Dissemination of professional routines, a case study in the automotive industry

This paper aims at studying the mechanisms that contribute to the dissemination, the transmission and the creation of professional knowledge. It is based on observations led within a French large company of automobile industry. Our approach was empirical. We carried out some observations in different technical fields. What we observed is how people, individually or collectively, gather the information available in their environment, how they transform this information progressively into knowledge, how eventually they apply this knowledge and embed it in what we called professional routines. This article deals with a model of the professional routines acquisition and transmission, both from an individual point of view and from a collective point of view. The model we built is divided into five parts: Learning, Experiment, Embodying, Routinization and Mastering. Individual and collective routinization is a key for understanding the learning phenomenon and the transmission and dissemination of knowledge. Routinization can be defined as a regular and mechanical act, being more the result of a habit than of a thinking. Acting routinely is acting without thinking about the act. The routinization process is core in our daily practices. In a professional environment, routinization refers to know-how which became "innate" as a result of repeated experiences. Routinization describes a process based on knowledge acquired from trial and error experiences. It is the result of a more or less long confrontation with the environment that allows to understand the world of this new knowledge. It helps to develop skills, hand-tricks, tips and knowledge. In a factory, routinization is essential for the organization of the manufacturing, but can lead to blockages: difficulties to modify the working processes, the dissemination of knowledge across the company as well as to new comers. Routinization is intrinsically conservative. We described a comprehensive process that leads from one step to the other. This process is by nature non-linear, cyclic, and retroactive. The aim of our work is to confront the model with reality. It was done using the observations we made, and we applied it in order to better understand the dissemination of tacit knowledge in a professional context.