A New Wind BlowingUniversity of Manchester Postgraduate Conference

2-3 August, 2012

Jennifer ScolesUniversity of Stirling

Reconceptualising the ‘skills gap’ discourse:

Professional knowing in the emerging sector of renewable energy

A practice-based, sociomaterial approach

PhD Topic

Situating the case study

• Sector emergence

• Changing profession

• Dissatisfied employers

• ‘Skills gap’ discourse

• Micro-practices

Theoretical Perspective

• Knowing-in-practice (Orlikowski, 2002)

• Sociomaterial (Feldman and Orlikowski, 2011)

• Actor Network Theory (Latour, 1987)

Methodology

• Ethnography• ‘Follow the actor’• Interviews &

observation• Photograph

elicitation(Harper, 1994)

Photos of practice ‘stuff’

Boundary objects (Star and Griesemar, 1989; Carlile, 2004)

‘Professional vision’ (Goodwin, 1994)

Objects and sites of interprofessional knowing

Objects as inhibitors and mediators

Summary

• Case study: Renewable energy

• Problematising ‘skills gap’ discourse

• Methodology and data collection

• Introducing photo elicitation

Any Questions?

ReferencesCarlile, P.R., 2004. Transferring, translating, and transforming: An integrative approach for managing knowledge across boundaries, Organization Science, 15(5), pp. 555-568.Feldman, M., and Orlikowski, W., 2011. Theorizing practice and practicing theory, Organization Science, 22, pp. 1240-1253.Goodwin, C.,1994. Professional Vision,. American Anthropologist, 96(3), pp. 606-633.Harper, D., 1994. On the authority of the image: Visual methods at the crossroads, in N.K. Denzin and Y.S. Lincoln (eds) Handbook of Qualitative Research, Thousands Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, pp. 403-412.Latour, B., 1987. Science in Action: How to follow scientists and engineers through society, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press; Milton Keynes: Open University Press.Orlikowski, W.J., 2007. Sociomaterial practices: Exploring technology at work, Organization Studies, 28(9), pp.1435-1448.Star, S.L., and Griesemer, J.R., 1989. Institutional Ecology, 'Translations', and Boundary Objects: Amateurs and Professionals in Berkeley's Museum of Vertebrate Zoology 1907-39, Social Studies of Science, 19(3), pp. 387- 420.