Projetos de Pesquisa Desenvolvidos por Estudantes de Pósgraduação: Uma Oportunidade Para a Aprendizagem Organizacional

Abstract

Knowledge-based organizations are facing interaction and communication challenges with their knowledge workers. Being knowledge is today’s most valuable companies’ asset therefore knowledge workers individual and collective learning ability to collaborate will be crucial. Organizational learning is a very broad issue, so key concepts are presented, especially those related to situated learning and communities of practice. Empresa X is a knowledge-based government-controlled research company operating in the field of tropical agricultural research, with 40 units across Brazil. A company here called Empresa X admits postgraduate students interested in developing their research projects using company’s infrastructure and technological support. This study aimed at discovering how individual and collective learning occurs during postgraduate research projects development at the company’s Unit AA, located in the capital city of the state of Rio de Janeiro. This qualitative research was configured as a case study. Field data was collected through semi-structured inperson interviews with six students, six advisors and five employees of the research group. Hermeneutic analysis method was applied in search for the collected data meaning. Research findings revealed that organizational learning occurred by-means of: literature review, formal education, problem solving, experience and reflection, social interaction and shared knowledge processes. It was also revealed the way students are selected by the advisors, how the research topics are chosen; how partnerships are established during projects development and their corresponding students’ guiding practices. Risk situations of effective loss of knowledge developed at the company and this unit research activities contribution for Empresa X, post graduate students, universities and Brazilian society were also pointed out. This study would contribute to support a knowledge management structure implementation within Empresa X and to understanding their collective learning processes, especially those accomplished at non managerial levels.