Abstract

Assuming the theoretical background of situated action and practice based studies, the paper explores the issue of professional identity as the result of the constant negotiation among organizational actors. It claims that, following a work and organizational psychology point of view, the relationship between sensemaking processes and participating to a community of practice shapes and influences the texture of professional identity: achieving shared meanings is related, in turn, to the experience of becoming author of the one's organization. Through a narrative device, the paper focuses upon the image of the kitchen of a convent as an organizational metaphor of the ongoing process of knowing, working, organizing and learning, held by organizational reflexion. The article discusses the dilemma between dynamic knowledge shaping and knowledge persistence, analyzing how affordance and agency can be seen as integrated in a process of constant production and reproduction of knowledge. The paper ends with the suggestion to underpin the relevance of the relationship people engage with their work as a distinctive psychological dimension, considering the emic methodology as a suitable way to detect embedded knowledge and situated practice of subjects.