Communities of Practice: Going One Step Too Far

1
Communities of Practice Going One Step Too Far?

• Chris KIMBLE
• Department of Computer Science, University of
  York ltchris.kimble_at_cs.york.ac.ukgt
• Paul HILDRETH
• K-Now International Ltd, York
• ltpmh_at_k-now-int.comgt

2
Overview

• Introduction and context
• The key questions
• CoPs The First Step
• CoPs and Situated Learning
• CoPs The Next Step
• Linking CoPs and Work
• Linking CoPs and KM
• CoPs One Step Too Far?
• CoPs in the Business Environment
• CoPs in the Virtual Environment
• Conclusions

3
Context

• In 1980s KM was seen as the solution to problems
  of managing knowledge in business environment
• Hard Knowledge could be "captured" from an
  expert, codified in a series of rules and stored
  in a computer
• In 1990s the importance of softer types of
  knowledge, and how this was created, shared and
  sustained, was beginning to be recognised
• Soft Knowledge Is implicit and unstructured and
  can not be easily articulated

4
The Key Questions

• Communities of Practice (CoPs) were seen as a new
  approach to KM that could deal with the softer
  types of knowledge
• However the concept of KM grew in a formal,
  commercial organisational setting, CoPs did not
• The key questions
• Do CoPs really offer a way to manage the softer
  aspects of knowledge? Can they be initiated and
  directed by an organisation?
• Are CoPs applicable to todays high tech and
  increasingly internationalised "virtual" world?

5
CoPs The First Step

• Lave and Wenger (1991) first introduced the term
  Community of Practice in 1991 in relation to
  informal situated learning
• " a set of relations among persons, activity and
  world, over time and in relation with other
  tangential and overlapping CoPs" (Lave and
  Wenger, 1991, p98)
• This was an apprenticeship model based on the
  notion of Legitimate Peripheral Participation
  where learning was seen as an integral part of a
  practice that gives meaning to the world
• " generative social practice in the lived in
  world" (Lave and Wenger, 1991, p35).

6
CoPs The First Step

• From Lave and Wenger (1991)
• CoPs are concerned with Situated Learning
• Learning is an informal process based on LPP
• Learning is a social process and people will
  participate at different levels
• The community, and participation in it, are
  inseparable from the practice.
• But during the 1990s a theory of learning
  developed from studies of non-drinking
  alcoholics, tailors in Goa and midwives in the
  Yucatan, began to be applied to the world of work
  and the problems of Knowledge Management and the
  world of commerce and work

7
CoPs and Work The Next Step

• In 1998 Wenger studied a CoP in a large
  insurance company and identified two key
  processes in CoPs participation and reification.
  
• Participation
• ... the social experience of living in the world
  in terms of membership in social communities and
  active involvement in social enterprises
  (Wenger, 1998, p55 )
• Reification
• ... the process of giving form to our experience
  by producing objects that congeal this experience
  into thingness (Wenger, 1998, p58)

8
CoPs and Work The Next Step

• From now on, a CoP was defined in terms of
• What it is about
• The activity/body of knowledge that the community
  has organized itself around - a joint enterprise.
• How it functions
• How people are linked through their involvement
  in common activities - mutual engagement
• What it produces
• The set of resources the members of a CoP build
  up over time - their shared repertoire

9
CoPs and KM The Next Step

• Early (circa 1985) KM systems focussed on Hard
  Knowledge (e.g. Expert systems)
• Knowledge has an independent existence and can be
  captured and stored in a computer
• Later (circa 1995) approaches to KM recognised
  the value of softer forms of knowledge
• Knowledge is a property of people, relationships
  and situations and only has meaning in a
  particular context
• Now (circa 2000) the view of knowledge as a
  duality is gaining acceptance
• Knowledge is a duality that consists
  simultaneously of both Hard and Soft Knowledge

10
CoPs and KM The Next Step

• From a KM perspective Hildreth and Kimble (2002)
  argue
• if we view knowledge as a duality, then all KM
  problems become problems of managing both hard
  and soft knowledge all KM projects must
  address both the hard and soft aspects of
  knowledge
• From a CoP perspective Wenger (1998) argues the
  two key processes, participation and reification,
  also form a duality.
• CoPs have moved from being a forum for informal
  situated learning to a means of managing knowledge

11
CoPs One Step Too Far?

• The key questions
• Do CoPs really offer a way to manage the softer
  aspects of knowledge?
• In CoPs knowledge is not possessed by an
  individual but is an emergent property of the
  group. Legitimacy is not a function of hierarchy
  but of status Can CoPs ever be initiated and
  directed by an organisation?
• Are CoPs applicable to a high tech and
  internationalised "virtual" world?
• The learning that takes place in a CoP is
  situated learning. Is this the same as being
  co-located? Can technology replace face-to-face
  interaction?

12
CoPs in the Business Environment

• Creating a CoP
• Most business organisations consist of project
  teams or task groups that can be brought together
  to meet the needs of the wider organisation.
• CoPs are self-directed, self-motivated and driven
  by the interests of their members. Status and
  legitimacy are internal to the CoP and may not
  reflect the organisational hierarchy
• Gongla and Rizzuto (2004) found examples of CoPs
  that disappeared in order to remove themselves
  from the organisational radar.

13
CoPs in the Business Environment

• Knowledge Sharing
• Lave and Wenger's (1991) saw CoPs as
• a set of relations among persons, activity and
  world, over time and in relation with other
  tangential and overlapping CoPs
• Wenger (1998) saw an organization
• not as one CoP, but as a constellation of
  interrelated CoPs that overlapped and exchanged
  knowledge via social links.
• Hislop (2004) found that
• In three case studies of CoPs in large European
  organisations only one was successful in sharing
  knowledge between communities

14
CoPs in the Virtual Environment

• CoPs
• "At the simplest level, they are a small group of
  people whove worked together over a period of
  time. Not a team not a task force not
  necessarily an authorised or identified group
  they are peers in the execution of "real work".
  What holds them together is a common sense of
  purpose and a real need to know what each other
  knows." (Brown and Gray, 1995)
• Knowledge Networks
• Electronic networking, means that it is possible
  for members of a CoP to link to others who do
  similar work. These might also be members of CoP
  one CoP might link with a CoP until everybody who
  had an interest in the area is a member.

15
CoPs in the Virtual Environment

• How might LPP translate to a virtual environment?
  (Lueg, 2000)
• In CoPs, there is a social periphery in a
  virtual group there is also a physical periphery.
  What effect might this have?
• The learning that takes place in a CoP is
  situated learning. Is this necessarily the same
  as being co-located?
• Electronic Networks of Practice (Brown and
  Duguid, 2000)
• NoPs share some features with CoPs but social
  ties are weaker and there is less common ground
  between the members.
• NoPs allow the diffusion of knowledge across a
  (virtual) network while CoPs are the (co-located)
  hub.

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Conclusions

• CoPs do appear to offer a means of managing the
  softer aspects of knowledge in a work related
  context, but there are problems with
• Managerial control
• Cross boundary knowledge sharing
• As human relationships are central to a CoP,
  technology does not really seem to have much to
  offer to the creation of virtual CoPs
• However, looser networks such as ENoPs do seem to
  come closer to the ideal of work based virtual
  CoPs

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Questions / Comments?

• Chris Kimble - Department of Computer Science,
  University of York
• chris.kimble_at_cs.york.ac.uk
• Paul Hildreth - K-Now International Ltd, York
• pmh_at_k-now-int.com
• Knowledge Networks Innovation through
  Communities of Practice, Paul Hildreth and Chris
  Kimble (eds), Idea Group Publishing, Feb 2004
• ISBN 159140200X (Hardcover)
• ISBN 1591402700 (Paperback)
• Copies of the paper and presentation are
  available at
• http//www.cs.york.ac.uk/mis/news.htm