Reworking knowledge in the everyday life experience of a French-Italian company: An analysis conducted through the lens of Alfred Schütz

Adopting the lens of Alfred Schütz, this article examines the case of a French-Italian organisation responsible for constructing a railway line. It investigates how knowledge is questioned and reworked when members of the two national cultures interact. Data was collected through 50 semi-structured interviews with managers. Results show that employees found the binational context challenging. Two individual postures were identified – ‘reflexive’ and ‘resistant’ – based on employees’ willingness to adjust their knowledge. At the organisational level, after analysing the construction of four binational artefacts, two types were identified, ‘shared’ and ‘contested’, interpreted as the outcomes of a cooperative and a conflictual experience, finally embedded in the ‘organisational stock of knowledge’.