Lave and Wenger’s theory of LPP along with other seminal works such as Brown and Duguid (1991) has been noted to shift the focus in organizational studies towards practices (Corradi, Gherardi & Verzelloni, 2010). These theories, coupled with the interest in a knowledge society, and knowledge economy have led to a ‘renewed interest in practical knowledge’ (Corradi et al. 2010:267). This viewpoint perceives practices as a focus to study the activities of practitioners (Corradi et al. 2010, 268). From this perspective, practice is the place of learning and knowledge leading to social learning theories (Elkjaer, 2003), work-based learning theories (Raelin, 1997) and fields such as strategy as practice (Jarzabkowski, 2003). These perspectives, while differing in focus, all take practice as an essential element and share the notion that practice can be the empirical object used to study the social phenomenon. According to Gherardi (2001), situated practices produce knowledge. Hence, knowledge is ‘enacted – every day and over time in people’s practices.’ (Orlikowski, 2002: 250). Another way of understanding this is through Schatzki’s (2012: 14) statement,
‘If what a person does, thinks, believes, desires, etc., presupposes the practices that s/he carries on, social phenomena cannot consist simply of people’s actions but must consist of these actions together with, or in the context of, these practices.’
We cannot talk of practice without speaking of knowledge and vice versa. Essentially, the knowledge as practice perspective is a way of understanding the world through practices.
Watson (2017) delineates practices, performances, and actions as the following, ‘practice is an entity with continuity across the instances of its performance,’ ‘performance is an enactment of practice,’ ‘actions are the doings (of skilled, reflective practitioners) that comprise performances.’ The relationships between practices and their components are ways of answering the question, what are practices? It must be stated, beforehand, that there is no single definition of practice, just as there is no single practice theory (Schatzki, 2001). The understandings of practice detailed, subsequently, are the ones I used to build my understanding of practices. The understanding of practice is necessary to explore the process of transition because it is practices that form the basis for situated learning. As newcomers go through the process of LPP, they are involved in the practices of a community and, in order to move towards fuller participation, they need to go through the process of becoming competent practitioners. Schatzki (2001: 11) states that most practice theorists conceive of practices as ‘arrays of human activities.’ Rouse (2006: 505) notes, ‘at one level practices are composed of human performances. These performances nevertheless take place, and are only intelligible, against the more or less stable background of other performances.’ Furthermore, taking a normative account of practices, he states that practices are not just the regularity of performances but, rather, the ‘interaction among them that expresses their mutual normative accountability.’ Hence, practice as ‘patterns of socially sustained action,’ is an analytical concept that enables the ‘the interpretation of how people achieve active being- in- the world’ (Gherardi, 2009b:356-7). Furthermore, from this perspective, practice is used as a way of understanding and describing the world as ‘something that is routinely made-and re-made in practice using tools, discourse and our bodies’ (Nicolini, 2013: 2). In seeing practices as composed of actions or performances, practice theorists look at the bodily doings and the linguistic sayings. Nicolini and Monteiro (2017), go on to define practices as,
‘Practices are meaning-making, order-producing and reality- shaping activities. That is orderly sets of materially mediated doings and sayings aimed at identifiable ends. We call such regimes of activity practices when they have a history, a constituency, and normative dimension. With a ‘real’ purchase in the regulated manufacturing of reality, practices contrast with hidden forces other social theories talk about.’
Practices are made up of performances that make sense in relation to other performances, which are done for a reason. They have been performed in a historically recognizable way by a group of practitioners who have a shared sense of the correct and incorrect ways of performing in practice. It is this understanding of practices that underpin the practices of seafaring that are being investigated in my study. This understanding of practice forms the basis of the study because to understand the process of transition there is a need to focus on what the newcomers are learning to do. Learning makes sense only in light of the practices of the community in which the newcomers are transitioning. That is, the newcomers learn doings and sayings which makes sense because members of the practice have negotiated these doings and sayings as the correct ways to perform within a practice. These meanings are historically negotiated. For example, the performances that make up the practices of seafaring make sense within those practices. If someone says, “raise the anchor” on land, it does not make sense, however on board a ship, within the context of the practice, this saying and related doings have a purpose. This purpose is an identifiable end for the community because raising the anchor might mean the ship is ready for her voyage or she is ready for berthing at the port. The process of transition involves learning these doings and sayings in the context of a practice so that newcomers learn how to perform as competent practitioners.
Nicolini and Monteiro (2017:110) note that ‘practice approaches are a primary way of studying organizations processually.’ This is because, they
share with process studies the notion that ‘social and organizational life stem from and transpire through real-time accomplishments of ordinary activities’ (Nicolini & Monteiro, 2017: 110) While practices are sustained, they are not static; they are constantly performed and re-performed every time anew. This repeated performance takes place not only between individuals but also between individuals and material objects. Depending on the practices and other influences, individuals may ‘adapt, transform or even reject practices’ (Handley et al. 2007). Hence, from a practice perspective, things are always in a state of becoming.
Taking a processual approach involves focusing on the suffix “-ing’’ that is, focusing on the emergent, fluid, temporal and spatial aspects of the organizational phenomenon (Langley & Tsoukas, 2017). Thus, we move from the notion of knowledge to knowing, from being to becoming and from organizations to organizing (Orlikowski, 2002). This fluidity is important to keep in mind because process theories focus on questions of “how”, that is, the processes through which something happens. In my study, while I adopt a practice lens, there is a process element involved, because the study focuses on the process of transition in the practices of seafaring. Here, processes are understood as the ways of doing things embedded in practice. Furthermore, the transition is understood as the progressive change or becoming that newcomers go through as they move towards fuller participation. Hence, understanding the practical accomplishment of LPP involves focusing on the ways of doing things, that is, the process of transition embedded in practice.