A Pragmatic View of Knowledge and Boundaries: Boundary Objects in New Product Development
通过民族志研究，探讨新产品开发中知识既是创新来源又是障碍的矛盾，提出知识在功能部门间存在本地化、嵌入性和投资性差异，并引入边界对象作为解决知识边界问题的工具。
This study explores the premise that knowledge in new product development proves both a barrier to and a source of innovation. To understand the problematic nature of knowledge and the boundaries that result, an ethnographic study was used to understand how knowledge is structured differently across the four primary functions that are dependent on each other in the creation and production of a high-volume product. A pragmatic view of 'knowledge in practice' is developed, describing knowledge as localized, embedded, and invested within a function and how, when working across functions, consequences often arise that generate problematic knowledge boundaries. The use of a boundary object is then described as a means of representing, learning about, and transforming knowledge to resolve the consequences that exist at a given boundary. Finally, this pragmatic view of knowledge and boundaries is proposed as a framework to revisit the differentiation and integration of knowledge.