Re-entry into home LO17013

Tony Kortens (tkortens@silcon.com)
Sat, 14 Feb 1998 17:38:49 -0800

Replying to LO16973 --

>Greetings. We are two University of Guelph (Canada) students currently
>working on a qualitative research project on re-entry and reverse
>culture-shock. We happened to fall upon this page, and we would like to
>know if anybody has any suggestions for us regarding this topic, and
>knowledge of any appropriate literature? At this time we are having
>difficulty finding appropriate literature and any help would be
>appreciated.

>Thank you in advance,
>Kim and Robyn

Hi Kim & Robyn,

Your project sounds very interesting and reminds me of a piece of research
done a decade or so ago at Honeywell, (I think) which reviewed re-entry
interview data and found that overwhelmingly people said they came back
primarily because they missed their quality group! (i.e. healthy
interpersonal relationships.)

I may be able to help you as I recently completed my mid-career
dissertation on org entry issues doing a critical ethnographical study in
a hi-tech org looking at engagement with communities of practice and
issues of single/double loop learning. My findings include a focus on
relational knowledge (Richards, 1988), relational capital (Kortens, 1998),
social capital / social trust (Putnam, 1993) and sense-making through
ontological oscillation (Weick, 1995).

I chose to view "culture" as more about legitimate peripheral
participation (Lave & Wenger) and subsequent engagement into communities
of practice (Wenger, 1998) and less about being passively swallowed by a
monolithic org culture, which has been the traditional view in most of the
literature. I suspect that this might also provide you with a contemporary
and rich "frame" for exploring your question/s. If you want references to
the above check out IRL at www.irl.org and order some of their relevant
technical reports.

I also have a massive bibliography and a head full of the resultant
confusion! Let me know some more about your intended direction and your
research question/s and I may be able to be of some help.

Best regards,
Tony
- --
Tony Kortens
Action and Learning in Organizations
Envision International
Ph/fax (510) 939 4177
3 Lincolnshire Court,
Lafayette, CA 94549, USA

mailto:tkortens@silcon.com

-- 

Tony Kortens <tkortens@silcon.com>

Learning-org -- Hosted by Rick Karash <rkarash@karash.com> Public Dialog on Learning Organizations -- <http://www.learning-org.com>