Communities of practice: creating and sharing knowledge/Comunidades de pratica: criacao e compartilhamento do conhecimento/Comunidades de practica: creacion y accion de compartir el conocimiento.
| Autor | Hartung, Kaytson |
| Cargo | Artigo--Tecnologia da Informacao |
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INTRODUCTION
When facing a highly competitive and unstable market due to the constant economic fluctuations, it is increasingly important for companies to focus on results and increase efficiency and productivity (MACHADO, 2006). In this context, knowledge plays a decisive role, and a number of companies are now seeking to capitalize on this fact (WENGER; SNYDER, 2000; LOPEZ-NICOLAS; MERONO-CERDAN, 2011). The knowledge that companies seek in the market (from consultants, for example) can often be found within the company itself.
Knowledge management (KM) is defined as the process by which an organization creates, captures, acquires and uses knowledge to support and improve its performance (KINNEY, 1998; LEE; YANG, 2000). KM represents one way of meeting the need to increase productivity and is essential for long-term organizational efficiency, as it improves the flow of information and knowledge (HARRIS, 2005; LOPEZ-NICOLAS; MERONO-CERDAN, 2011). According to Kratzer, Zboralski and Leenders (2009), a growing number of companies have applied KM systems in order to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of the use of knowledge, and several have adopted Communities of Practice as a means of implementing those systems.
Communities of Practice (CoPs) are "groups of people informally bound together by shared expertise and passion for a joint enterprise" (WENGER; SNYDER, 2000, p. 139). These are informal groups that go beyond organizational, geographical or communication boundaries and may belong to several organizations in various countries. According to Teigland (2000) and Kim, Hong and Suh (2012), CoPs play a key role in providing an organization with competitive advantage, thus adding value to it in various ways. CoPs help guide the strategy, begin new lines of business, solve problems faster, disseminate best practices, develop professional skills and help recruit and retain talent (WENGER; SNYDER, 2000). Additionally, CoPs have an impact on various aspects of the organization, such as collaboration, coordination, synergy, learning curve, productivity, efficiency and innovation (FONTAINE; MILLEN, 2004; LEE; SUH; HONG, 2010; KIM; HONG; SUH, 2012). In the literature, CoPs are associated with both the creation and sharing of knowledge. Thus, this study aims to contribute towards the knowledge available in this field by analyzing the strategies adopted by CoPs in relation to the creation and sharing of knowledge and, thus, identify the aspects that influence these phenomena.
The remainder of this paper is structured as follows: section 2 presents a literature review focused on the characteristics of CoPS and their relationship with the creation and sharing of knowledge; section 3 describes the methodological steps adopted; in section 4, there is a discussion of the results; and section 5 contains the conclusions and ideas for further research.
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COMMUNITIES OF PRACTICE AND THE CREATION AND SHARING OF KNOWLEDGE
Communities of Practice (CoPs) have existed ever since humans began to interact socially. Wenger, McDermott and Snyder (2002) provide examples, such as prehistoric hunters who debated the best ways to kill their prey, medieval knights who were trained for combat, writers who exchange ideas about their work, artists who get together to discuss a new technique or style of painting, gang members learning how to survive and mothers that join their children in games and discuss parenting tips with each other. The term "Community of Practice" was introduced by Lave and Wenger (1991) in the 1990s when they were studying situational learning and ways of sharing knowledge.
CoPs can be defined as "groups of people who share a concern, a set of problems, or passion about a topic, and who deepen their knowledge and expertise on this topic by interacting on an ongoing basis" (WENGER; MCDERMOTT; SNYDER, 2002, p. 4). CoPs provide multiple points of view and thus increase and improve the interpretation of knowledge (BHATT, 2001; LEE; SUH; HONG, 2010). In the perception of these authors, CoPs are associated with both the idea of sharing and of creating knowledge.
Generally, CoPs arise spontaneously, independently and are self-managed, allowing anyone to participate (WENGER, 1998b), yet managers have difficulty understanding how to implement these communities, their structure, or how they function (BISHOP et al., 2008). CoPs are entities that are constantly changing and are not stable or static (ROBERTS, 2006; DU PLESSIS, 2008). They change as members join and leave, with changes in organizational culture and especially when the organization's business strategy changes (DU PLESSIS, 2008).
While the management team cannot form CoPs, they can, however, facilitate the spontaneous emergence of CoPs and support those who wish to develop them (ROBERTS, 2006; DU PLESSIS, 2008). CoPs are self-managing social entities that choose their own leaders and the rules by which they operate (DU PLESSIS, 2008). The manager's role is to support the development of CoPs and perhaps try to structure their spontaneity, encouraging the alignment of changes in practices between communities and helping to transfer knowledge within the organization (BROWN; DUGUID, 2001).
According to Wenger, McDermott and Snyder (2002) and Kingston (2012), the structure of CoPs can vary according to the following aspects:
* Size--small, involving only a few specialists, or large involving hundreds of people;
* Time--short shelf life, such as a COBOL developer community, or can last for centuries such as a group of craft workers;
* Location--distributed across different countries, in which case interaction may occur only by phone or e-mail, or local, with weekly meetings;
* Composition--can be homogeneous, composed only of people from a single discipline, or heterogeneous, composed of people from different disciplines and backgrounds;
* Limits--may include members exclusively from within an organization or may include members from within and from outside an organization;
* Origin--may be spontaneous, beginning without any effort or intervention on the part of the organization, where members come together spontaneously, or they may be intentional, where the organization intentionally introduces them in order to develop some specific skills;
* Recognition--institutionalized or unrecognized by the organization, depending on the type of relationship they cultivate with the organization, they may be in a variety of intermediate states such as informal, legitimate, and supported.
In order to function, a CoP requires the support of a set of virtual and non-virtual resources, such as a place to meet, a repository of ideas and record of the activities, a list of the members and their interests, means of communication between members and ways of sharing tacit knowledge (COAKES, 2006). CoPs may make use of technologically advanced tools with content management systems, or may be just a group of people debating a particular problem, with the tools used for their support ranging between these two extreme possibilities (DU PLESSIS, 2008). Coakes (2006) mentions video conferencing, instant messaging applications and e-mail as examples of tools that promote communication between members.
In order to facilitate interaction between members in different geographic locations and time zones, Wenger et al. (2005) mention asynchronous communication tools such as blogs, wikis, e-mail, mailing lists, forums, RSS (really simple syndication) and the use of integrated tools such as portals and other proprietary software. These authors also argue that the technological tools available to a CoP must be easy to use and learn, evolve over time, be easily accessible and designed with the end-user's perspective in mind.
A lack of, or limited access to technological tools may make it difficult for the individuals in an organization to find the knowledge they seek (DU PLESSIS, 2008). KM systems must enable integration and be sufficiently flexible to facilitate the transformation of different types of knowledge (DAVIS; SUBRAHMANIAN; WESTEMBERG, 2005).
The learning potential of organizations is structured by the CoPs through the knowledge they develop at their core and the interactions they provide within their limits, with people who are not members or with other CoPs...
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