BP case study: KM team structuration and sense-making (Part I)

Recently, an increasing amount of research and literature has focused on knowledge management, organizational learning and virtual teams. Building on Parsons 1950s and 1960s work around general Theory of Actions, this paper uses Schwandt's (1994; 1995; 1999) dynamic organizational learning model that considers both cognition and action, as a framework, to explore the factors that a virtual project team (the British Petroleum Knowledge Management Team) used to contribute to a multi-national's learning, along two-dimensions: structural and sense-making dimensions.Despite a growing body of literature in both organizational learning and groupware research, there are few studies on the relationship between the two areas. Exceptions are the empirical study of a groupware implementation by Riggs, Bellinger and Krieger (1996) and Neilson's (1997) case study exploring the influence of a collaborative technology – this three year case study on BP's virtual team provides new, qualitative insights into previously unexplored areas of research in the knowledge management discipline.