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The Seven Steps

As stated above, communities-of-practice activities can be initiated via the Strategic Integration component of Responsive Organizational Dynamism. According to Lesser et al (2000), a knowledge strategy based on communities-of-practice consists of seven basic steps as shown in the table below:

Extended Seven Steps of Community of Practice Strategy

Lesser (2000) suggest that communities of practice are heavily reliant on innovation. "Some strategies rely more on innovation than others for their success….. once dependence on innovation needs have been clarified, you can work to create new knowledge where innovation matters" (8). Indeed, electronic communities of practice are different than physical communities. IT provides another dimension to how technology affects organizational learning. It does so by creating new ways in which communities of practice operate. In the complexity of ways that it affects us, technology has a dichotomous relationship with communities of practice. That is, there is a two-sided issue: 1) the need for communities of practice to implement IT projects and integrate them better into learning organizations, and 2) the expansion of electronic communities of practice invoked by technology, which can in turn assist in organizational learning, globally and culturally.

The latter issue establishes the fact that a person can now readily be a member of many electronic communities and in many different capacities. Electronic communities are different in that they can have memberships that are short-lived and transient, forming and reforming according to interest, particular tasks, or commonality of issue. Communities of practice themselves are utilizing technologies to form multiple and simultaneous relationships. Furthermore, the growth of international communities resulting from ever-expanding global economies has created further complexities and dilemmas.

Thus far I have presented communities of practice as an infrastructure that can foster the development of organizational learning to support the existence of constant technological change. Most of what I have presented impacts the Cultural Assimilation component of Responsive Organizational Dynamism (ROD), i.e., affecting organizational structure and the way things need to get done. However, technology, particularly the Strategic Integration component of ROD fosters a more expanded vision of what can represent a community of practice. What does this mean? Communities of practice through the advent of Strategic Integration have expanded to include electronic communities. While technology can provide organizations with vast electronic libraries that end up as storehouses of information, they are only valuable if it they are allowed to be shared within the community. Although IT has led many companies to imagine a new world of leveraged knowledge, communities have discovered that just storing information does not provide for effective and efficient use of knowledge. As a result, many companies have created these "electronic" communities so that knowledge can be leveraged, especially across cultures and geographic boundaries. These electronic communities are predictably more dynamic as a result of what technology provides to them. Below are examples of what these communities provide to organizations.

• Transcending boundaries and exchanging knowledge with internal and external communities. In this circumstance, communities are not only extending across business units, but into communities among various clients—as we see developing in advanced e-business strategies. Using Internet and Intranets, communities can foster dynamic integration of the client, an important participant in competitive advantage. However, the expansion of an external community, due to emergent electronics, creates yet another need for the implementation of Responsive Organizational Dynamism.


• Creating "Internet" or electronic communities as sources of knowledge (Teigland 2000) particularly for technical-oriented employees. These employees are said to form "Communities of Techies": technical participants, composed largely of the IT staff, have accelerated means to come into contact with business related issues.


• Connecting social and workplace communities through sophisticated networks. This issue links well to the entire expansion of issues surrounding organizational learning, in particular learning organization formation. It enfolds both the process and the social dialectic issues so important to creating well-balanced communities of practice that deal with organizational-level and individual development.


• Integrating teleworkers and non-teleworkers, including the study of gender and cultural differences. The growth of distance workers will most likely increase with the maturation of technological connectivity. Video conferencing and improved media interaction through expanded broadband will support further developments in virtual workplaces. Gender and culture will continue to become important issues in the expansion of existing models that are currently limited to specific types of workplace issues. Thus, technology allows for the "globalization" of organizational learning needs, especially due to the effects of new technologies.


• Assisting in computer-mediated communities. Such mediation allows for the management of interaction among communities, of who mediates their communications criteria, and of who is ultimately responsible for the mediation of issues. Mature communities of practice will pursue self-mediation.


• Creating "flame" communities. A "flame" is defined as a lengthy, often personally insulting, debate in an electronic community, which provides both positive and negative consequences. Difference can be linked to strengthening the identification of common values within a community, but requires organizational maturation that relies more on computerized communication to improve interpersonal and social factors to avoid miscommunications (Franco et al 2000).


• Storing collective knowledge in large-scale libraries and databases. As Einstein stated: "Knowledge is experience. Everything else is just information." Repositories of information are not knowledge, and they often inhibit organizations from sharing important knowledge building-blocks that affect technical, social, managerial, and personal developments that are critical for learning organizations (McDermott 2000).

Ultimately the above communities of practice are forming new social networks, which have established the cornerstone of "global connectivity, virtual communities, and computer-supported cooperative work" (Wellman et al 2000: 179). These social networks are then creating new Cultural Assimilation issues, changing the very nature of the way organizations deal with and use technology to change how knowledge develops and is used via communities of practice. It is not, therefore, that communities of practice are new infrastructure or social forces, but rather the difference is in the way they communicate.

In sum, what we are finding is that technology creates the need for new organizations that establish communities of practice. New members enter the community and help shape its cognitive schemata. Aldrich (2001) defines cognitive schemata as the "structure that represents organized knowledge about persons, roles, and events" (148). This is a significant construct in that it promotes the importance of a balanced evolutionary behavior among these three areas. Rapid learning or organizational knowledge brought on by technological innovations can actually lessen progress because it can produce premature closure (March 1991). Thus, members emerge out of communities of practice that develop around organizational tasks. They are driven by technological innovation and need constructs to avoid premature closure as well as ongoing evaluation of perceived versus actual realities. As Brown and Duguid state

This perspective can be historically justified. We have seen time and time again how a technology's original intension is not realized, yet still productive. For instance, many uses of email by individuals were hard to predict. It may be indeed difficult, if not impossible, to predict how a technology will eventually impact an organization and provide competitive advantages. Specifically this means that communities of practice can provide the infrastructure to support growth from individual-centered learning, i.e., to a less event-driven process that can foster systems thinking, especially at the management levels of the organization. As organizations evolve into what Aldrich calls "bounded entities," interaction behind boundaries heightens the salience of cultural difference. Aldrich's analysis of knowledge creation is consistent with what he calls an "adaptive organization"—one that is goal-oriented and learns from trial and error (individual-based learning)—and a "knowledge development" organization (system level learning). The latter consisting in a set of interdependent members who share patterns of belief. Such an organization uses inferential and vicarious learning and generates new knowledge from both experimentation and creativity.

Bibliography

Aldrich, H. (2001) Organizations Evolving. London: Sage Publications.

Brown, J. S. and Duguid, P. (1991) 'Organizational learning and communities of practice', Organization Science, 2, 40-57.

Elkjaer, B. (1999) 'In search of a social learning theory', in M. Easterby-Smith, J. Burgoyne and L. Araujo (eds.) Organizational Learning and the Learning Organization, London: Sage Publications.

Franco, V., Hu, H., Lewenstein, B. V., Piirto, R., Underwood, R. and Vidal, N. K. (2000) 'Anatomy of a flame: Conflict and community building on the Internet', in E.L. Lesser, M.A. Fontaine and J.A. Slusher (eds.) Knowledge and Communities, Woburn, MA: Butterworth-Heinemann.

Lesser, E. L., Fontaine, M. A. and Slusher, J. A. (eds.) (2000) Knowledge and Communities, Woburn, MA: Butterworth-Heinemann.

March, J. G. (1991) 'Exploration and exploitation in organizational learning', Organization Science, 2, 71-87.

McDermott, R. (2000) 'Why information technology inspired but cannot deliver knowledge managment', in E.L. Lesser, M.A. Fontaine and J.A. Slusher (eds.) Knowledge and Communities, Woburn, MA: Butterworth-Heinemann.

Mintzberg, H. and Waters, J. A. (1985) 'Of strategies, deliberate and emergent', Strategic Management Journal, 6: 257-72.

Teigland, R. (2000) 'Communities of practice at an Internet firm: Netovation vs. In-time performance', in E.L. Lesser, M.A. Fontaine and J.A. Slusher (eds.) Knowledge and Communities, Woburn, MA: Butterworth-Heinemann.

Wellman, B., Salaff, J., Dimitrova, D., Garton, L. Gulia, M. and Haythornthwaite, C. (2000) 'Computer networks and social networks: Collaborative work, telework, and virtual community', in E.L. Lesser, M.A. Fontaine and J.A. Slusher (eds.) Knowledge and Communities, Woburn, MA: Butterworth-Heinemann.

Wenger, E. (1998) Communities of Practice: Learning, Meaning and Identity, Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

Check out previous Langer Reports:

Langer Report: IT And Change Management

The Langer Report: Are You A Driver, Support, or Both?

Columbia University's Dr. Arthur M. Langer is Senior Director of Technology, Innovation and Community Engagement, Fu Foundation School of Engineering and Applied Science; Associate Director, Instruction and Curricular Development, School of Continuing

Comments (1)

	1. 08-18-2008 20:09
	Chris,    Just something I thought we could leverage for the COP approach that Michael Lawry et al referred to at the ASE last Friday.    Rgds  Keenan Guest

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