Dishing up individual and collective dimensions in organizational knowing

Abstract

This article investigates the interplay between individual and collective dimensions in organizational knowing. We ground our analysis on the case of a gourmet restaurant managed by three different head chefs over an eight-year observation window from 2000 to 2008. We find organizational differences between the three periods although apart from head chef changes, the cooking team itself remained stable. Building on a parallel between knowing and habitus, we take into account the chefs’ trajectories, the ‘doing’ of agents in the organization, and organization and field characteristics. We show that in each period, the chef ’s knowing deeply permeated the restaurant. We demonstrate that the individual, collective, organizational and even field dimensions form a system of interdependence in knowing, where each dimension influences and is influenced by the others. Emphasizing the bidirectional nature of these relationships, we argue that a relational approach is necessary to better understand knowing.