Communities of Practice

From the article ‘Intranets and knowledge sharing’ by James Robertson 2004, ‘Communities of practice’ can be described as groups of like-minded people with a sense of community and identity who collaborate, share knowledge and experiences in order to solve problems, learn, and build up a knowledge base as a valuable tool for the future.

As the originators of the term, most authors writing on the topic defer to Lave and Wengers’ outline of a Community of Practice (Cousin & Deepwell 2005, Buysse et al 2003, Wesley & Buysse 2001). Wenger (Wenger & Snyder 2000) defines 'communities of practice' as groups of people informally bound by shared experience, sharing experience and knowledge in free flowing, creative ways, and fostering new approaches to problems.

Communities of practice, Intranets and knowledge sharing
Knowledge management, and indeed knowledge sharing can only be achieved when people have a means of communication and an environment which facilitates that sharing. There has been much discussion of knowledge management in the literature, with varying opinions (see for example further reading on KM below). However, this point is crucial to all: that leveraging knowledge cannot be achieved by technology alone; though technology such as intranets and groupware can assist in the sharing of knowledge.

Intranets are private, internal networks based on internet standards (Choo 2000). Within an organisation, intranets can support communities of practice by:

• Use of remote login reducing geographic distances, thus bringing people together.

• Providing a common space for communication and collaboration, and access to each other’s work.

• Providing a space for conversation and communication: forums, message boards, blogs, wiki’s etc, allowing for informal discussion. Knowledge creation is seen as a social process (Choo2000, McDermott 1999), and thus must not be totally formalised.

• Easy navigation by use of hyperlinks and a user friendly interface, facilitates convenience and accessibility of information to all users.

Thus intranets can be used to create a knowledge base and provide access to it. Communities of practice cannot function without communication, collaboration, a drive to share and foster knowledge, and so an environment which allows for this. In large organisations especially intranets are often already in place, or the infrastructure to support it is, which make it an ideal space to utilise for supporting communities of practice.

References:
Buysse, V, Spackman, KL & Wesey, P 2003, ‘Communities of practice: Connecting what we know with what we do’, Exceptional Children, vol.69, no.3, pp.263-277

Choo, CW, Detlor, B & Turnbull, D 2000, ‘The intranet as infrastructure for knowledge work’, in J ackenzie Owen (ed.) Web Work: Information seeking and knowledge work on the world wide web, Information Science and Knowledge Management: 1, Kluwer Academic Publishers, Dordrecht, pp.71-100

Cousin, G & Deepwell, F 2005, ‘Designs for network learning: A communities of practice perspective’, Studies in Higher Education, vol.30, no.1, pp.57-66

McDermott, R 1999, ‘Why information technology inspired but cannot deliver knowledge management’, California Management Reiview, vol.41, no.4, pp.103-117

Robertson, J 2004, ‘Intranets and knowledge sharing’, adapted from a paper prepared for the KM Challenge conference, Sydney, March 30-31 2004, available at http://www.steptwo.com.au/papers/kmc_intranetsknowledge/index.html

Wenger, EC & Snyder, WM 2000, ‘Communities of practice: The organisational frontier’, Harvard Business Review, vol.78, no.1, pp.139-145

Wesley, PW & Buysse, V 2001, ‘Communities of practice: Expanding professional roles to promote reflection and shared inquiry’, Topics in Early Childhood Special Education, vol.21, no.2, pp.114-123

Further reading on Communities of practice:
Nickols, F 2003, ‘Communities of practice: An overview’, Distance Consulting, available at http://home.att.net/~discon/KM/CoPOverview.pdf

Sites of note include:
http://www.ewenger.com/theory
http://www.infed.org/biblio/communities_of_practice.htm
http://home.att.net/~discon/KM/CoPs.htm
http://hbswk.hbs.edu/archive/2855.html
http://www.steptwo.com.au/papers/cmb_intranetcop/index.html

Further Reading on Knowledge Management:
Abell, A & Oxbrow, N 2001, ‘Role of IM in KM: core skills in new contexts’ in Competing with knowledge: the information professional in the knowledge management age, Library Association Publishing, London
Al-Hawamdeh, S 2002, ‘Knowledge management: rethinking information management and facing the challenge of managing tacit knowledge’, Information Research, vol.8, no.1, 10p
Bouthillier, F & Shearer, K 2002, ‘Understanding knowledge management and Information management: the need for an empirical perspective’, Information Research, vol.8, no.1
Damodaran, L & Olphert, W 2000, ‘Barriers and facilitators to the use of knowledge management systems’, Behaviour and Information Technology, vol.19, no.6, pp405-413
Duffy, J 2000, ‘Knowledge Management: what every Information Professional should know’, Information Management Journal, vol.34, no.3, pp.10-14
Earl, MJ 1996, ‘Knowledge strategies: propositions from two contrasting industries’, in M J Earl (ed) Information Management: the organisational dimension, Oxford University Press, Oxford
Ferguson, S 2004, ‘The knowledge management myth: will the real knowledge managers please step forward’, paper presented at ALIA conference Challenging Ideas, 2004
Tucker, M 1999, ‘Dark matter of decision making’, Intelligent Enterprise magazine, vol.2, no.3
Wilson, TD 2002, ‘The nonsense of knowledge management’, Information Research, vol.8, no.1, 27p