Reification of Numbers in Inter-Organisational Physician Learning Networks

Abstract Book of the 19th International Conference on Modern Research in Management, Economics and Accounting

Year: 2026

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Reification of Numbers in Inter-Organisational Physician Learning Networks

Dr. Natalie Cummins, Jan Mouritsen

ABSTRACT:

This paper investigates inter-organisational arrangements, including Communities of Practice (CoPs) and virtual networks, through which public sector physicians cooperate across organisational boundaries. Using an extended qualitative field study, the research examines how physicians engage with numbers – including accounting numbers – as tools for cooperation and learning. The central argument is that numbers support inter-organisational cooperation only when they become reified artefacts that enable what Pyrko, Dörfler and Eden (2017) describe as “thinking together”: the collective process through which practitioners develop shared understandings of their problems and practices. Drawing on Wenger’s (1996; 2000) theorisation of reification and participation, the study shows that numerical artefacts gain meaning only through active engagement, where tables, graphs, dashboards and benchmarking displays become focal objects of collective physician interpretation.

The study distinguishes between two co-existing learning arrangements. In informal, self-managed CoPs, physicians bring locally generated numbers into peer dialogue and collaboratively construct meaning through shared interpretation. In contrast, in third-party managed virtual networks, performance numbers are reified upstream by external actors and circulated as stabilised metrics that practitioners subsequently interpret and translate into locally meaningful insights. Across both arrangements, physicians act as active interpreters rather than passive recipients of quantification. Reified numbers become shared resources that enable a dispersed profession to think together across organisational boundaries, supporting an enriched form of evidence-based medicine grounded in peer communication and situated professional judgement.

The full extended abstract is attached. The full paper is available when required.

Keywords: Communities of Practice, Evidence based Medicine, Inter-organisational Learning, Reification, Virtual Networks