ABSTRACT
Inquiries into knowledge capture and use have hitherto focused primarily on commercial organisations who seek to gain competitive advantage through individual and organisational development. A large metropolitan fire service offers a different milieu in terms of work practices, hierarchical structures and the relationships between knowledge, learning and action. In exploring these relationships Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) emerge as important for training and learning since there are important connections between how knowledge is captured, rendered and then conveyed as organisational views of tasks and their resolution. Any attempt to describe and analyse the capture, rendering and subsequent use of a procedure, even an apparently straightforward item such as a SOP, will require a multi-method approach. Establishing the relationships between the SOPs and action involved exploring the perspectives held by the seven interviewees regarding definitions, experience and the issues they associated with using the SOPs.
