This project gives students an opportunity to rethink and strengthen their knowledge of the following topics: Information, Knowledge, Understanding; Dual Types 1 and 2 Information Processing Systems; and Reasoning about Higher-Order Relations.

The following story provides inputs for answering questions.

Source: Tran, Y., Truong, A.T.T. Knowledge recontextualization by returnee entrepreneurs: The dynamic learning perspective. Journal of International Management, 28(3), 2022, 100922.

The returnee entrepreneurs are people who left their home (native) country for one of the advanced countries (further, host countries). In 7-10 years, these people returned to their home country. The researchers collected the initial data about returnees by using documents, stored in the state organizations that furnish permission to enter and remain in the country. The data allowed researchers to identify and contact the returnees. Researchers conducted interviews with the returnees to learn about their plans how to make a living. A group of returnees revealed that they were entrepreneurs in the host country and wanted to apply their experience and skills to launch entrepreneurial ventures in their home country.

Researchers stayed in a regular contact with the entrepreneurially minded returnees for up to five-seven years and studied the process of adaptation to a different in comparison to host countries environment of their home country. Returnees encountered notable differences in cultural, business, and regulatory areas.

Over the unfolding period, researchers periodically conducted interviews with these entrepreneurially minded returnees regarding their undertakings to build new ventures. The interviews were focused on four issues: (i) how institutions of home country and host country differed; (ii) how social interactions differed; (iii) what part of their business knowledge have returnees found the most and least useful; (iv) favorable and unfavorable events that happened to returnees while they have been working on building entrepreneurial ventures. Researchers characterized numerous processes, which took place in the returnees cognitive system.

Returnees had to recontextualize their business knowledge. Knowledge is contextually dependent in that it is embedded in the institutional and market dimensions of the business environment in which it is acquired. Knowledge recontextualization deals with grasping the new meanings which elements of existing knowledge have to gain in the novel environment. Recontextualization of returnees knowledge has primarily focused on firm practices, strategic concepts, and corporate values. During the pre-founding phase of their ventures, returnees performed intuitive learning, vicarious learning, and interactive vicarious learning. Vicarious learning takes place through observation. Returnees engaged in interactive vicarious learning when they participated in observations and communication with the observed people.

During the founding phase of their ventures, returnees took action to start and run their business by experimenting in order to determine how far the business could go. They engaged in blended

learning, which requires the ability to simultaneously (i) act according to norms of the local context and (ii) apply the brought-back (from the host country) knowledge. Blended learning requires the interplay and

a subtle balance between (i) and (ii). Excessive reliance on the local way of doing business would nullify the value of brought-back knowledge and deprive returnees of their competitive advantage. Excessive use of the brought-back knowledge would risk the business failing due to local resistance. Blended learning provides a solution to the immense challenge presented by the knowledge recontextualization.

While practicing blended learning, returnees were involved in a temporary unlearning of certain elements of the brought-back knowledge. Here, unlearning denotes an exclusion of certain knowledge elements from the application because they contradict the established local norms. These elements are not abandoned but reserved for opportunities in the future.

During the growth phase of their ventures, returnees were engaged in an intricate process of relearning the entrepreneurial mastery. Here relearning focuses on synthesizing knowledge elements that provide the most effective way to develop a value proposition, a strategic intent, and organizational culture, given the business environment of the home country.

Questions

QI. From data to information

• I.1 Were data, furnished by state organizations, contextualized?
• I.2 Were data, which researchers obtained during their first interviews with returnees, contextualized?
• I.3 Were data, which researchers obtained at the growth phase of ventures, contextualized?
• I.4 Did data, which researchers obtained during their first interviews, represent reliable information about true skills of entrepreneurially minded returnees?
• I.5 Did data, which researchers obtained during the interviews at the growth phase, represent reliable information about skills, which entrepreneurs demonstrated in the activities to build their ventures?

QII. The meaning of knowledge recontextualization.

• II.1 Does knowledge recontextualization reflect a development of tacit knowledge?
• II.2 Is knowledge recontextualization described in terms tacit knowledge?
• II.3 Does knowledge recontextualization reflect a development of explicit knowledge?
• II.4 Could a development of explicit knowledge be described in terms of tacit knowledge?
• II.5 Could a development of tacit knowledge be described in terms of explicit knowledge?
• II.6 Could recontextualization of business knowledge be attained without an extended direct involvement in business operations?
• II.7 Does recontextualization of business knowledge require abstract knowledge?
• II.8 Could a returnee-entrepreneur be successful if she recontextualized her knowledge of firm As practices but interpreted the As strategic concepts as if A functioned in the business environment of the host country?
• II.9 Could a returnee-entrepreneur be successful if she recontextualized her knowledge of firm As practices and strategic concepts but interpreted the As corporate values as if these values were identical in the host and home countries?
• II.10 Can one characterize recontextualized knowledge as disembodied knowledge?
• II.11 Can one characterize recontextualized knowledge as public knowledge?

Q.III Dual information processing by System 1 and System 2.

• III.1 Which processing system System 1 or System 2 carries responsibility for production of intuitive knowledge?
• III.2 Which processing system System 1 or System 2 carries responsibility for production of vicarious knowledge?
• III.3 Which processing system System 1 or System 2 carries responsibility for the quality of relearning the entrepreneurial mastery?

Q.IV Ordering levels of entrepreneurs mental activities during pre-founding, founding, and growth phases.

The ordering is based on the postulate that mental activities progress from the least sophisticated to the most sophisticated. Suppose that there exist seven levels. The least sophisticated mental activities are assigned tolevel ONE, the most sophisticated mental activities are assigned to level SEVEN.

• IV.1 Is the following statement correct: knowledge recontextualization should be assigned to higher level than relearning the entrepreneurial mastery?
• IV.2 Is the following statement correct: creation of information set should be assigned to lower level than intuitive knowledge?
• IV.3 Is the following statement correct: knowledge recontextualization should be assigned to higher level than vicarious learning?
• IV.4 Which type of mental activity provide the closest approximation to the activity that the handout defines as understanding?