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Purpose -The purpose of this paper is to present adaptive culture structuration, a new approach for theorizing and analyzing culture change and for creating an "adaptive cultural structurated learning environment". Design/methodology/approach -Incorporating a case study in the financial sector the paper explores 12 employees' narrated accounts of living through a culture change initiative. A constructivist, interpretive, qualitative research study followed grounded theory principles. Organizational documentation provided secondary data. Semi structured interview data were analyzed using content analysis, constant comparison and theoretical sensitivity and were managed by ATLAS.ti software. Findings -Three themes emerged: respondents' investment of self, accepting the culture change initiative and its values; employees' epistemic analyses of the embedded value promises including experiencing a critical incident that interrupted managers' enactment of values; employees' resulting "received practice" which represented the enacted (versus the espoused) values and was not visible to managers. Practical implications -An adaptive culture structurated learning environment fosters a relationship of "negotiated practice" instead of "received practice" between managers and employees in the constitution of corporate culture change. In this space, employee interpretations and assessments, which may otherwise remain hidden from managers and thereby prevent workplace learning opportunities, can be drawn upon, shared meaning co-produced and psychological contract issues explained. Originality/value -While much has been written on espoused culture change, this is the first theoretical model to examine the process from an employee perspective through an adaptive culture structurated lens.

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This paper seeks to bridge a perceived gap in the literature on the methodology of qualitative research. The audience in mind are business and management students who are required to carry out field research as a part of their masters or doctoral degrees. After submitting a research proposal or candidacy, which sets out the research strategy in broad terms, students are characteristically faced with field work involving the collection of data from participants or respondents. Whatever thought and planning has been given to interviewing and questionnaires in theory, it is a necessity in qualitative research to adapt to the situation on the ground which is unique for every research.The paper argues that this situation is not specifically addressed in the qualitative research literature. This activity is termed a 'Familiarization Study'. The elements of a familiarization study -procedures, content and theories -are discussed. The paper concludes with two cases of a familiarization study as a part of doctoral research. In the first case familiarisation focussed on the necessity for the research to interview in an unfamiliar and potentially hostile environment. The second case the researcher was faced with the task of developing practical procedures for the collection of data according to the exacting protocols of the discourse research method known as conversation analysis.3

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to investigate employees' and managers' accounts of interactive learning and what might encourage or inhibit emergent learning.Design/methodology/approachThe approach taken was a constructivist/social constructivist ontology, interpretive epistemology and qualitative methodology, using grounded theory method. Data collection included semi‐structured interview, “complete this sentence” and “scenarios” from 51 respondents: 22 managers and 29 employees in four private sector organisations. As respondents' theories emerged, these informed the next round of data collection, this process named “theoretical sampling”. Managers and employees were asked about perceptions of their own role and the other's roles in learning.FindingsReciprocity and participative learning involving managers and employees emerged. There was dynamism to the data and evidence of both Billett's notion of affordances and Stacey's patterns of local interactions. Employees encouraged learning through peer discussions, and motivation/personal initiative. Managers encouraged learning through have a go coaching, formal training opportunities and working with company structure and resources. The data support the idea of complex and integrated learning.Practical implicationsThe data informed both managers and employees in such a way as to highlight the dynamic and complex interactions around learning processes. One practical implication is employee and manager training in emergence and complexity as learning environments. Ideas of complex responses and patterns of local interaction resonated with the data more than particular typologies of learning.Originality/valueThis paper captures insights, especially from employees, into the dialogue and dynamism of their learning opportunities, whilst supporting existing theories. The need for managers to “learn” employees' local interaction patterns emerged as a future research agenda, alongside the need to penetrate the social space of employee learning more deeply.

This paper concerns the specific problem of the critical levels of staff turnover in the information technology (IT) area in Hong Kong. The aim is to give advice to improve the management of IT personnel.

Purpose-This paper aims to report on an empirical case study, (single case multi-site) employing both a ''hard'' and ''soft'' method. The tangible, visible component of the study was the production of a database whose fields were to be the source of tacit knowledge emergence. Design/methodology/approach-The proposition was that the possibility for the capture of tacit knowledge was subject to four conditions. The first was the need for a teleological motive and purpose. The second was a bounded environment expressed in this case in terms of the published corporate goals and key business drivers. The third was the production of a controlled vocabulary that made sense to both the respondents in the context of the true nature of the business activity. The fourth and most important condition was the interactive and iterative process that allowed those involved to own the tacit knowledge emerging process. Findings-Results supported the idea that under bounded conditions, a shared sense of purpose and an iterative process where ownership was possible, tacit knowledge could be captured. In the bounded environment tacit knowledge was found to be not haphazard, confirming its ''end purpose'' for being. Practical implications-The findings of the research have practical application for organisations wishing to capture the tacit knowledge of their knowledge workers and describes a methodology for emerging and capturing it. Originality/value-Is of value in presenting a method for emerging tacit knowledge in-play in a bounded environment.