John King / Institutions, cognition and knowledge transfer / 1 Abstract The successful transmission of knowledge requires the construction

of intersubjectively shared meanings which give rise to mutual understanding (Berger & Luckmann 1966). But on what basis do people come to agree meanings when they are in conflict, as in Bourdieus social scientists, journalists and politicians, who all lay claim to the imposition of the legitimate vision of the social world (Bourdieu 2005, p.36)? I do not fully accept, as Carlile (2004) does, an interests-driven view of barriers to knowledge exchange, but rather seek to explore how actors world views simultaneously shape knowledge transfer intent and limit or enable the skilful reinterpretation of meanings in order to translate knowledge across semantic barriers. In this early development paper, I critically examine two important books, On Justification (Boltanski & Thvenot 2006) and The Institutional Logics Perspective (Thornton et al. 2012), and attempt to apply their metatheories of practice to cases of knowledge exchange across societal domains. Berger and Luckmanns sociology of knowledge is the cornerstone of institutionalist theory (Friedland & Alford 1991), and the institutional logics perspective emphasizes the frames of reference that condition actors choices for sense making, the vocabulary they use to motivate action, and their sense of self and identity (Thornton et al. 2012, p.2). The institutional logics perspective offers a framework which links the social cognitive processes through which meanings about social reality are generated to the institutional ideal types of family, religion, state, market, profession, and corporation. An explanation of knowledge transfer rooted in institutional theory would emphasise conflict between and co-mingling of alternative logics which encourage or discourage knowledge sharing and enable or deny certain meanings to be constructed. An alternative tradition, the sociology of worth (Boltanski & Thvenot 2006), empirically derives alternative and incommensurable principles of justification, or rationalities, from the writings of six authors: civic (Rousseau), market (Adam Smith), industrial (Saint-Simon), domestic (Bossuet), inspiration (Augustine), and fame (Hobbes). For Boltanski & Thvenot, disputes about worth are resolved by examining whether a particular rationality has been contravened or which rationality is most appropriate to the matter at hand.

John King / Institutions, cognition and knowledge transfer / 2 References

Berger, P.L. & Luckmann, T., 1966. The Social Construction of Reality, Wiley-Blackwell. Boltanski, L. & Thvenot, L., 2006. On Justification, Princeton University Press. Bourdieu, P., 2005. The political field, the social science field, and the journalistic field. Bourdieu and the journalistic field, pp.2947. Carlile, P.R., 2004. Transferring, Translating, and Transforming: An Integrative Framework for Managing Knowledge Across Boundaries. Organization Science, 15(5), pp.555568. Friedland, R. & Alford, R.R., 1991. Bringing society back in: Symbols, practices and institutional contradictions. In The New Institutionalism in Organizational Analysis. University Of Chicago Press. Thornton, P.H., Ocasio, W. & Lounsbury, M., 2012. The Institutional Logics Perspective: A New Approach to Culture, Structure, and Process, OUP Oxford.