Abstract
Attempts to summarize Claudio Ciborra’s work through a single theme cannot succeed due to its breadth and the ease in which he moved between subjects. This paper is a tentative attempt to discover a common theme in his work, with the notion of knowledge identified as an appropriate starting point. Encompassing learning and rationality, the theme of knowledge has been persistent and evolving in Ciborra’s work, with three knowledge combinations reflecting its development: knowledge-rationality, knowledge-learning and everyday-knowledge. The first combination depicts rationality as a catalyst in the pursuit of specific objectives that determine knowledge. Ciborra continued his exploration of knowledge by theorizing that background knowledge structure objectives were the basis of sense-making and organizational action, while short term knowledge structure was required to address developing situations. This introduced and provided the foundation for the knowledge-learning combination. Ciborra’s final knowledge combination was predicated on the interpretation of reality as created by the experiences of the individual, including participation in organizational life where feelings, moods and the totality of existence is expressed, delineating the everyday-knowledge combination in the process. Ciborra utilized these and other approaches like the learning ladder in his investigation of complex multilayered subjects like information systems, undertaken from amongst others, a phenomenological vantage point that shaped many of his key contributions.
This paper originally appeared as Resca, A. (2006) Knowledge: climbing the learning ladder to a ‘phenomenological’ view, Journal of Information Technology 21(3): 203–210.
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© 2009 Andrea Resca
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Resca, A. (2009). Knowledge: Climbing the Learning Ladder to a ‘Phenomenological’ View. In: Bricolage, Care and Information. Technology, Work and Globalization. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230250611_13
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