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Kelly Kerr

Communities of Practice: Knowledge Management for the Global Organization - 20 views

communities of practice CoP intranet collaboration innovation community

started by Kelly Kerr on 14 Apr 11
  • Kelly Kerr
    #1 Kelly Kerr on 14 Apr 11
     
    Topic : How internet technology has shaped collaboration within organisations.

    Communities of Practice: Knowledge Management for the Global Organization


    http://proquest.umi.com.dbgw.lis.curtin.edu.au/pqdweb?index=11&did=1864150261&SrchMode=1&sid=12&Fmt=2&VInst=PROD&VType=PQD&RQT=309&VName=PQD&TS=1302329578&clientId=22212

    This report discusses Communities of Practice (CoP) and their role in the practice of Knowledge Management within global organisations through the use of the corporate Intranet. The report also points our some of the issues which arise with a CoP depending on how the community is structured within an organisation.

    Communities of Practice are an invaluable resource for sharing information within a corporation and fostering a community of subject matter experts. One of the strengths of a CoP is the speed with which they can assist with getting a new employee up to speed within an organisation. New starters can access comprehensive information pertinent to their role and also have access to a global network of specialists that can guide and mentor them whilst they are learning a role. The report also discusses how a CoP can form a powerful community to identify and drive change to spread best practices throughout an organisation.

    Whilst communities of practice foster collaboration by their very nature they can also inhibit collaboration, especially when involving lower level staff. Essentially everyone within the CoP is an expert in their field, so it can make it hard when a junior staff member within the community wants to raise an issue that could be in conflict with a person in a senior role. Further, if the group is heading in a direction with a solution and someone disagrees, it can be uncomfortable for the person who disagrees, which in turn could inhibit collaboration as they are reluctant to share their contribution. The article goes on to discuss strategies to mitigate conflict in a large organisation in order to keep the ideas flowing, encourage collaboration, and recognise and reward innovation.


    Reference
    Resnick, M., & Mejia, A.. (1 January). Communities of Practice: Knowledge Management for the Global Organization. IIE Annual Conference. Proceedings,1714-1719. Retrieved April 15, 2011, from ABI/INFORM Trade & Industry database.
  • Matthew Hewett
    #2 Matthew Hewett on 17 Apr 11
     
    Communities of Practice: Knowledge Management for the Global Organization



    I found this an interesting article about the social aspects of online collaborations through communities of practice. It was interesting that technology has allowed organizations to encourage the formations of online groups. One of the more interesting aspects I found mentioned in the article was the effect that online calibration had in affecting conformity with it appearing that professional communities of practice online were less likely to conform to a single viewpoint than similar communities meeting in real space. The article mentioned that it appeared that the fact that people were communicating through the interface of technology allowed people to resist the need to confirm to the majority viewpoint.


    Reference
    Resnick, M.L., Mejia, A. (2007). Communities of Practice: Knowledge Management for the Global Organization. Paper presented at the 2007 Industrial Engineering and Research Conference. Retrieved April 16, 2011 from http://proquest.umi.com.dbgw.lis.curtin.edu.au/pqdweb?index=11&did=1864150261&SrchMode=1&sid=12&Fmt=2&VInst=PROD&VType=PQD&RQT=309&VName=PQD&TS=1302329578&clientId=22212
  • Emily Murphy
    #3 Emily Murphy on 17 Apr 11
     
    This paper provides an excellent overview of the concept of a Community of Practice (CoP), a social network of professionals independent of any one company. According to the author, CoPs are useful in decreasing the learning curve of new employees, supporting faster responses to customer inquiries, and enhancing the generation of new ideas.

    Like Kelly and Matthew, I found the author's concerns about conformity within CoPs to be of most interest. 'Information influence' and 'social cascades' occur when a highly-perceived individual's theory is widely supported because of the high perception of that individual, causing the contrary views of other individuals to go unheard.

    Open source software development communities, which have been likened to CoPs (Ye & Kishida, 2003), exhibit this problem because of the division between 'core members' and other contributors. For example, a feature request on the KeePass SourceForge site, which was asked by a member of 7 years, received the reply of "Nice idea, thanks! I've now added an 'Export' button in the icon picker dialog" from a core developer (Tracker: Feature Requests, 2011). In contrast, a member of 6 days wanted to know why the source code repository for the project was not open to public view (a valid question, considering it's an open source project), but the reply from the afore-mentioned core developer simply stated that the code repository was "On my PC" (Source code..., 2011). This example demonstrates the vast difference between how the opinions and ideas of highly-perceived members and newer members are treated in Communities of Practice.

    The author proposes that maintaining anonymity or providing incentives to debate during initial deliberation phases can help to overcome such problems. I think that mechanisms such as these might contribute to the promotion of a culture of openness, which would in turn address the wider social problem of inequality within CoPs.

    References:
    Ye, Y. & Kishida, K. (2003). Toward an Understanding of the Motivation of Open Source Software Developers. Proceedings of the 25th International Conference on Software Engineering. Accessed April 15, 2011, from http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=776867
    Tracker: Feature Requests. (2011). Accessed April 17, 2011, from http://sourceforge.net/tracker/?func=detaila&aid=3256113&group_id=95013&atid=609911
    Source code repository for KeePass?. (2011). Accessed April 17, 2011, from http://sourceforge.net/projects/keepass/forums/forum/329220/topic/4478457
  • Shan Shan Cheung
    #4 Shan Shan Cheung on 17 Apr 11
     
    The conference paper presented an aspect of how social network could be organised and formed to support knowledge sharing within group of professionals. What I realized in my research, informal sharing or learning is important for organisations. Nevertheless, it can be an impact for organisations. Appropriate planning is the benefit of organisations' profit making. One of advantage of Communities of Practice (CoP) is enabled the development and dissemination of knowledge. It is because professionals can share their particular knowledge. The knowledge can reuse in professional (Resnick and Mejia, 2007, p.1714). CoP benefit organisations easy to access more valuable knowledge and practice them in organisations.
    Other benefit is new professionals easy to absorb related knowledge and experience by CoP. It is because of they can access other's professionals' experience through professionals' sharing. Meanwhile, new professionals have mentor practice within professional group (Resnick and Mejia, 2007, p.1715). The benefit is a profitable advantage to organisations and professionals and shows the beneficial result of knowledge sharing. However, CoP needs efficient collaboration. I have experience on CoP at information professional's field. I have learnt lots of knowledge from experience professionals. They post their experience or articles on particular webpage and share with other professional. They exchange their knowledge on the webpages, such as they post their challenge of jobs to ask solution or advice. Social network tool is a powerful collaboration tools once it manages well.

    Reference:

    Resnick, M.L., Mejia, A. (2007). Communities of Practice: Knowledge Management for the Global Organization. Paper presented at the 2007 Industrial Engineering and Research Conference. Retrieved from http://proquest.umi.com.dbgw.lis.curtin.edu.au/pqdweb?index=11&did=1864150261&SrchMode=1&sid=12&Fmt=2&VInst=PROD&VType=PQD&RQT=309&VName=PQD&TS=1302329578&clientId=22212
  • Kristy Long
    #5 Kristy Long on 18 Apr 11
     
    I read this article with great interest as I am about to establish a Community of Practice among intranet authors in my workplace.

    Our intranet authors are spread over many geographical sites and are also in different levels of the organisational hierarchy.

    This paper outlined how I might use the new collaborative tools on our new intranet to help strengthen the community, their knowledge and empower them to help each other.

    However, I would also like to concentrate on relationships and networking that exists outside of a computer-mediated environment. In line with Step Two Designs article, No collaboration without communications (see my earlier post) I would like to also offer face-to-face workshops once or twice a year to help put faces to names and support the online collaboration.

    As Resnick and Mejia write, "A less well-known application of social networks is the Community of Practice." As a side issue, I think if I referred to this term when what I am actually really talking about is work-based social networking, it would also assist managers to think of social media in terms of professionals and knowledge sharing, rather than just socialising and having fun. It would help to break down some of senior managements misconceptions about social and collaborative tools.

    Reference
    Broomhall, A (2009) No collaboration without communication Retrieved from http://www.steptwo.com.au/papers/cmb_nocollaboration/index.html

    Resnick, M.L., Mejia, A. (2007). Communities of Practice: Knowledge Management for the Global Organization. Paper presented at the 2007 Industrial Engineering and Research Conference. Retrieved 16 April, 2011 from http://proquest.umi.com.dbgw.lis.curtin.edu.au/pqdweb?index=11&did=1864150261&SrchMode=1&sid=12&Fmt=2&VInst=PROD&VType=PQD&RQT=309&VName=PQD&TS=1302329578&clientId=22212

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