The work-team is understood to have the potential to develop and sustain high-performing, modern organizations through the knowledge conversion process. This process includes an effective work-team that learns and creates knowledge, and then converts knowledge for use by the team and the larger organization in a process of continuous improvement. There is literature that questions the work-team and its potential to be highly effective, however, and which informs the problem, purpose, and central research question. Other literature related to work-teams is given coherence through a conceptual synthesis, and is critically analyzed. This dissertation asks how and why work-teams in four organizations are enabled or constrained to use the knowledge conversion process for continuous improvement. A conceptual framework constructed of the four orientations of effective teams and knowledge creation theory was used to guide the research process. Research was conducted in each of for-profit, non-profit, education, and government settings. Several aspects of work-team functioning were reported by participants, and supported through document analysis and field notes, as being enabling and / or constraining to the knowledge conversion process. Enabling elements include: the four orientations of effective teams (relational, ends, process, learning) and elements of knowledge creation theory. Constraints include: conditions or actions that oppose a relational, ends, process, or learning orientation, and conditions that oppose the tenets of knowledge creation theory. The discussion presents representative responses, documentation, and field notes which give context to the enabling and constraining functions of each work-team. Critical realism is utilized as the methodology of this research, and illuminates the stratified reality of the work-team context, including four modes of reality: materially, ideally, artifactually, and socially real. The four orientations of effective work-teams, knowledge creation theory, and critical realism are found to be useful tools for the establishment and development of an effective work-team knowledge conversion process.
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