Online Communities & Communities of Practice

Week 8 of Social Media for business introduces COP – Communities of Practice. In this blog I will try to analyze what are the characteristics of COP and their relevance to business strategy, and their benefits and limitations of online communities.

Today’s economy runs on knowledge,  and use of cross-functional teams, customer- or product-focused business units, and work groups to capture and spread ideas. In many cases, these ways of organizing are very effective, and no one would argue for their demise. But a new organizational form is emerging that promises to complement existing structures and radically galvanize knowledge sharing, learning, and change. It’s called the community of practice.

Etienne Wenger summarizes Communities of Practice (COP) as “groups of people who share a concern or a passion for something they do and learn how to do it better as they interact regularly.

Communities of practice are groups of people who share a concern or a passion for something they do and learn how to do it better as they interact regularly.

The author (Etienne Wenger) noted three important elements:

1. Domain – an identity formed through a domain of shared interest. Being a part of the domain implies commitment & therefore a shared competence distinguishing members from non-members.
2. The Community – has shared interest in its domain and engage in building relationships that enable them to learn from one another. Commitment to the community can run deeply within its members.
3. The practice – members of a community of practice are practitioners. Over time they develop tools and a practice that is enduring an beneficial to its members

 

Characteristics of COP

Communities of practice have different names in all organizations. They are known under various names, such as learning networks, thematic groups, or tech clubs. Communities of practice have been around for as long as human beings have learned together. At home, at work, at school, in our hobbies, we all belong to communities of practice, a number of them usually. In some we are core members. In many we are merely peripheral. And we travel through numerous communities over the course of our lives.

The concept has been adopted most readily by people in business because of the recognition that knowledge is a critical asset that needs to be managed strategically.  COP is used for:

• Sharing and co-learning about related practices across projects.
• Learning while doing.
• Support for practitioners spread across the globe.
• Professional development.

Communities of practice are as diverse as the situations that give rise to them. People in companies form them for a variety of reasons. For example, when a company re-organizes into a team-based structure, employees with functional expertise may create communities of practice as a way of maintaining connections with peers. Sometimes people may form communities in response to changes originating outside the organization, such as the rise of e-commerce, or inside, such as new company strategies—think of auto manufacturers going into the financing business or computer makers offering consulting services.

COP and Business Strategy

The COP raises the capability and facilitates innovation through the cross-domain exchange. As a business strategy a COP offers a lot of value. The informality and passion that drive COP’s if harnessed effectively can be a very effective business tool.

The infrastructure to support COP’s doesn’t need to be complex. It needs to be simple and easy to use  social media tools, like blogs, wikis, discussion forums, on-demand video/teleconferences etc. are highly effective.

An example from Hewlett-Packard, where a community of practice consisting of product-delivery consultants from around North America holds monthly teleconferences. The community focuses on an HP software product called High Availability, which minimizes computer downtime for customers. The core group of consultants, who had been somewhat isolated, came together a few years ago with the help of facilitators from a knowledge management support team. The members discovered that they had many problems in common and that they could learn a great deal from one another. The community has succeeded in standardizing the software’s sales and installation processes and establishing a consistent pricing scheme for HP salespeople.

Online Communities

An online community is a virtual community whose members interact with each other primarily via the Internet. For many, online communities may feel like home, consisting of a “family of invisible friends.  An online community can act as an information system where members can post, comment on discussions, give advice or collaborate. Commonly, people communicate through social networking sites, chat rooms, forums, e-mail lists and discussion boards. People may also join online communities through social media like blogs and virtual worlds.

What is an online community of practice?

The evolution of Internet and Web technologies has:

• Impacted on the way individuals communicate;
• Greatly enhanced the development of communities online; and
• Provided the opportunity for online communities of practice to facilitate the creation, refinement, sharing and use of knowledge effectively between individuals.

Benefits And Limitations

An online community of practice requires more than simply transferring a community of practice to an online environment.

Technology infrastructures have to be created to support the functioning of online communities of practice to overcome barriers that do not occur in co-located communities of practice. These barriers include:

– Time: to meet and communicate;

– Size: membership may be large and involve many locations;

– Affiliation: members spread across organisations; and

– Culture: members experience different organisational cultures.

Can communities of practice be totally supported and operated online? An ongoing debate is whether or not communities of practice can be virtual. Two key issues raised in this debate concern:

• Whether relationship and trust can be built online
• Whether tacit knowledge and practice can be shared online.

Limitations:

• Very little information is available regarding bilingual online communities of practice.
• Conducting online discussions in multiple languages is complicated.
• Designing a bilingual website requires more than translating the words.
• Providing bilingual websites makes an important statement regarding the value of that culture to society.
• More research is required into the provision of bilingual online communities of practice.

Benefits of online communities of practice include:

 

• Membership is diverse;
• Leadership is strong;
• Technology is used appropriately;
• There is an emphasis on participation and community building; and
• They are long-term

 

It should be noted that communities of practice can be very effective in a digital world, where the working context is volatile, complex, uncertain and ambiguous.  A large part of the lifelong learning market will become occupied by communities of practice and self-learning, through collaborative learning, sharing of knowledge and experience, and crowd-sourcing new ideas and development.

Reference:

Wenger, E. (2006). Communities of practice: A brief introduction.   Retrieved from  http://wenger-trayner.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/07-Brief-introduction-to-communities-of-practice.pdf

Communities of Practice: The Organizational Frontier. Source: https://hbr.org/2000/01/communities-of-practice-the-organizational-frontier

Online Community.  Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Online_community