Inter-professional Barriers and Knowledge Brokering in an Organizational Context: The Case of Healthcare
研究专业层级如何影响组织内知识中介，发现同级中介在医学知识中普遍，但通过发展架构知识可超越层级，促进知识更广泛分布以惠及患者。
Our study examines brokering of situated knowledge within an organizational context, characterized by professional hierarchy. We examine how professional affiliation and associated power differentials impact upon knowledge brokering at the individual and group levels within an organization. Our empirical case, which combines social network analysis and qualitative fieldwork, is set in healthcare with a focus upon integration of management, psychosocial and clinical component knowledge domains deemed necessary for treatment of a long-term condition. Our study shows that peer-to-peer knowledge brokering, which is framed by professional hierarchy, remains pervasive with respect to medical knowledge brokering. However, social structures might be mediated through developing architectural knowledge, reflected in both formal and informal organizational routines and schema, which engenders community tendencies that transcend professional hierarchy, so that knowledge brokering is more widely distributed to benefit patients.