Communities Of Practice

What are Communities of Practice?

Source: Dr. Etienne Wenger and his team of sociologists were among the first pioneers to introduce the concept of Communities of Practice (COPs) in their study of apprenticeship as a learning model. They discovered a complex set of social relationships in apprenticeship that enabled effective learning and named it Communities of Practice. COPs became a focal point in knowledge management after the publication of their first book, Communities of Practice – Learning, Meaning, and Identity, in 1998. Since then, COPs have played a very important role in the field of knowledge management, especially for distributing public knowledge among formal departments/units and as a tool for breaking down barriers to knowledge flow throughout the entire organization.

Definition

Communities of Practice are a group of people who share a concern or a passion for something they do and learn how to do it better as they interact regularly. In the context of knowledge management, COPs are formed – intentionally or unintentionally – to disseminate and create general skills, knowledge, and expertise among employees.

Characteristics

COPs can exist within one department or organizational unit, across all organizational units, or beyond the boundaries of multiple organizations. COPs are typically used to share and develop general skills, knowledge, and expertise, such as engineers working on similar issues, a network of surgeons researching a novel method, or bringing together those who have become managers for the first time to help each other. There are also COPs that focus on innovation and the creation of new knowledge. The size of COPs varies from 2-3 people to thousands, and the expertise of the members can be homogeneous or diverse. For example, a COP for effective/efficient problem-solving in a specific technology area should include engineers in a similar field, whereas a COP for solving the quality issues of a specific product should include members from various fields, such as developers, marketers, and maintenance and repair personnel. Observing the following three elements is very essential when designing a Community of Practice.

• Domain A Community of Practice is not just a club of friends or a network of contacts among individuals. This community has an identity defined by a domain of shared interests. Therefore, members agree with the said domain and the competence that distinguishes them from others. The domain is not necessarily something officially recognized as “expertise” outside the community. They value collective competence and learn from each other, although a few people outside the group may understand and appreciate their competences.
• Community In pursuit of their interests within the domain, members engage in activities and discussions, help each other, and share information. A pattern that enables such activities is vital for the Community of Practice. This reliance on trust-based communication among members encourages continuous interactions for sharing and developing public knowledge.
• Practice Communities of Practice are not merely communities of people interested in topics like movies, music, and the like. The members of a Community of Practice are individuals with a profession. They develop a shared repertoire of resources, such as experiences, stories, tools, methods for addressing common issues, and, in a word, shared experiences. This requires time and sustained interactions. The combination of these three elements constitutes a Community of Practice, and by developing these three elements in parallel, such communities flourish. Communities of Practice can be IT-based or not, depending on the geographical considerations of the members.

Why are Communities of Practice used for Small and Medium Enterprises?

There are many reasons to use Communities of Practice in small and medium-sized enterprises, but perhaps the simplest and most powerful reason is the effective sharing and development of skills and knowledge among employees without a huge investment (if the COPs are well-designed). The biggest benefit of an effective internal Community of Practice is that it encourages and facilitates the flow of knowledge across the entire community, which often gathers from different departments of the organization. This means that COPs open up knowledge sharing and break down the knowledge silos that often emerge in hierarchical organizations.

The Role and Importance of Communities of Practice in Developing Employee Skills in Small and Medium Enterprises

COPs typically do not require extraordinary investment: you can form a Community of Practice as soon as you define a specific domain and find enthusiastic people in that domain. The most important attraction for small and medium-sized enterprises is that they usually cannot afford the costs of employee skill development programs. Many companies have COPs where they encourage participants to help each other. For example, one member poses their problem, and then another member offers advice or shares their experience. Additionally, there are other communities that simply provide an opportunity to exchange best practices on a common topic.

The Impact of Communities of Practice on Promoting Trust, Satisfaction, and Innovation in Small and Medium Enterprises

Furthermore, fostering trust-based relationships among employees through COPs promotes employee satisfaction and ultimately the retention of valuable workforce, which is a key issue for small and medium-sized enterprises. You can even form COPs to share general skills and knowledge across your entire company: among different departments to create knowledge clusters. In some cases, COPs are also formed to accelerate innovation. In such cases, employees with different backgrounds come together to discuss and test their specific ideas.

How to Nurture Communities of Practice

Since Communities of Practice are essentially about bringing people together, the capabilities of the participants in COPs are of great importance. However, we cannot force people to participate actively or intelligently design active communities. As an operational matter, the biggest reason for the failure of Communities of Practice is the lack of ability to attract and retain members who are actively engaged. In contrast, many successful COPs have nurtured the context for activities through intelligent and flexible design, although the COPs themselves are natural and spontaneous. The following steps show the basic principles for designing and sustaining active Communities of Practice.

1. Seek opportunities around urgent needs. Communities of Practice usually work well when there is an urgent need to share interests/desires/skills/knowledge: for example, common technical expertise among maintenance and repair engineers or success/failure experiences in designing a general machine among designers. You must find such key opportunities to connect people and share knowledge that can make a difference. In other words, it is the pre-setting of the Community of Practice’s domain that attracts people through shared needs and interests.
2. Invite enthusiastic people and capture their thoughts. To design a good Community of Practice, you need key individuals (2 to 3 people is a good start) who will play the role of stewards in the Community of Practice. They are usually very passionate (and often knowledgeable) in the area that is the focal point of the COP. You then discuss the design of the Community of Practice with them, paying attention to the following points. What is the strategic theme of the Community of Practice? What is the key knowledge to be shared? Who are the potential participants who can benefit from the Community of Practice and participate in it? What are the key activities that will sustain the community’s power? Where (physically or virtually) can community members interact? What are the key values for the organization and the participants? These key questions are closely related to the three elements of Communities of Practice (domain, community, and practice).
3. Open the Community of Practice with a social activity. Developing any Community of Practice always begins with the social relationships of individuals. If you do not build trust among participants, the Community of Practice will not work, even if there are strong reasons to share public knowledge. A simple way is to use existing social networks, which form the core of the Community of Practice and are expanded through face-to-face meetings.
4. Create results through activities and sharing stories. After opening the Community of Practice, you need key activities that create results and sustain the community’s power. These activities are diverse: such an activity could be the codification of key implicit knowledge shared among experienced employees, or the sharing of good experiences through storytelling sessions. The important point is that you need to get a result, however small, from the Community of Practice to prove its value. After that, you can expand activities and attract more people by telling the story of the success achieved.

Key Enablers

The key enablers of Communities of Practice depend on the three elements of these communities (domain, community, and practice). For example, if one of the key activities is to share success/failure in real experience among engineers of several small and medium-sized companies, perhaps enthusiastic stewards and a physical space to bring people together are very important. If you want to share daily activities among sales managers in different departments, you may need a virtual collaborative workspace. The following are some of the prominent enablers for Communities of Practice:

• Stewards: Key individuals who are passionate about the field and want to take care of the Community of Practice are the most important components of any COP.
• Incentives: In general, you do not need artificial incentives such as money or promotions. In contrast, spontaneous incentives for continuous participation are fundamentally needed to sustain active Communities of Practice. Responding to the issues participants face, increasing opportunities, or mere intellectual recreation will be important.
• Physical/Virtual Spaces: Since Communities of Practice are social, they need a space where members can interact. This does not mean that COPs need dedicated rooms. This space can even be a virtual space if it meets the needs of the participants. The important aspect is that the center of Communities of Practice is human relationships based on trust, and COPs need a space where they can nurture these relationships.
• Information Technology: Although information technology is a key platform for sharing knowledge and is considered key for many Communities of Practice, some COPs have no need for information technology. This depends on the three elements of Communities of Practice (domain, community, and practice).
• Management Support: If the Community of Practice has strong strategic goals for an organization, management support will be an important enabler. This support not only shows the importance of the community’s activities to the participants but also provides sufficient resources. If a Community of Practice has a spontaneous nature, strong management support can sometimes even harm the members’ motivation by instilling a sense of being controlled. In such a case, the best support from management will be “hidden membership” that accepts the activities of the Community of Practice.

Video

The following address contains a short video from the National Association of Agricultural Educators, which explains the concept of a Community of Practice for this association. The principles described in this video are applicable to any Community of Practice: www.youtube.com/watch?v=be_k4BH2EvU&feature=player_embedded

Links

• Etienne Wenger’s website on COPs at www.ewenger.com/theory/
• CPSquare (the COP on COPs) at http://cpsquare.org/

References

• Wenger, E. Communities of practice: Learning, meaning, and identity.
• www.amazon.com/dp/0521663636/
• Wenger, E., R. McDermott, and W. M. Snyder. Cultivating communities of practice.

• www.amazon.com/dp/1578513308/