Correia et. al. (2009) VIRTUAL COMMUNITIES OF PRACTICE: EXAMINING THE MOTIVATIONS AND CONSTRAINTS IN THEIR KNOWLEDGE CREATION AND KNOWLEDGE TRANSFER PROCESSES (original) (raw)
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With accelerated market volatility, faster response times and increased globalization, business environments are going through a major transformation and firms have intensified their search for strategies which can give them competitive advantage. This requires that companies continuously innovate, to think of new ideas that can be transformed or implemented as products, processes or services, generating value for the firm. Innovative solutions and processes are usually developed by a group of people, working together. A grouping of people that share and create new knowledge can be considered as a Community of Practice (CoP). CoP’s are places which provide a sound basis for organizational learning and encourage knowledge creation and acquisition. Virtual Communities of Practice (VCoP's) can perform a central role in promoting communication and collaboration between members who are dispersed in both time and space. Nevertheless, it is known that not all CoP's and VCoP's share the same levels of performance or produce the same results. This means that there are factors that enable or constrain the process of knowledge creation. With this in mind, we developed a case study in order to identify both the motivations and the constraints that members of an organization experience when taking part in the knowledge creating processes of VCoP's. Results show that organizational culture and professional and personal development play an important role in these processes. No interviewee referred to direct financial rewards as a motivation factor for participation in VCoPs. Most identified the difficulty in aligning objectives established by the management with justification for the time spent in the VCoP. The interviewees also said that technology is not a constraint.
2000
The rapid pace of change compels organizations to be innovative in order to maintain a sustainable competitive advantage. Such innovation is supported by the generation of new ideas, which in turn depends on access to new knowledge. Innovative solutions and processes are unlikely to be developed by an individual but rather by a group of people, working together. As point out, innovation depends on managing knowledge transfer and situated learning (Lave and Wenger 1991). One group of people that share and create new knowledge is a Community of Practice (CoP). Communities of Practice are places which provide a sound basis for organizational learning. This encourages knowledge creation and acquisition, thus improving organizational performance, leveraging innovation and consequently increasing competitiveness. Virtual Communities of Practice (VCoPs) can perform a central role in promoting communication and collaboration between members who are dispersed in both time and space (Bradshaw et al. 2004).
Information and knowledge sharing within virtual communities of practice
SA Journal of Information Management, 2018
Background: The concept of a virtual community of practice (VCoP) emanates from the need to create a new mode of learning and knowledge development platform. It has also been found that highly structured forums are not always the best way to assist people to learn and improve their knowledge. The first author (main researcher) has limited background knowledge and professional practice in the area of VCoPs. Within this context, the investigation of the use of VCoPs to optimise knowledge sharing within stakeholders is the central theme of this research. The authors adapted the life cycle knowledge flow model and present an extended model that resulted after an empirical research was conducted with various VCoPs. Objectives: The objective of this paper is to report on the research that, firstly, attempted to find a suitable model among all previous research conducted on knowledge sharing (management) and to create a new model that could be used to optimise knowledge sharing within VCoP...
Knowledge Sharing Within and Between Communities of Practice in a Knowledge Intensive Organization
IGI Global eBooks, 2011
The aim of this chapter is to link communities of practice to the knowledge creation and dissemination in the specific context of knowledge intensive organization. This is done by pointing out the role that CoPs may have in relation to knowledge sharing and innovativeness in the knowledge intensive context. CoPs can fulfill numerous functions in respect to the creation, accumulation, and diffusion of knowledge. Thus, Wenger's (1998) clarifying categorization of those knowledge-related functions has served as a foundation and inspiration in this context-specific description: exchange and interpretation of information; retaining knowledge; steward competencies and provide homes for identities. However, it is worth noting that while communities of practice are traditionally seen as the creators of knowledge and innovations, it is also important to acknowledge the challenges and even obstacles of these tightly-coupled groups may bring to the organizational knowledge sharing and learning processes. These issues are mainly defined through our empirical case examples we have linked to the theoretical review.
Impact of Communities of Practice on Organisational Knowledge Transfer and Creation
Knowledge management specifically aims at converting tacit knowledge into explicit knowledge and thereafter again into tacit knowledge in an ever growing cycle of expansion and regeneration. Called knowledge spirals by Nonaka and Takeuchi, such processes used to traditionally occur through informal and totally voluntary work groups who had particular knowledge, and are now being attempted in progressive organisations through the use of knowledge creating processes like Communities of Practice.
The emergence of the Web has brought proximity and favored partnership among different groups viewing to cooperate in the generation of knowledge and in the process of innovation. Among the organizational forms of cooperation, the communities of practice (COPs) have been notable as a propitious activity for joining work groups aiming at creating and sharing knowledge as well as problem solving (Wenger et al., 2002). For some authors, communities of practice have always been part of the informal structure of any organization. However, IT has made it possible to exchange knowledge and ideas at an unprecedented pace. The aim of this paper is to analyze the formation and performance of communities of practice as a tool for enterprise innovation. The methodology used in this paper is based on a case study of a multinational company whose performance as an innovative enterprise has been outstanding. La aparición de la Web ha traído la proximidad y ha favorecido la asociación entre diferen...
Virtual Communities of Practice: Theory, Measurement and Organizational Implications
Communities of Practice (CoPs) are informal groups people form around shared problems or disciplines. As natural drivers of knowledge-sharing and innovation, they are the cornerstone of Knowledge Management programs, and are viewed by organizational scholars as a key element of the knowledge-based view of the firm. Nowadays, employees and organizations face considerable turmoil from phenomena such as globalization, rapid technological change, and the increasingly mobile workforce. This hinders employees from regular engagement in face-to-face CoPs, thus increasing the need for virtual CoPs that engage effectively over the Internet. This book reports a systematic search for Usenet-based CoPs that displayed all the traits of co-located CoPs as described in seminal studies. The study used surveys and content analyses as measurement instruments, and found four fully compliant virtual CoPs. The implication for employees is that they can enhance their professional skills through virtual CoP engagement. Organizations, in turn, can foster this engagement in extra-organizational CoPs to tap the rich knowledge ecologies in which businesses work today and keep abreast of fast changing fields.