What are communities of practice? A comparative review of four seminal works

This paper is a comparative review of four seminal works on communities of practice. It is argued that the ambiguities of the terms community and practice are a source of the concept's reusability allowing it to be reappropriated for different purposes, academic and practical. However, it is potentially confusing that the works differ so markedly in their conceptualizations of community, learning, power and change, diversity and informality. The three earlier works are underpinned by a common epistemological view, but Lave and Wenger's 1991 short monograph is often read as primarily about the socialization of newcomers into knowledge by a form of apprenticeship, while the focus in Brown and Duguid's article of the same year is, in contrast, on improvising new knowledge in an interstitial group that forms in resistance to management. Wenger's 1998 book treats communities of practice as the informal relations and understandings that develop in mutual engagement on an appropriated joint enterprise, but his focus is the impact on individual identity. The applicability of the concept to the heavily individualized and tightly managed work of the twenty-first century is questionable. The most recent work by Wenger – this time with McDermott and Snyder as coauthors – marks a distinct shift towards a managerialist stance. The proposition that managers should foster informal horizontal groups across organizational boundaries is in fact a fundamental redefinition of the concept. However it does identify a plausible, if limited, knowledge management (KM) tool. This paper discusses different interpretations of the idea of 'co-ordinating' communities of practice as a management ideology of empowerment

To share or not to share, that is the question. Conditions for the willingness to share knowledge

Sharing knowledge is an important aspect of most modern organisation. Ideas about how to stimulate knowledge sharing abound, but without much theorising. The objective of this article is to link basic motivation theories to empirical studies of knowledge sharing and its conditions. The paper starts with an orientation on company strategies to stimulate knowledge sharing, and the role of various types of incentives. It appears that these incentive schemes are based on various assumptions concerning human motivation. We turn then to work motivation theory to search for underlying processes that may explain why people would or would not share their knowledge. Understanding these processes and conditions can promote organisational strategies that support knowledge sharing. The findings are combined in an overview and motivational model that identifies the interaction of several psychological and organisational processes. From this overview a checklist is derived to assess the motivation for knowledge sharing and the conditions that may influence this motivation. Organizations that want to improve knowledge sharing may use this instrument to identify the issues they have to give attention toResearch Programme Innovation SystemsTechnology, Policy and Managemen

Werken in netwerken: Nieuwe vormen van arbeid en organisatie

Technology, Policy and Managemen

Knowledge Communities in fives

Many modern knowledge intensive organisations rely on knowledge sharing communities, often called ‘communities of practice. These communities can be found in many organisations, but their forms and functions appear to be quite diverse. This implies that questions concerning the functioning of communities, (how do they work) and questions concerning success conditions (how to organize and facilitate them) cannot be answered in a general way. The purpose of this article is to develop the theory in this area by discovering basic types of knowledge communities, underlying the diversity of knowledge sharing groups. Through an analysis of the literature and of a series of communities in large organisations, three basic dimensions, i.e. institutionalisation, connectivity and virtuality, and five basic types of knowledge communities are identified, i.e. strategic communities, informal communities, knowledge networks, interest groups and Delphi groups.Research Programme Innovation SystemsTechnology, Policy and Managemen

Omgaan met ICT in het werk; complex en onontkoombaar

Praktisch alle organisaties hebben te maken met toepassingen van de Informatie en Communicatie Technologie. Die toepassingen zi/n van zeer ulteenlopende aard. Zonder in de val van het technologisch determinisme te vallen kan gesteld worden dat die nieuwe technologie gepaard gaat met vele veranderingen in werk, organisatie en in menselijk gedrag. Het terrein is zeer breed en de voor sociale wetenschap pers relevante verschijnselen zijn dan ook van verschillende niveaus: het gaat om een gelaagd fenomeen’ van mens-computer interactie tot maatschappelijke sturing van lCTontwikkelingen, van telewerken tot kennismanagement. De arbeids-, sociale en organisatie psychologie hebben veel kennis in huis die ‘vertaald’ en relevant gemaakt kan worden voor de vraagstukken op dit gebied