going
exchange of e-mails during the weekend. Teresa at the meeting openly acknowledges her intention
of wanting to help Laura whom she praises with supporting words such as ‘very good’, ‘don’t
worry’ and ‘it is ok’. At the end of a long paragraph read by Laura, Teresa states an emphatic
‘Cool!’ looking at John. John, however, does not move his eyes from the document. Laura is recep-
tive to the changes made to her document. However, she also makes it clear that she has been
struggling to reorganise the document that has been produced by the client’s technical developer
and had been agreed on Friday.
Having made corrections, Laura is left to make further amendments on her own. Later, when
Amber, the MD, sees the revised document, her reaction is unequivocal: ‘It is too complicated.
This is the messiest document I have ever seen. It is too technical and there is no consideration of
the user’s point of view’. Laura points out that the specification produced by the client is very
technical. She tries to explain to Amber the client’s point of view. Amber just says that what Laura
has designed looks ‘naff’, British slang similar to the more widely known ‘uncool’. At that point,
John joins them. He sits next to Amber who repeats her verdict that the design is too technical. John
explains that the client is telling them how to do the design. They have been provided with a func-
tional technical specification, which the client expects AML to transform into a creative solution.
Amber is unhappy with the work done by the team. Simon and Mark, technical director and com-
mercial director, respectively, who are sitting close by are attracted by this discussion and join in.
At the end, they are all laughing at S4 saying that, after all, they are ‘techies’.
Amber is drawn into the project. In fact, she suggests to Laura that she should do more research
on the subject and then they agree a meeting ‘to sort things out’. Amber is unhappy. She told me
that she should not be doing this, not at this stage.
Later, Teresa, Laura, John and Amber are in the meeting room. Laura starts describing the
design and the problems. They are not starting from scratch because they do have the client
specification and Laura’s document. The atmosphere is playful with jokes and laughter.
However, the jokes also allude to tensions that, otherwise, are unacknowledged. John offers to
prepare tea. When he returns, Laura finds he has put sugar in her tea and says ‘revenge!’, as
John knows how much sugar she takes, because each person’s preference is written on a board
in the kitchen.
Amber takes charge of the meeting by shaping the way the meeting proceeds. She questions the
overall design. The meeting is now very different from the one in the morning. Amber approaches
the task by taking a flip chart and asks ‘OK, what are we trying to do? What do we need here?’
Everything needed becomes a specific feature in the drawings she makes. She asks questions and
facilitates her colleagues’ reflections. At the end of the meeting, the room is walled with sheets of
drawings, sentences and navigation diagrams. Laura, the content designer, is to collate all the data
in a document that must present everything agreed in this meeting. This is the detailed content
design of the messaging system. Amber leaves Laura to sort this out, but she suggests that Laura
should write up the ideas developed so far, now represented in dispersed flip charts, sheets and
notes, into a word document so not to forget what has been agreed. Eventually, Joanne, another
content designer, gives Laura an old document – the detailed content design of a project for another

Contu 301
client. The team was supposed to send an update to the client that day. However, it is already 5 p.m.
by the time Laura starts her document.
Creative abrasion 1: Differences at work in the detailed content

design document
Teresa is the account manager and an expert in content design. She has worked for AML since
1997. Laura joined AML in May 2000. She is a college graduate and has worked as a freelance
designer. John joined AML at the beginning of 2000. He has a Masters in computer science
and 2 years of experience as a technical developer for a multinational. Amber is MD, founder
of AML and expert in content design. They all work as a team to produce a successful solution,
in what can be considered a simultaneous engineering, as Charles Sabel and Micheal Dorf
termed it. Creative and technical skills are simultaneously brought together rather than follow-
ing a sequential logic when the technical infrastructure is first completed (see also Girard and
Stark, 2002).
In AML, the practice of teamwork is not due to the inspirations of a management guru or the
official appropriation of the management-by-community brand of business (Amin and Cohendet,
2008). It is instead due to what the founders recall as their original way of working when they
launched the company. AML’s teamwork establishes and embeds the belief of the four founders
that a mixed team of creative and technical people is what enables them to produce successful
digital solutions. The official ideology of AML’s work, as also stated on the company’s website,
is that this mixed-team system makes it possible for them to think interactively from the start
of a project. This team-based project work employs workers with different expertise, signature-
skills and status to design a successful digital solution, specifically by creating what they call
the ‘detailed content design’ of the solution. As Laura states, in this practice of design,
everybody was working at their best to approach it [the project] … technical people were thinking it should
be done that way, the assistant producer that we should be it doing the other way … I was thinking it should
be done that way.
The tension generated by the clash of all these different perspectives based on signature-skills can
be considered a creative abrasion, as defined by Leonard-Barton, evident in the detailed content
design practice, which is also the name they give to the artefacts they are creating. Such artefacts
work as a boundary object because it embeds and represents the knowledge of AML’s team on
concept, design, technology and content. However, these two concepts (creative abrasions and
boundary object) have little explanatory power. In fact, the recognition of knowledge and what
counts as such is not at all transparent but is in itself highly contested. We see in the vignette how
‘detailed content design’ is not a canonical definition of digital design but is a situated practice
whose meaning is ambiguous and not codified with clear rules of engagement, checklists and tem-
plates. Even if Laura has previously worked in the industry and has a formal education in the field,
her role as ‘content designer’ is neither transparent nor obvious to her. One sees her struggling to
propose her document and to explain her views to the team and Amber. Moreover, there is a wide
web of expectations of what each team member should be doing and what is legitimised to add
value to the design. This aspect is captured in the form of Laura’s document as much as its content.
Content and form mesh, and they are both contested. It is what this document looks like that also
becomes disputed. John probes Laura because the document does not contain specific features they

had discussed earlier, and these are not expressed as he thinks they should. Amber says that the
design is too ‘naff’. Laura recalls that for her
it was lack of confidence through lack of experience, but also a lot of clearly-defined briefs that I didn’t
know how to brief and without a brief I cannot produce clear work. So it was difficult.
She could not ‘brief’, that is, produce valuable recognised knowledge, because she was a new-
comer and she was not told how to ‘brief’. Without any guidelines or templates to help her, she
is supposed to learn by participating in the practice and learn fast, in vivo, from Teresa’s sym-
pathetic words but discontinuous support, John’s awkward behaviour and Amber’s ambiguous
comments and sporadic participation. It is documented that young women in this industry are
subjected to high expectations and difficulties (Prpić et al., 2009). Laura is left in charge of
completing the document while clearly knowing very little about how to proceed. Eventually,
an old detailed content design document is given to Laura late in the day. It looks like a story-
board that includes the look of the page, the content and navigation diagrams. However, this
does not provide sufficient clarity, and tensions between Amber, Laura and the team and John
and Laura continue.
Creative abrasion 2: Situating (and learning) AML’s identity in

the difference with the client
Laura’s latest version of the detailed content design is criticised because it is ‘naff’. This triggers a
heated exchange at lunchtime where a boundary is drawn in defining and constructing the image
of the client. Laura explains the position of the client rather than that of future users. However, in
doing so, she is opposed by a specific positioning of the client’s staff as ‘techies’ who only want
AML to beautify their functional solution, as John describes it. What John’s comments imply is
that AML’s practitioners do markedly more skilled work than mere beautification. When Simon
and Mark join in, they ridicule the client by mocking its staff as techies. This can be considered as
a ritual (Hammersley and Atkinson, 2010), which asserts two main aspects of the creative design
practice:
1. The identification with what is posed as the specificity and the identity of digital media
specialists.
2. The high value regarding, and a belief in the value of, their (AML) design practice.
Both the identity and the value of their work are different from that of the client – information
technology (IT) software developers or techies. In this specific instance, what is interesting is that
this ritual is initiated and supported by those, such as Mark, John and Simon, whose skills-base is
mainly technical. They are also techies; therefore, this boundary is more meaningful to them. The
ritual is poignant because it retroactively establishes the belief (see Žižek, 1989) in a community
of which they are recognised members, a community of digital media practitioners different from,
and in this case in contrast to, ‘techies’. This exchange reminds us of an impeccable dressage
where ‘knowledgeability’ (Lave, 2008: 284) of AML’s practice is demonstrated by John in the
approving recognition offered by the experts, Simon, Mark and Amber.
In attempting to advocate the client’s point of view, Laura seems unable or unwilling to ascer-
tain the key value of the boundary drawn here. She demonstrates here how little she knows of how
AML workers identify with their work. She has little recognition of what AML’s effort is about.

Contu 303
However, by participating in this specific ritual, Laura has an opportunity to learn more about the
identity and value ascribed and proposed to AML’s practitioners. This indicates a situated instance
of how recognition is also based on competency in establishing and navigating specific boundaries
with other communities and organisations, in this case those of the client.
More broadly, Amber’s comment and intervention, together with the lunchtime ritual, invite
us to ponder how the team designing the S4 messaging system is not simply translating knowl-
edge of an artefact (the S4 specification) into another (the design developed by AML). The
translation performed through the boundary object ‘detailed content design document’ involves
complex power dynamics evident in the personal, social and technical processes through
which a client’s requirements are represented and challenged via a set of concepts that are
interpreted, developed and embodied in a design that has AML’s ‘look and feel’, that is, the
specific quality and imprint of the agency’s digital practice. Amber’s intervention of forward-
ing the users’ point of view and calling a meeting also indicates how the team’s technical and
creative capabilities are harnessed and disciplined by the owners/managers/experts of AML
who endeavour to ensure that effort is expended productively in developing products that have
the correct AML ‘look and feel’. This ‘vaporous’ process (Pratt, 2000) establishes a connec-
tion of aesthetically pleasing, technically accurate, usable and commercially viable digital
solutions. The abrasion between Amber and the rest of the team helps to unravel this dynamics
further.
Creative abrasion 3: Difference (and sameness) in the creation

of value
Amber, qua owner and MD, as well as qua expert in that practice, is granted legitimacy in situ to
intervene and act as she did. Amber’s direct comments about the team’s and specifically Laura’s
work, that is, it is ‘naff’, overly technical and messy, position the practice itself not only as a crea-
tive endeavour but also as a capitalist labour process that has to produce an added value to be sold,
in this case, to the S4 techies. The representation of the boundary object ‘detailed content design’
document is central in demonstrating such added value. As Amber indicates, the document cannot
be overly technical. Instead, it must exemplify AML’s specific expertise. It cannot be messy
because it has to speak to the client giving the client (and AML practitioners) the confidence that
the product they are buying is worth it. It cannot be ‘naff’ because anticipating what is ‘naff’ and
what is cutting edge and cool is what differentiates an expert and professional from one who is not.
This practice is not only guided by meeting the client’s specifications in a purely technical sense,
or by pursuing the AML designers’ own creative imagination without boundaries or boundaries set
by their imaginary ‘users’, it is also compounded by these subtle elements of exchange among
themselves and others (such as the client) in which a valuable meaning of the practice is produced
both as a creative solution and as situated identities where some are more able than others to show
‘knowledgeability’ of AML’s practice. Clearly, one team meeting with Amber and a few comments
are not enough to guarantee value generation, even if these are important. The design team working
with Amber in such close proximity is offered the opportunity of learning how to input their knowl-
edge, how to collect it and how to think interactively. As Teresa puts it, this is the way she learnt
her practice:
I worked with Amber quite closely, she pretty much mentored me through the content design so I learnt all
about content design with Amber, learnt about things like, you know, what makes a website usable, what
makes it difficult to navigate etc.

She describes her learning as a process of participation based on a long-standing, supportive prox-
imity with Amber. This has the characteristics of the apprenticeship-learning system that Lave and
Wenger deemed a (supported) legitimate peripheral participation (Lave, 2008; Lave and Wenger,
1991). However, this is no longer happening. Teresa says that she could not mentor Laura as the
demands of her job were too great. John has also repeatedly expressed his frustration over the work
of the design team. Amber’s participation in the design is intermittent and patchy. Amber says she
cannot be ‘too hands on’ because as MD she is busy overseeing and steering the whole company.
This is the relatively new condition of the founders’ work because, in this period, they had taken
on official director roles. As Andrew, the artistic director, puts it,
The company this year … I guess has been through a bit of a transition period in our minds as to what we
want it to be … the internet is sort of growing up and we’re sort of growing up with it … and that’s sort of
changed dramatically over the last year in terms of … I guess how business perceives it and how business
is using it. So I guess we’ve had to change with it and have a more sort of grown-up attitude to the way we
see.
They answer what they see as the call to ‘having a more grown-up attitude’ by coming out of pro-
duction and assuming clearer managerial roles. They start reflecting openly on what their practice
means – not only as a practice of creating successful solutions but also as a managerial practice.
One could say that they are learning about themselves as managers and their work as a business.
Their managerial identification is evident in the creation of specific artefacts such as a new organi-
sational chart and their new directorial roles. They also interrogate themselves on the workflow,
theirs and everyone else’s roles, AML’s value chain and how to maintain the quality of work. In
summary, even if other choices were possible, they identify more openly with a view of their prac-
tice as a commercially applied, market-driven practice, which responds to the business logic of
profit-making by also attempting to optimise resources. Yet, their practice still has a high degree of
ambiguity. Their work lacks detailed formalisation, clear rationalisation of activities and strong
rhetoric on efficiency. The founders, just like Amber in the vignette, erratically move in and out of
production and are fatally attracted by the practice and the desire of getting ‘hands-on’ making sure
that everything is done properly. However, they are unable to give the time and quality of support
needed by newcomers, such as Laura or John, to learn the fine details of the design process and to
balance and modulate their own participation in the project. Teresa is mindful of this and suggests
that there is an unsatisfied promise of learning that generates disillusionment and frustration among
the ‘cheap’ people working for AML:
as if there was a very exploitative management but you know it didn’t happen on purpose it was just a lot
of things at the same time, needing more people, not having money to pay them … and poor Laura found
herself doing all of it knowing nothing of it at all.
Teresa signals the pressing demands for the founders of a growing (up) business – that they openly
identify themselves as managers and not just experts. However, from Teresa’s perspective, by so
doing, their practice is exploitative. The organisation of work, as is often found in this industry,
reminds us of Gabher’s (2000) heterarchies, that is, an organisation characterised by flat hierarchies
and heterogeneity. Yet, in AML’s design practice, hierarchies are established and asymmetries and
subordination reproduced. Perceived knowledge, cheap labour, recognised expertise and ownership
punctuate differences and subordination in the possibilities of action available to the participants in
the mixed-team formula. This is nevertheless the organisational and management formula the man-
agers adopt. The way work is organised and managed has not changed, regardless of the fact that this

Contu 305
formula is showing its strain. This formula, as the storyline consistently narrated by the founders
tells us, is centred on the idea that AML’s work is structured according to the image of how the
founders say they originally operated when AML was just the four of them.
Whether this origin was ever fully lived by the founders in the beginning and whether this is
factually true is not so significant. What is important is that the founders consistently remember
this as the moment of origin. Salecl (2000) reminds us that ‘for the subject the very process of
remembering is an attempt to secure the existence of a symbolic order so that the subject can
achieve some certainty about his or her identity’ (p. 4). The mixed-team formula is thus such an
anchoring point that punctuates the identity of the founders (a) as passionate experts who left their
previous employment and together pursued their passion for innovative ways of producing digital
solutions and (b) as those with acumen for the commercial exploitation of their own knowledge.
As Simon, the commercial director, puts it, ‘we are only passionate about what we have done from
day one … that you know how to do it and everyone else around you did not seem to …’.
The way they relate to their conditions of existence, here with reference to a passionate embodi-
ment of an expert practice, articulates their desire to act in the world and to create, maintain and
extend the idea of digital media as independent craftsmanship. They did, it should be noted, resist
attempts to sell AML to larger companies.
Difference and sameness: Continuity and discontinuity

By examining the abrasions in the creative practice, I have found that the efficacy of the formula
is seriously compromised, and the current organisation of work is reaching its limits. However, in
this historical moment, the founder/manager/expert still trusts the practice. How is this possible? A
clue to this is given to us by the affect furnishing their reflection on their work as being a passionate
endeavour, as Simon describes it. Mark also suggests,
I do actually love doing programming [ … ] taking something and actually making it, doing it better than
anyone thought it would have been and if you say it to me and Andrew because me and Andrew [ … ]
Amber, are brilliant at what we do and there is that degree of ‘it’s a shame we’re not still doing that because
we were very good’ and most of our really good stuff was done by us and you do miss it and becoming a
manager does, I think that’s why I don’t mind sometimes getting drawn back into production just to let out
that thing I’ve still got ‘cos it is a difficult one.
Their reflection about themselves as directors is lived by them as a sacrifice of having to take on
managerial roles. This meant abandoning what they ‘actually love’ and have been ‘passionate
about from day one’. Paradoxically, to continue doing what they love, they effectively have to stop
doing it directly. They now enjoy it vicariously and by getting involved in production through
snatched moments, as Amber did in S4. The founders get ‘others’ to do what they say they have
done from day 1, that is, working together in a mixed-team formula. These ‘others’ they are
employing are also cheaper than themselves (or other digital media experts), and therefore, make
it possible for AML to continue production. Given all these differences of expertise, clout, owner-
ship and labour-market value of those participating in the creative design practice, what is the
equation here? These ‘others’, the newcomers, are posed as ‘the same’, that is, equal to the found-
ers in the possibilities and desires of creating successful digital solutions. It is the passion and love
for the practice that can be presumed to be equal, given that everything else is not. I submit that this
is what makes possible the continuity of the practice in the face of the perceived discontinuity, that
is, the experiences that the mixed-team formula is not as efficacious as it was in the past. The com-
mitment shown in the actual ‘everyday doing’ also suggests that the workers’ desire may be staged

by this communitarian fantasy of passion. As we see below, this is a passion that shows itself in the
mist of tensions, grievances and problems experienced in the organisation of work. After all, as the
etymology suggests, it would not be a passion if some suffering was not involved. In such condi-
tions, then, the workers do what they are told and passionately fill the gaps of what is untold.
Creative abrasion 4: Differences in identifications and

antagonism in practice
John and Laura’s cooperation is ridden with tensions. John leaves the meeting, and there is bicker-
ing. In the privacy of interviews, they both refer to each other negatively. For example, Laura
talked of how ‘they almost killed each other’ and how, in certain moments, ‘nerves were getting
frayed’. She complained that John was rude, and how she reacted to John with comments such as
‘excuse me you are talking to a human here’. To explore this abrasion further, I investigate the
trajectory of their participation by looking at how they reflect on their conditions of existence.
Dynamics of antagonism: The importance of (not) being a team worker

John finds Laura’s role as a content designer upsetting and unacceptable. He openly questions
Laura’s legitimacy:
there hasn’t been an extremely senior strong person and what you get [as content designer] is Laura who
is sort of like completely new to that … mind you I am not prepared to sort of be involved in the content
designing quite heavily … really far too much for what the project demanded and I felt very frustrated.
For John, Laura lacks the seniority (hence the knowledge) to design S4, and this brings about a
frustrating situation where he is working ‘far too much’. In John’s reflections on his work, then, we
can see how this brought to bear the impossibility of AML’s mixed-team formula. As John puts it,
my job is technical … while now we keep on working on content design… the creative side … and I don’t
mind doing that … but then that’s it … you have to say ‘ok you are doing that’ that’s fair enough but it’s
like … Jooohn [as if someone was calling him] … I don’t know I just did not feel comfortable with it at
times, really because somebody else should be dedicated to doing this job and it’s not like you come in
every two minutes – I don’t know it just wasn’t working.
John is called to work ‘far too much’, as he does not see the work as continuous with his technical
role. One can infer that Laura resists the pressure on herself and the deadlock in which she is in by
embodying the mixed-team formula and diffusing her responsibility into a ‘team responsibility’ by
approaching the team for answers, which in practice means calling on John’s help. This interpreta-
tion is also supported by Laura’s speech as she dismisses John’s reaction as sign of a lack of com-
mitment. As she puts it,
for an organisation that it is about teamwork it is essential that everyone can work as a team member and
he came across occasionally quite negative and it was difficult to cope with all the time.
She identifies with the mixed-team formula, taking it as if it really is the way to get the job done.
By her practical behaviour, she calls for the team (mainly John) and not just herself to be respon-
sible for the development of the detailed content design.

Contu 307
I submit that the abrasion and antagonism in their relationship is the clue to understanding the
dislocation and discontinuity of the mixed-team formula. Laura appropriates this formula and
makes it central to her interest, while John brings it to bear with the memorable ‘my job is techni-
cal’ remark. Such a comment is almost meaningless in the mixed-team formula where techies,
although not their skills, are mocked. So, how it is that in such frail conditions, they keep on work-
ing together and demonstrate such high commitment? In other words, how is the continuity of the
practice maintained?
Manufacturing commitment
John and Laura both noted how much they had learnt during S4 and were adamant that this was
their dream job. In actual practice, however, their pleasure is mixed with pain, frustration and dis-
appointment, which give an insight into the practice as a passionate endeavour. They express criti-
cisms and grievances on the way work is organised. Arguably, the very legitimacy of Amber – and
by extension, how the managers organise their work – is questioned. As we have seen, John tries
to signal that things are not working and Laura entrepreneurially searches for team collaboration
and support, which not only diffuses her responsibility but also enhances the likelihood that the
quality of work is good. They had plenty of employment opportunities in what was at the time a
buoyant labour market and AML’s informality, arguably, lent itself to ‘being slack’. However, as
shown in the vignette, the staff worked intensely, including during the weekend. Overtime was the
norm. As Laura recalls,
well I think there was a desperate situation as for the S4 staff and things … and I was doing a lot of
overtime which I was not particularly happy about but it just needed to be done … I was not the only one
though … Amber was also involved and people at a high level were doing overtime, we had various stages
in which we worked late at night trying to get things done. (emphasis added)
Overtime in AML was not financially compensated. The informal rule was that those who work
hard will receive a bonus at the end of the year. What is interesting is how, as Laura puts it, they
felt they were part of a ‘desperate situation’ and were ready to remain in the office to try and solve
it. This indicates that participation is a way of life, as established in the practice at hand, where their
enjoyment is not only an undiminished pleasure of doing this work, as if everything was perfect,
but rather is something where pain and sacrifice are needed. The identities constituted are those of
bearers of an ‘authentic’ passion (see Fleming, 2009). They offer this sacrifice to an image of them-
selves as committed and cool digital media professionals and to all of those who enjoy the fruits of
this practice, including clients and all digital media professionals. There are different ways in
which such an enjoyment is domesticated, that is, made meaningful and bearable. As far as John is
concerned, his commitment and enthusiasm were teetering:
I felt very frustrated because I felt that what was produced was just not up to scratch, and I said it’s just not
right … and I kept on saying look this is not right, it’s not working … but it wasn’t really getting anywhere
it is just like that so I just lost any enthusiasm for the project in that respect, it needed somebody to really
overlook it the whole time you know what I mean … the project is so thick, it is so thick, quite complicated
and that’s why it needs people with experience to be working on that.
John’s identification with the digital community sustains his commitment to a practice of work that
frustrates him. As he reminds us, ‘my job is technical’, and he is a techie like the S4 client he joked
about during the lunchtime exchange. It is qua techie, with a recognised technical expertise, that

his effort is (also) exerted, for example, by working closely with the client to interpret their think-
ing, that is, the codes in their software. Yet, his belief in practice is that the final outcome, the solu-
tion that AML designs, is something interactive from the start that brings together creative and
technical elements, and as such will be interpreted by others – colleagues, clients, users and all
digital media professionals – not simply as a technical solution, but a solution tout court. He
engages yet more forcefully to get things done, attempting to correct the shortcomings of manage-
ment, the silences of the clients regarding the codes of the software and fighting against his falter-
ing enthusiasm. Notes of sacrifice are again all too obvious in his passionate endeavour. Laura’s
sacrifice to improve this desperate situation is addressed with the ‘learning’ signifier, which plays
a significant, if ambiguous, role. As Laura puts it,
I am learning a lot, so whilst I am learning, I am quite happy you know. I am getting the experience of
working in a commercial environment, how to work with deadlines, how to get a structure and work in
teams. I am building up my portfolio getting more work together that I can show to people.
‘Learning’ works as that which domesticates the discontinuities of this working practice. Laura
recognises the exchange at work and professes an instrumental view of herself and her work. She
considers learning as an acceptable trade-off for the time expended and difficult period she went
through. The fantasy is, of course, that this is effectively the case since in practice, the exchange is
between labour and something that perhaps will pay-off in the future by the reward of an employ-
able professional identity. ‘Learning’ is the signifier for the domestication of this question mark on
‘something-in-the-future’, this point of uncertainty. It is also a trust in the future and in the fairness
of a capitalist system that sustains this potential future occurrence – one invests one’s labour on the
premise that it will pay back. For the moment, Laura is aware of the double-edged and ambiguous
nature of what one could call the l-earning discourse:
you know … I have been working hard … and perhaps it has not been rightly scheduled … not given the
right amount of time and not because I couldn’t do it.
This learning discourse, therefore, does have a leftover, something that sticks out of the solid image
of herself as a learner. She, in fact, realises that problems are often not due to her inexperience and
the fact that she is still learning but are due to the way the work is organised and managed.
Nonetheless, one could say that in l-earning she trusts!
Summary of the research results

Before discussing the contribution, the results are summarised by providing answers to the key
research questions that guide the research.
1. What is the complex practice under production? This is indeed a complex practice but not
only or mostly because it includes different activities (i.e. team discussions, design meet-
ings, solo work, research, etc.) but also because for participants, this practice means many
different things at once. Most obviously what is interesting is that the design practice for
those participating in it is at once a creative endeavour, a job, a source of abrasions and
conflict, a dressage of knowledge and competence (or lack of it), a learning ground, a pas-
sion, a commercial enterprise, and a way to manage, control and exploit a labour process.
How is it possible to abstract such multiplicity of meaning and openness of the practice yet

Contu 309
avoid suggesting that this is simply ‘an indeterminate flow’? The practice is in fact deter-
minate for those living it, in the sense that the practice is ‘something’ for those living it, that
is, it is meaningful, important and valuable. This question opens up theoretical considera-
tions, elaborated in the discussion, where the notion of overdetermination is discussed.
2. What are the trajectories of participation in the practices of the different subjects? There are
different trajectories of participation that are related to the conditions of work and the ways
the participants make sense of these in the field. Amber (and the other founders) only par-
ticipates in an intermittent way. They are not consistently involved in the design but only
on occasions (which are unstructured and ad hoc). Teresa also participates in a peripheral
way. She is involved by being helpful, giving comments and suggestions, but she is not
responsible for the practice. Laura is at the centre of this practice and she participates fully
in the design, being responsible for most of the key design activities. John is also central to
the practice of design, even if he is not a designer. He is involved in meetings and interacts
with Laura on a regular basis and with the client. We have identified how the trajectories of
participation generate abrasions – the creative abrasion created from different viewpoints
during design work, the abrasion during Amber’s (intermittent) steering of the design, the
abrasion between AML members and the techie client and finally the abrasion between
Laura and John who had a contested relationship.
The reflections on these abrasions and the boundaries/asymmetries therein generated have high-
lighted answers to question (3), what are the power dynamics these trajectories enable us to ascer-
tain? As seen, there is a complex configuration of power relations and a complex set of power
dynamics played out in this field. The power dynamics between experts and newcomers and then
that between owners/managers and workers are considered. Specifically, these power dynamics are
characterised by complex configuration found in the boundary drawn with the client and the mixed-
team formula (with the learning that was said to support it). Fundamentally, the results refer to a
simmering antagonism that shows a discontinuity of the practice. This is due to the founders ‘com-
ing out of production’ and taking clearer managerial roles; to new ‘cheap’ people bought in to cope
with the volume of AML projects and to Teresa, one of the old timers, and the experts founders who
are too busy with their new roles and so cannot be fully central to the design practice. However, if
points of strains are evident, the continuity is still encompassing. This is due to the passion for the
practice and the imaginary community of competent practitioners for whom and by whom the
practice is enjoyed. This helps in fostering commitment and favouring the continuity of the prac-
tice in the moment in which the discontinuity of the mixed-team formula is coming to the fore.
Discussion
The purpose of this article was to address issues of power dynamics in the creation of design work
where knowledge transformation is needed at the boundaries where disciplines, skills and status
meet ‘to get the job done’ as Julian Orr put it in his celebrated ethnography of the Xerox techni-
cians. The (theoretical) challenge was how to develop an understanding of power and politics
‘without privileging knowledge at the expenses of knowing’ (Orlikowski, 2002: 251). If I had only
considered power as the mobilisation of resources in forwarding individuals’ wants/interests (in
this case, influencing the design of the solution), I would have ascertained the ways in which
knowledge was unequally distributed and mobilised as a powerful resource that each individual
could leverage over others. While interesting, this would have returned us to a view of knowledge
as ‘a thing or a disposition’ (Orlikowski, 2002: 250). This would have taken us further away from

the practices in which resources are as such enacted (Feldman and Orlikowski, 2011: 1249), for
example, in this study, as a dressage of knowledgeability in the boundary drawn with the client or
by appealing to teamwork in the modulation of participation. The complexity of the practice under
production and the dynamic character of its continuity and discontinuity would have been lost.
Therefore, the possibilities offered by the situated, embedded view of knowing-in-practice were
explored as chiefly developed in the CoP theory rearticulated here with a specific site ontology, one
that gives ontological primacy to power as the condition of possibility for constituting an intelligi-
ble world and an intelligible practice. The boundaries drawn up in the evident tensions and the
reflections of those participating in a design practice were examined because these are ways in
which power works. In answering question (2), what are the trajectories of participation in the
practices of the different subjects?, one of the key results, as indicated above, is that, indeed, the
tensions observed can be comprehended, at least partially, as ‘creative abrasions’. They can be
attributed to AML’s team members’ attempts to take the design in certain directions as well as to
hegemonize imaginary ‘users’. AML’s document of ‘detailed content design’ is the boundary
object for translating, communicating and shaping such transformative knowledge at the boundary
of creative and technical work. The creation of the imaginary users is a significant part of the crea-
tive process, and different skill-sets, styles and tastes, as the literature indicates, are important in
determining such attempts. However, this study has scrutinised the importance of what is not
related directly to such factors. It has shown instead what is specific to the situated character of the
practice under production, as the opacity and contestation of the boundary object, and the different
trajectories and conditions of participation, suggested. Creative abrasions then are not only a func-
tional process dictated by differences in dispositional factors and skills but are also situated in a
broader politics of management and organisation of creative design work.
The AML participants appeal, for example, to the users’ point of view, the client and the mixed-
team formula. These become ways of highlighting and punctuating, concretely in the everyday
doing, how the practice under constitution has many meanings and it is, for those engaging with it,
many different things at once. The answer to the question (1), what is the complex practice under
production? is that this design practice is not only a creative passionate endeavour but also a job, a
learning process, a dressage of knowledgeability and competence, a value-adding exercise in cir-
cuits of commercial exploitation and a management tool of labour control. As indicated earlier,
how does one abstract theoretically this point without suggesting either an indeterminate plurality
or even a mere determination of one meaning over the other (this is a commercial enterprise over
a creative endeavour, for example) but instead maintain that there is determination with plurality
so to speak? This invites us to suggest that ‘practice’ is not only complex but is better understood
as overdetermined. This theoretical contribution brings us to a revision of the key research question
in this field of study. As Lave (2008) puts it, ‘what is the complex practice under production’
becomes ‘what is the complex and overdetermined practice under production?’ Let me explain
why this term, ‘overdetermination’, for me indicates well the ‘determination with plurality’ point I
have signalled above.
Overdetermination does not mean that practice is conceived simply as determined by one dis-
course more than another, for example, in our case, a discourse that closes down the meaning of the
practice as a mere creative endeavour (passion) as opposed to one that sutures it as one of mere
control and exploitation (business). It does not also simply mean, like the term ‘indeterminate’
would, that the practice is plural and open-ended. Rather, overdetermination implies determination
and yet openness and complexity, that is, the multiplicity/ambiguity of meanings (and therefore the
retroactive positing of contexts, such as capitalism, learning, organisation, market and work iden-
tity) and also their symbolic fusion. In other words, in the lived reality, the signifying chains

Contu 311
constituting the discursive practice are not separable once and for all. Overdetermination maintains
how social relations ‘lack an ultimate literality that would reduce them to necessary moments of an
immanent law’ (Laclau and Mouffe, 2001: 98). To be clear, with Louis Althusser (1969) who also
used this term, I am ‘not particularly taken by this term overdetermination’ but I ‘shall use it in the
absence of anything better’ (p. 101). This term, because of its pedigree and use in Laclau and
Mouffe’s oeuvre, is still worth using because it suggests/reiterates the hegemonic character of the
continuity/stability of practice and the concurrent primacy of the political. This transformative
redefinition focuses our attention on how the practice is maintained and reproduced (as we have
seen in how AML’s commitment is manufactured through the passion for the practice and what this
practically involves, that is, a sacrifice to work harder and keep the quality high). However, this
redefinition also focuses the attention on the possibilities for change in the practice under examina-
tion itself, that is, the managers could have sold the business so relinquishing their independence,
could have socialised their enterprise, could have taken on less projects and so on.
The second contribution to draw from this study is an elaboration on the understanding of power
dynamics. As in question (3), what are the power dynamics these trajectories enable us to identify?
by unravelling the trajectories of participation and the tensions therein generated, the power
dynamics and the way power is exercised have been illustrated. In such political dynamics where
difference and boundaries are set, identities and specific interests emerge and can be inferred.
Theoretically, we have seen that also Carlile suggests it is important to focus on the ‘political
boundary’ because knowledge creation and transformation at the boundaries is not only a matter of
translating different meanings but also of negotiating interests and making trade-offs between
actors (Carlile, 2004: 559). However, such interests are also situated and contingent on the emerg-
ing identities and the context that is posited in these dynamics. Such meaningful identities (and
therefore the interests) also have contradictory and ambiguous features as seen in relation to the
mixed-team formula and the different identifications with it of the founders and the workers. In
other words, it is important to stress that the semantic/interpretive boundary is always already the
space of the political. There is no simple, neutral, power-free translation. Etienne Wenger’s (1998)
concept of ‘economy of meaning’ (p. 199) approximates this very well as it maintains the focus on
knowing-in-practice where knowledge and practice are ‘reciprocally constituted’ (Orlikowski,
2002: 250) and where power is understood as ‘negotiation of meaning and the formation of identi-
ties’ (Wenger, 1998: 189). A notion of economy of meaning is useful since it alerts us to the relative
value that meanings acquire, solidifying and challenging the identities at hand, as seen, for exam-
ple, in the ritual about the client.
However, what too easily gets forgotten in this view is that the economy of meaning regards the
solidification and sedimentation engendered in the power struggles (see also Elkjaer and Huysman,
2008). The hegemonic view proposed here is fruitful exactly because it does not lose the moment
of sedimentation and determination where identities and, therefore, contexts emerge as significant.
However, at the same time, it keeps alive (so to speak) the political moment, as shown in the mean-
ings of AML practice where participation is conditioned and boundaries drawn. This study has
highlighted the force of every demarcation of a boundary where a difference becomes an asym-
metry constituting an unequal relation that can be characterised as a relation of subordination
(Brown et al., 2010; Feldman and Orlikowski, 2011; Laclau and Mouffe, 2001). Therefore, the
precise answer to question (3), what are the power dynamics these trajectories enable us to iden-
tify?, is to have identified power dynamics in their practical constitution: ranging from the ambigu-
ous conditions of the mixed-team formula to the emergence of the ‘cheap’ people. In this study,
power dynamics are evident in the contradiction between continuity and displacement between
AML’s expert founders and the relative newcomers to the practice. However, this practice is

complex as the relation of employment and the circuits of capitalist valorization and commercial
exploitation also overdetermine the practice. The power dynamics between Laura and John, for
example, is not only due to them being relative newcomers (to teamwork and design, for John, or
to the design practice, for Laura) but due to fundamental structural difficulties determined by the
commercial nature of AML practice (as business) and the management decisions of the managers/
founders. With the managers coming out of production, John and particularly Laura are the fairly
‘cheap’ people who had to participate in the practice without the proximity newcomers would have
had prior to the directors ‘coming out of production’. They lack any system to suffice for this
absence of a close proximity and constant interaction with the experts, other than an official ideol-
ogy of how work was done in AML (the mixed-team formula) and the passion for the practice.
This, as suggested, favoured the commitment of all and therefore helped in maintaining the quality
of AML solutions at acceptable levels. As shown, it is possible to avoid relegating such aspects,
which relate to ‘a specific political and social system’ to an external institutional context that
affects ‘the lives of people through the community and identities they construct’ (Wenger, 1998:
190). To be clear, I agree with those who suggest that when it comes to studying knowledge crea-
tion, in practice, one cannot but include the wider institutional context (Levina and Orlikowski,
2009; Mørk et al., 2010; Newell et al., 2006). However, this approach developed here, as promised
in the introduction, has avoided treating this as an external context, a container where the micro-
politics of the community is played up. Therefore, a third contribution is that of having shown how
in practice ‘context and contextualised entity constitute one another’ (Schatzki, 2005: 468). Its
transformative redefinition stands in showing the significance of such co-constitution. Alternatives,
in fact, if not actualised in the practice, were always possible. For example, when considering the
power dynamics of the founders coming out of production and employing ‘cheap’ people, it is
important to indicate that the founders might have chosen otherwise, as discussed earlier. Or, if we
consider this from the workers’ point of view, workers could have left AML given that on the whole
they had few obligations (e.g. family responsibility) and had plenty of job opportunities at the time.
This study shows in its actual, historical realisation (Lave and Wenger, 1991), the struggle of a
practice that is caught between art and commerce, management and craft and passion and business
and the antagonisms therein generated (De Fillippi et al., 2007; Elkjaer and Huysman, 2008;
McKinlay and Smith, 2009; Thrift, 2005). It offers an historical documentation of the struggles of
new economy workers who, as Andrew Ross indicated, in their ‘cool hip-hop’ heaven had to come
to terms with the price to pay for their no-collar jobs (Ross, 2004). The discontinuity affecting the
mixed-team formula, for example, on the promises of the on-the-job learning Teresa referred to,
was discussed in detail. The mixed-team formula is porous, and the tensions between the partici-
pants are condensations of the antagonism contaminating such a formula of work, bringing to the
fore the subordination and hierarchical differences in expertise, ownership, recognition and legiti-
macy. The answer to question (2), what are the trajectories of participation in the practices of the
different subjects? shows that there are different trajectories, as detailed earlier. As seen, they are
predicated on a myriad of identifications that are also contradictory (e.g. the passionate experts/
founders who are at once willing and unwilling to be directors/managers, the workers who are
doing their dream jobs but are faced with a ‘desperate situation’). The communitarian and egalitar-
ian fantasy of passion works in practice by enabling the continuity of the practice itself in the face
of such growing discontinuity where tensions and dislocations start shaking participants’ certain-
ties. It is the passion for the practice, the investment and trust in the identity of cool digital media
professionals doing their dream job that enable the stake for this practice to emerge meaningfully
and potently for all those involved. This is despite, or perhaps even more due to, the increasing
strain and sense of frustration and unfairness. Arguably, these aspects authenticate the passion,

Contu 313
making it a real one. This identification can be actual, as for John, or can be in the future, as for
Laura. She is l-earning her identity as a competent digital professional. This scenario supports the
manufacturing of commitment that makes possible at least in this historical moment the continuity
of AML’s digital practice in the face of widening cracks threatening its very existence.
Conclusion
While rarefied contributions to the problematics of power and politics in knowing-in-practice and
learning theories have been taking shape (Contu and Willmott, 2003, 2006; Gherardi, 2006;
Heinzmann, 2011; Mørk et al., 2010; Oborn and Dawson, 2010), this article has contributed to the
this literature addressing the power dynamics of learning design work in the historical realisation
of AML’s design practice . This study has enabled an appreciation of the power dynamics of ‘no-
collars’ practicing design work. The practice requires collaborations at the boundary of creative
and technical skills where creative abrasions are to be expected. The approach developed here has
made it possible to detail the workings of a motley crew (Caves, 2000) and appreciate the informal
processes and power dynamics through which ‘the job gets done’. The practical implications for
this article are mostly in terms of broadening the understanding and thinking tools for those inter-
ested in exploring the politics of work, learning and organising specifically in the creative industry.
This is still an important sector where, as suggested, the heterarchical workplaces of the future
(Gill, 2002; Grabher, 2001) have come to terms with long-standing issues of the ‘past’, such as
subordination, equality, fairness and exploitation.
This study can also be useful to those who manage and work in creative industries. To think of
a practice as complex and overdetermined, with the resulting power dynamics therein generated,
can be a useful way to approach and reflect on one’s work (managerial and otherwise), for exam-
ple, appreciating the different key meanings of the practice, identifying how they clash or instead
support each other. Such attentive and purposeful alertness to the complex and overdetermined
nature of one’s practice could be developed as part of becoming a reflective practitioner producing
a heightened awareness that can open up original and better-situated solutions. As Simon, AML’s
commercial director, puts it, ‘I just know that when I’m not there people do the same amount of
work ‘cos they just know what they’ve got to do and they get on with it, I never really know why’.
Hopefully, we have given an answer to Simon’s question and to those wishing to reflect on the
challenges and opportunities of an organisation facing discontinuity and its own limits.
The contributions proposed here are based on a limited case, the practices of one digital media
company. So any statistical generalisation is foreclosed. However, with other similar studies in this
field also based on one case, our contributions are related to what Yin (2009: 580), for example,
calls ‘analytical generalisations’, which have sought to expand, generalise and, we add, refine
theories, specifically theories related to the substantive aspects of creative design work and more
abstract aspects related to situated practice theorising.
Finally, this article has illustrated and elaborated what the site ontology can offer to the study of
situated learning and knowing-in-practice theorisation. The toolkit of the relational and critical
CoP theory perspective has been enriched, specifically, by elaborating transformative redefinitions
of key concepts such as practice, power and identity. The notion of stake articulated with that of
enjoyment and fantasy has also been ‘reactivated’ showing how the affective dimension plays also
an important role in covering over discontinuities and maintaining the continuity of the practice.
The hope is that the approach developed here can inform those wishing to study work and organi-
sation from this perspective and offer new points for further elaboration of knowing-in-practice at
work and, more specifically, of learning creative work.

Acknowledgements
I wish to thank all AML members for sharing with me their time and allowing me into their world, and the
editor and the anonymous reviewers for their suggestions and advice. I also thank Adam James, Andre Spicer,
Andrew Brown, Bente Elkjaer and Hugh Willmott for their generous comments on earlier versions. For vari-
ous reasons, this article has taken far too long. I wish my aunt, who would laugh at me every time I returned
to this article, was here so that I could tell her ‘zietta this is now finally out’!
Funding
The author received no financial support for the research, authorship and/or publication of this article.
Notes
1. In general terms, identity refers to what characterises the subjects participating in a practice: specifically
their reflections on themselves and others. Our conceptualisation of identity is elaborated more fully in
section ‘Analytical process’.
2. These belong to the tradition of qualitative studies and often employed in the interpretation of ethno-
graphic data (Hammersley and Atkinson, 1995). They are used as interpretive devices to suggest direc-
tions along which to approach the concrete and to favour further abstractions.
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On boundaries and 2014, Vol. 45(3) 289­–316

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Knowledge, power and CoP theory

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Situating our study: A site ontology

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investigating organising and knowing-in-practice. There is a contiguity of thought. Second, it is a

Reactivating a relational and critical CoPs theory

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Research setting and access

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The choice of the vignette

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Abrasions/CoP key Abrasion 1 Abrasion 2 Abrasion 3 Abrasion 4

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Abrasions/CoP key Abrasion 1 Abrasion 2 Abrasion 3 Abrasion 4

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CoP: community of practice; MNC: multinational corporation; MD: managing director.

Table 2. Empirical material.

MD: managing director.

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Creative abrasion 1: Differences at work in the detailed content

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Creative abrasion 2: Situating (and learning) AML’s identity in

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Creative abrasion 3: Difference (and sameness) in the creation

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Difference and sameness: Continuity and discontinuity

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Creative abrasion 4: Differences in identifications and

Dynamics of antagonism: The importance of (not) being a team worker

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Summary of the research results

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Orr J (1996) Talking about Machine. Ithaca, NY: ILR Press.

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On boundaries and 2014, Vol. 45(3) 289–316