1. Information & Knowledge
Management
Class 8 - Communities of Practices
Marielba Zacarias
Prof. Auxiliar DEEI
FCT I, Gab 2.69, Ext. 7749
mzacaria@ualg.pt
http://w3.ualg.pt/~mzacaria
2. Sumário
Communities of
Definition
Origins and development
Benefits
Success factors
Actions to cultivate communities of practice
Tool section
Innovation Cast
Online communities
3. Definition
Group of people sharing an interest, profession,
hobby, skill, art or craft.
Emergent or designed
Driving principle:
People develop personally and professionally
through sharing information and experiences
4. Starting point
“Situated learning: legitimate peripheral
participation”
Lave & Wegner 1991
Focus of:
Learning theory
Knowledge management
5. Early years
Study of how new group members
evolve into established members
Learning through the practice of
participation
Situated learning
6. After that...
CoP structured by:
“Mutual Engagement”
Establishment of norms and construction of
collaborative relations through participation
“Joint Enterprise”
Shared understanding of “Mutual Engament”
“Shared Repertoire”
Shared vocabulary and meanings
7. Presently
Learning through social participation
The individual as an active participant in
community practices and in the
construction of his identity within the group
Community of Practice is a group of
individuals that participate in an activity
8. Structure
Domain
Shared knowledge area
Community
Strong social “Tissue” fosters interaction and
encourages the will of sharing ideas
Practice
Specific focus on practice
9. CoP in organizations
Integral part of some organizational
structures
Allows “knowledge stewarding”
Knowledge sharing to improve
productivity
Allow capturing tacit knowledge
10. CoP Roles
Reduce the learning curve of new participants
Answer more quickly to customer needs
Reduce re-work and avoid re-inventing the
wheel
Generate new ideas about products and
services
11. Features
Organically created with as many goals as individuals
Membership defined by knowledge and expertise
Indefinite duration
Active participants
Sharing of rules of thumbs and good practices, help and
support among members
12. Benefits
Social Capital
Multi-dimensional concept
Privada & public facet
Value for the individual and the group
Acquired through interactions of
information, formal sharing processes,
and learning from others
14. Individuals in the
community
Members are effective condutors of
information e experiencies
Complement organizational manuals
Fosters “storytelling” between colleagues
that improves professional skills
15. Individuals at the
community
Study shows that workers
invest 1/3 of their time searching for
information
5 times more probable ask colleagues thant
search for explicit knowledge sources
manuals, data bases or books
Integrating them in a CoP allows saving
time
16. Individuals in the
community
Member have tacit knowledge difficult to
express or store
A person may tell another how to deal with
a situation, shortening his/her learning curve
Sharing through discussions and
brainstorming
17. CoP as a bridge..
Between theory and pratice
Theory = know things (know-what)
Pratice = know how to apply theory
(know-how)
CoP help individuals in linking theory
with pratice
18. Social Presence
Communicate with each other entails
creating social presence
Degree of salience of another person in
an interaction and the consequence
salience of the interpersonal relationship
Determines the participation in a
communitiy
19. Barriers
that hinder individual participation (in
knowledge sharing) in a CoP
egos
personal attacts
big intimidatory communities
time restrictions
20. Motivation
Individuals are motivated to share when
knowledge is regarded as:
public asset
a moral obligation
a community interest
tangible incentives (raises, bonuses) or
intangible incentives (auto-esteem, respect)
21. Collaboration
Sveiby and Simons (2001)
Collaborative environment essential for
“knowledge work” to be effective
Experience, age, power e education
Enterprise dimension and distance
22. Actions to build CoP
Design the community to evolve organically
Create the opportunity of open dialogues and
external perspectives
Allow several participation levels
leaders (centre)
regular participants
less active participants (periphery)
23. Actions to build CoP
Create public and private spaces
Focus the community value
Combine novelty with familiarity
Find and follow the rhythm of the
community
24. Practice Networks
(RoP)
Variant of CoP
Informal social network that emerges
from information sharing among people
with common practice areas
Entails looser relations
Electronic networks
blogs, foruns, mailing lists
25. CoP Online
CoP virtual supported by IT
May extend traditional communities
First CVs in the 90’s
TheGlobe, Geocities, Tripod
Social web appears from year 2000
Flicker, Twitter, FB, Delicious, etc.
26. Types of online CoPs
Genres:
Mommy blog, Political blog
Member life cycle
Theories about characters
Example: use of avatars & v characters
27. Member life-cycle
1. Peripheral (only reads - lurker)
2. Newly arrived that participates and it is
decided to form part of the community
(inbound)
3. Regular Participant (committed)
4. Leader: supports the participation of others
and performs intermediation tasks
5. About to leave (outbound)
28. Example: YouTube
1. We only see videos
2. We occasionally put some videos and
comment others
3. We put videos regularly. We comment and
evaluate videos from others
4. We abandon the community due to lack of
interest or time
31. The FB case
Personality influences the way of using FB
Extroverted as a complement
Introverted as a substitute
High in neuroticism like the Wall
Low in neuroticism like pictures
Open to new experiences use as a different way
of socializing
Competency and familiarity
time in FB and wall visit frequency
34. Managing the
Innovation Process
Challenges and marketing campaigns
Idea Management
Innovation opportunities
Innovation Projects
Prize and acknowledgment management
Innovation analytics
Collaboration tools
