Organizational Communities Of Practice Research Articles

Healthcare professionals\u2019 longitudinal perceptions of group phenomena as determinants of self-assessed learning in organizational communities of practice

BackgroundGiven the importance of continuous learning as a response to the increasing complexity of health care practice, there is a need to better understand what makes communities of practice in health effective at fostering learning. Despite the conceptual stance that communities of practice facilitate individual learning, the scientific literature does not offer much evidence for this. Known factors associated with the effectiveness of communities of practice – such as collaboration, psychological safety within the community, and commitment to the community – have been studied in cross-sectional qualitative designs. However, no studies to date have used a quantitative predictive design. The objective of this study is to assess how members of a community of practice perceive interactions among themselves and determine the extent to which these interactions predict self-assessed learning over time.MethodsData was collected using validated questionnaires from six communities of practice (N = 83) in four waves of measures over the course of 36 months and was analysed by means of General Estimating Equations. This allowed to build a longitudinal model of the associations between perceptions of collaboration, psychological safety within the community, commitment to the community and self-assessed learning over time.ResultsPerception of collaboration in the community of practice, a personal sense of psychological safety and a commitment to the community of practice are predictors longitudinally associated with self-assessed learning.ConclusionsIn terms of theory, conceptual links can be made between intensity of collaboration and learning over time in the context of a community of practice. Recent work on psychological safety suggests that it is still unclear whether psychological safety acts as a direct enhancer of learning or as a remover of barriers to learning. This study’s longitudinal results suggest that psychological safety may enhance how and to what extent professionals feel they learn over time. Commitment towards the community of practice is a strong predictor of learning over time, which hints at differential effects of affective, normative and continuance commitment. Communities of practice can therefore apply these findings by making collaboration, psychological safety, commitment and learning regular reflexive topics of discussion.

Enabling Knowledge Management Initiatives through Organizational Communities of Practice

Learning the concept of organizational communities of practice (OCoP) is very effective but too complicated when it comes to implementation. Challenges arise when cultivating OCoPs and creating effective communication processes, particularly within an organization that has a traditional hierarchy. Literature on knowledge management (KM) fails to provide an inclusive comprehension of the significance of OCoPs. Thus, the current exploratory research aims to determine how organizational contexts can enable or disable the establishment and development of OCoPs. This article is built on communities of practice (CoP) theory to study the phenomenon of intentionally established OCoPs within large organizations. The case studies conducted for this research involved two companies based in Saudi Arabia, with intentionally created OCoPs. The selected cases assist in providing a holistic understanding of the influential role of organizational context in enabling OCoP activities, using semi-structured interviews, document reviews and field notes. The study findings support an integrated framework to assist organizations in establishing effective OCoPs. Its five phases include establishment, enforcement, recognition, maintenance and sustainability, representing OCoP development phases. The resulting framework organized 16 enabling or disabling factors in OCoP development. This article expands the focus of research beyond traditional CoPs, to investigate the intentional establishment of OCoPs within organizations and understand opportunities and challenges that enable OCoPs. The study argues that organizations implementing OCoPs should offer a comprehensive, long-term strategy for KM initiatives that leads to designing OCoP activities that enable better alignment with the organization’s business plan. A company can shape perceptions and behaviours by establishing the organizational context for social interaction. Thus, this article extends the perspective on developing OCoPs within organizations and argues that the role of middle management requires more thoughtfulness about OCoP research.

Managing social and human capital in organizations

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to discuss the role of communities of practice in organizations and their most beneficial effects for both individual and collective development.Design/methodology/approachBased on a literature review, from the first authoritative texts by Lave and Wenger until the most recent critiques, the paper has attempted to conciliate the individual and the organizational perspectives about this precious tool for knowledge management and creation.FindingsBecause of their distinctive features, a joint enterprise, a mutual engagement and a shared repertoire, if strategically managed, might resort to individual and organizational positive outcomes. From an individual perspective, communities could be beneficial in developing professional skills, a stronger sense of identity and finding continuity even during discontinuity and change. From an organizational perspective, communities of practice could help drive the strategy, start new lines of business, solve problems quickly and transfer best practices.Research limitations/implicationsMany limitations about this conceptualization have been presented. Therefore, future research should try to focus on communities within different socio-cultural contexts and within different kinds of organizations.Practical implicationsPractical implications about the use of communities of practice within organizational contexts are mainly linked to the enhancement of human and social capital seen as a strategic, although intangible, asset.Social implicationsThe social implications of this paper are connected to the contribution to the discussion on the theme which is quite uncommon in human resource management research.Originality/valueThe value of this paper is the attempt to connect the communities of practice to human and social capital.

Organizational communities of practice: Review, analysis, and role of information and communications technologies

ABSTRACTInformation and communications technologies (ICTs) play a key role in supporting Communities of Practice (CoPs). A review of the extant literature reveals six factors that facilitate or constrain the development, sustenance, and effectiveness of CoPs that, in turn, enable generative and degenerative structures and behaviors that affect epistemic environments within Organizational Communities of Practice (orgCoPs). OrgCoPs are accepted as beneficial organizational learning structures and need to be deliberately designed and cultivated. The materiality of ICTs that is used to support orgCoPs may play a role in supporting or opposing seeding structures. The literature review further reveals five material properties that describe the relationship between the orgCoPs and the technologies used to support it. We argue that these distinct but intersecting properties are germane to understanding the role that ICTs play in supporting orgCoPs and propose that the future work on orgCoPs could be nuanced if examined through the lens of ICTs’ materiality.

Reflection on Social Construction of Reality

In this reflection, the author seeks to highlight the phenomena of social construction of reality in individuals as open systems in the societal environment. In doing this, the author explains "Social Constructionism" in terms of social construction of reality (SCR) (Berger & Luckmann, 1966); explicates social constructionism through meaning and perspectives on the lives of people (Mead in Lock & Strong, 2010). Additionally, the author explains: 1) the concept of society as both objective and subjective realities, and the processes involved in this conceptualization, namely: institutionalization through reciprocal habitualization and typification (Baumer & Tomlinson, 2015); and individually defines these processes. Also, the author connects the Kirk Model (Fu & Kirk, 1999) and the Duality of Participation and Reification Model (Wenger, 2008) to social construction of reality in communities of practice within a given social environment; and finally, clarifies the meaning of social construction of reality in open systems in communities of practice in organizations in the global community.

Global organizational communities of practice: The effects of nationality diversity, psychological safety, and media richness on community performance

Organizational communities of practice (OCoPs) are used increasingly to capitalize on valuable distributed knowledge and to fully engage the innovation potential of employees. OCoPs have become increasingly global in their reach, relying of necessity on virtual forms of interaction to engage the participation and expertise of a global workforce. An unanswered question is whether the performance of such global OCoPs may be predicted to benefit or suffer owing to their nationality diversity. Using data from over 200 members of 30 global OCoPs in a Fortune 100 US-based multinational mining and minerals processing firm, we found that nationality diversity was curvilinearly (U-shaped) related to community performance. We also found that the curvilinear relationship was moderated by psychological safety and the extent of rich communication media use. Specifically, the arc relating nationality diversity and performance became more positive at the higher end, and less negative at the lower end, to the extent that communities reported higher psychological safety and richer communication media use.

Another cog in the machine: Designing communities of practice in professional bureaucracies

Summary This paper explores the purposeful design and development of a community of practice within a professional bureaucracy. The view of communities of practice has shifted from fundamentally organic entities to ones that can be deliberately designed and developed and they have frequently been presented as a panacea for knowledge sharing and creation, a basis for innovation in organizations. However, evidence that organizations have succeeded to achieve this challenge is lacking. Through the processual analysis of such an organizational intervention, this longitudinal study shows that these two contexts – the community of practice and the professional bureaucracy – do not mesh well and create tensions for those employees who are also community of practice members. This implies that the community of practice approach may not serve all types of organizations. The findings also lead to the reconsideration of communities of practice in organizations and a critique of the main appraisal of this approach is presented. It is suggested that communities of practice should be regarded as a social phenomenon rather than an organizational learning tool.

Higher education and knowledge sharing: from ivory tower to twenty-first century

Knowledge is the driving force of a knowledge economy. Therefore, the way knowledge is shared and created and the way these actions are managed could lead to either a competitive advantage for an organisation or it could lead to its demise. Managing especially academics’ knowledge to the benefit of all can be even a greater challenge to any academic institution. The reason for it is that for too long universities have perceived themselves as the monopolies of knowledge, ‘sitting on an ivory tower’. Since universities are the transmitters as well as generators of new knowledge, a way of increasing their knowledge bank is through knowledge sharing. One way to share knowledge is through a community of practice. Volumes of literature have been written about communities of practice but the greatest majority deals with communities of practice in organisations and not in academic institutions. However, knowledge sharing within communities is complex. The literature shows that challenges such as a lack of trust, a lack of incentives and a poor culture of learning in an organisation have an effect on effective knowledge sharing. The need to establish the degree of knowledge sharing in an academic institution and subsequently create a framework to assist universities with managing it is created. A questionnaire consisting of open- and closed-ended questions was administered to academics. This article reports on academics’ awareness and views of a community of practice at a higher education institution in South Africa. The empirical evidence shows that academics would be willing to share knowledge. A number of inhibitors were identified such as, time constraints, an unwillingness among academics to share knowledge, and a lack of support or participation from management.

Managing a new collaborative entity in business organizations: Understanding organizational communities of practice effectiveness.

Companies worldwide are turning to organizational communities of practice (OCoPs) as vehicles to generate learning and enhance organizational performance. OCoPs are defined as groups of employees who share a concern, a set of problems, or a passion about a topic and who strengthen their knowledge and expertise by interacting on a consistent basis. To date, OCoP research has drawn almost exclusively from the community of practice (CoP) literature, even though the organizational form of CoPs shares attributes of traditional CoPs and of organizational teams. Drawing on Lave and Wenger's (1991) original theory of legitimate peripheral participation, we integrate theory and research from CoPs and organizational teams to develop and empirically examine a model of OCoP effectiveness that includes constructs such as leadership, empowerment, the structure of tasks, and OCoP relevance to organizational effectiveness. Using data from 32 OCoPs in a U.S.-based multinational mining and minerals processing firm, we found that external community leaders play an important role in enhancing OCoP empowerment, particularly to the extent that task interdependence is high. Empowerment, in turn, was positively related to OCoP effectiveness. We also found that OCoPs designated as "core" by the organization (e.g., working on critical issues) were more effective than those that were noncore. Task interdependence also was positively related to OCoP effectiveness. We provide scholars and practitioners with insights on how to effectively manage OCoPs in today's organizations.

A Two-Layer Multi-agent Architecture to Facilitate Knowledge Sharing within Communities of Practice

This paper presents a two-layer multi-agent architecture designed to support communities of practice in organizations which are concerned with knowledge sharing. The main goal of this proposal is to facilitate knowledge exchange in organizations whose employees are organized into communities. In order to test the architecture, a prototype with which to recommend documents in communities of practice is also described.

An Exploratory Analysis on PerformanceMeasurement Framework of Organizational Communities of Practice

An Exploratory Analysis on PerformanceMeasurement Framework of Organizational Communities of Practice

The Complex Relations Between Communities of Practice and the Implementation of Technological Innovations

The paper analyses the implementation of IT based innovations through a communities of practice lens. It is suggested that such a framework can add fresh insights to the dynamics of innovation processes. The paper makes an empirical and theoretical contribution to the innovation literature by both examining case study evidence from a number of technological innovation projects, and reflecting on the relationship between innovation processes and communities of practice. It is concluded that this relationship is not unidirectional. Not only did the communities of practice influence the innovation processes, for example through shaping important knowledge sharing processes, but the innovations also impinged on organizational communities of practice in important ways. The paper also proposes ways in which the analytical utility of the community of practice concept can be improved, for example by taking greater account of potential negative effects that communities of practice can have for innovation processes.

Getting strategic value from constellations of communities

The concept of constellations of communities is a big picture view of how communities of practice in organizations relate to one another. These communities are voluntary, and over time they form a complex, informal network of relationships, knowledge sharing, learning, and conversations that can be woven together into a powerful strategic fabric with the right kind of leadership. Like a garden, these communities must be tended and nurtured rather than commanded and controlled. The article contains examples of constellations of communities in business, non‐profit, volunteer‐oriented associations, and society at large and outlines the potential benefits of a constellation to its stakeholders.

Implicit Orders: Documentary Genres and Organizational Practice

The paper explores the proposition that documentary genres implicitly order organizational activity; analysis oftheir role as tacit sorting devices can improve understanding of documentation and organizational practice. The author reviews recent work on communities of practice in organisations and discusses historical work on documentary genres and their role in capturing local or tacit knowledge. More recent work on documentary genres in the digital workplace is then addressed, and the place of the politics of classification in the construction of genres is discussed. The author analyzes case studies of new technology and changes in practice in a number of contexts, including current work on documentary genres in a small entreprise in the Scottish food and beverage sector. In this company, evolving documentary genres have allowed a recently automated sales team to adapt to a new order imposed by changes in external circumstanceS and the procurement of new technology. The paper concludes with a review of recent work on visualisation of social interactions, and its possible role in the rapid provision of templates for documentary genres in different domains. The author speculates that representations (by visualization or other means) of documentary genres in organizational settings may serve as 'thumbprints' of groups at work that may provide rapid insight into the nature of work in a given domain. Such insight may be important in distributed cognition, where ad hoc project teams work online and at a distance from each other in the 'temporary organizations' that characterize work in many domains.

Governance in the participative organisation: Freedom, creativity and ethics

Organizations in changing environments need to become flexible, responsive and participative. We develop an understanding of governance in these organizations by drawing analogies between organization theory and theories of non-linear dynamics. We identify freedom and creativity as driving principles in 'chaotic' participative organizations, and explore the ethics of their exercise within organizational communities of practice, communities of discernment and communities of commitment.