Plugged Into the Network: How Embeddedness Enables Knowledge Access

Sammanfattning

This study explores how employees in a newly established sales and service unit experience and navigate knowledge access during the early stages of organisational formation, when structural ties, relational ties, and shared cognitive frames are still emerging. It further examines how the three dimensions of network embeddedness (structural, relational and cognitive) shape employees’ ability to identify, access, and interpret organisational knowledge. The study uses an exploratory, qualitative-dominant mixed-methods design with a census-style strategy targeting the entire unit. Data collection integrated a semi-structured interview with a short questionnaire. The authors analyzed 13 interviews using a systematic coding process and descriptive survey data from 16 participants using SPSS correlations. The thesis concludes that network embeddedness makes corporate knowledge actionable, but its dimensions influence early stage units unevenly. Cognitive embeddedness is the most decisive and foundational requirement because a shared language and aligned interpretations are necessary to understand and apply information. Relational embeddedness built on trust provides the comfort needed to share complex insights, while structural embeddedness merely provides the baseline visibility to locate who to ask.