Information & Knowledge Management

Class 8 - Communities of Practice

Marielba ZacariasProf. Auxiliar DEEI

FCT I, Gab 2.69, Ext. 7749mzacaria@ualg.pt

http://w3.ualg.pt/~mzacaria

SumárioCommunities of

Definition

Origins and development

Benefits

Success factors

Actions to cultivate communities of practice

Tool section

Innovation Cast

Online communities

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

Starting point

“Situated learning: legitimate peripheral participation”

Lave & Wegner 1991

Focus of:

Learning theory

Knowledge management

Early years

Study of how new group members evolve into established members

Learning through the practice of participation

Situated learning

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

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

StructureDomain

Shared knowledge area

Community

Strong social “Tissue” fosters interaction and encourages the will of sharing ideas

Practice

Specific focus on practice

CoP in organizations

Integral part of some organizational structures

Allows “knowledge stewarding”

Knowledge sharing to improve productivity

Allow capturing tacit knowledge

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

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

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

Success factors

Individuals in the community

Social Presence

Motivation

Collaboration

Individuals in the community

Members are effective condutors of information e experiencies

Complement organizational manuals

Fosters “storytelling” between colleagues that improves professional skills

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

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

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

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

Barriers

that hinder individual participation (in knowledge sharing) in a CoP

egos

personal attacts

big intimidatory communities

time restrictions

MotivationIndividuals 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)

Collaboration

Sveiby and Simons (2001)

Collaborative environment essential for “knowledge work” to be effective

Experience, age, power e education

Enterprise dimension and distance

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)

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

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

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.

Types of online CoPs

Genres:

Mommy blog, Political blog

Member life cycle

Theories about characters

Example: use of avatars & v characters

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)

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

Difussion Model

Online Participation

Anticipated reprocity

Greater acknowledgement

Online identity

Sense of efficacy

Sense of community

The FB casePersonality 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

Tool Section

Innovation Cast

Managing the Innovation Process

Challenges and marketing campaigns

Idea Management

Innovation opportunities

Innovation Projects

Prize and acknowledgment management

Innovation analytics

Collaboration tools

Idea Management

Collaboration

Idea Management

Analytics