“Bouncing ideas” as a complex information practice: information seeking, sharing, creation, and cooperation
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/JD-03-2021-0047 |
| Published date | 22 October 2021 |
| Date | 22 October 2021 |
| Pages | 800-816 |
| Subject Matter | Library & information science,Records management & preservation,Document management,Classification & cataloguing,Information behaviour & retrieval,Collection building & management,Scholarly communications/publishing,Information & knowledge management,Information management & governance,Information management,Information & communications technology,Internet |
| Author | Rebekah Willson |
“Bouncing ideas”as a complex
information practice: information
seeking, sharing, creation,
and cooperation
Rebekah Willson
School of Information Studies, McGill University, Montreal, Canada
Abstract
Purpose –“Bouncing ideas”is a phrase used colloquially to illustrate a way of advancing ideas in the
workplace. While described by some as a key part of their information work, it has remained largely
unexplored in the information science literature. As a metaphor used to depict information work, it describes a
process of working on ideas in conjunction with others. This paper examines how early career academics use
the term when describing their academic work.
Design/methodology/approach –This paper reports on one of the findings from a larger, in-depth study
that examined the information behaviour of early career academics undergoing career transitions, which was
carried out using constructivist grounded theory (CGT). CGT provides both a framework for the systematic
collection (that included multiple interviews and check-ins with 20 early career academics) and analysis of the
data (that consisted of multiple rounds of iterative, inductive coding).
Findings –The findings identify the component parts of bouncing ideas, which include three component in-
formation activities –information seeking, information sharing and information creation –and are undertaken
as cooperative information work (joint work for a shared purpose, but the benefits of the work may not be equal
between participants).
Originality/value –Bouncing ideas is proposed as a complex information practice, defined as engaging in a
temporary cooperative effort that involves social information exchange in order to gain help and/or support for
an intellectual endeavour to create new information. The work identifies that more research into bouncing ideas
is needed to more fully explore the distinct component behaviours that take place whilst bouncing ideas and the
social conditions that foster this collaborative exchange.
Keywords Information behaviour, Information sharing, Information practices, Information seeking,
Information creation, Cooperative information work
Paper type Research paper
Introduction
During my dissertation, “bouncing ideas”wasa phrase that stood out wh en interviewing early
career academics about their information behaviour during the transition from their doctoral
studies to their first continuing academic position (Willson, 2016) . The phase was used with
relativefrequencyto describe a way ofinteracting withcolleagues,mentors and collaborators to
advance an idea. Discussion of “bouncingideas”became a small subsection in my dissertation
but was mainly descriptive, as I did not have the time to explore it in full. The prevalence of this
colloquial expression piqued my interest and led me to further examine the phrase in the
information science literature. While appearing with some frequency in the literature
(colloquially used by participants and authors), “bouncing ideas”was not defined nor directly
discussed. While frequency of use of a phrase does not indicate importance, it does indicate a
sharedunderstandingand a utilityto describeinformationwork. What isnot understoodis what
is includedin the shared understanding nor what that information work entails.
JD
78,4
800
Dr. Willson would like to acknowledge the financial support received for this research, including a
Doctoral Fellowship, Social Sciences and Research Council of Canada (Award #752-2014-0499) and an
Australian Postgraduate Award International Postgraduate Research Scholarship (Charles Sturt
University).
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available on Emerald Insight at:
https://www.emerald.com/insight/0022-0418.htm
Received 3 March 2021
Revised 1 October 2021
Accepted 3 October 2021
Journal of Documentation
Vol. 78 No. 4, 2022
pp. 800-816
© Emerald Publishing Limited
0022-0418
DOI 10.1108/JD-03-2021-0047
This paper is a closer examination and exploration of bouncing ideas. The phrase evokes
the image of repeatedly throwing a ball, which rebounds, is caught and thrown once again –
several interrelated, coordinated actions. Upon further investigation, I came to realize that
bouncing ideas metaphor was used by a number of participants to describe crucial ways of
working with colleagues and collaborators, which denoted their tacit knowledge about a
process for furthering their thinking on a topic or problem. While a simple phrase, it
encompasses several complicated behaviours –including interacting with others –that serve
important functions for the academics undertaking the process. Discussed by academics with
different disciplinary backgrounds and in different countries, bouncing ideas is –for many
academics –a key way of working. For these reasons, the phrase requires in-depth
investigation. I propose that bouncing ideas is a complex information practice that contains
three component information activities –information seeking, sharing and creation –and is
undertaken as cooperative information work. The next section reviews some of the literature
about information practices, “bouncing ideas”as a concept, as well as the proposed
component information activities that make up bouncing ideas.
Literature review
Information practices
An information practice is “a set of socially and culturally established ways to identify, seek, use,
and share the information available in various sources ...[that] are often habitual”(Savolainen,
2008,pp.2–3). Savolainen (2007) describes the theoretical roots of information practices, which
include Suchman’s situated action, Lave’s situated learning and Lave and Wenger’s
communities of practice, which emphasize that meaning making happens dynamically
through social interactions that take place locally (p. 120). The term was adopted by those
wanting to emphasize the social nature of information seeking because, to some information
science researchers, “all human practices are fundamentally social”(Talja and Hansen, 2006,p.
127), meaning that practices originate in communities and are organized in relation to others (i.e.
are collaborative). This means that when engaging in an information practice, actors are
“participants in a practice”(Talja and Hansen, 2006, p. 127, emphasis in the original) that exists
beyond the individual. Information practices also include a broader spectrum of information
seeking and encountering situations, covering the full range of elements that individuals recount
when discussing their engagement with information (McKenzie, 2003). A practice is “composed
of a set of actions that are organized by understandings of how to do things; by rules; and by
teleoaffective structures, i.e. beliefs, hopes, expectations, emotions and moods that have bearning
on what is being done”(Pilerot and Limberg, 2011, p. 315). These sets of actions can be viewed as
forming individuals’tacit knowledge about how to engage in a particular setting (Jarrahi and
Thomson, 2017). Rather than one specific action or activity or behaviour, information practices
are socially established patterns of interacting with information that incorporate the complex
ways in which individuals act in particular contexts.
“Bouncing ideas”
As a concept, “bouncing ideas”is oftenimplicitly understoodbut not explicitly articulated.As a
step to further exploring the phrase, “bouncing ideas”was presented as a poster at an
informationscience conference(Willson, 2018a) to introducethe concept. The posterstated that
...it typically describes an idea being presented to a colleague; discussion and active work on or
with that idea (which might include brainstorming, testing out, adding to, and/or modifying);
repetition of the active engagement; and then the originator of the activity taking the idea away for
further work or implementation (p. 930).
In addition to introducing the phrase, conference attendees were asked about what they
believed the term means. During the poster session, scholars engaged with the poster and
Bouncing ideas
801
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