Community of Practice

A community of practice (CoP) is a group of people, who interact and share knowledge of mutual interest to each member in an informal way. Each member participates voluntarily and freely shares his understanding and skills about the particular subject of interest, and also gets to learn from the other members' experiences.

The concept of CoP is not something new. It has been practised since olden times. For instance, in traditional African societies, old men well versed in herbal medicine used to meet, share and learn from each other how different twigs, leaves, roots etc. were used to treat different diseases. In this way, this kind of tacit knowledge was then retained, refined and passed on to future generations.

It was anthropologist Jean Leave and thought leader Etienne Wenger who first coined this term while studying apprenticeship as a learning model. According to (Wenger 1998), a CoP is defined by three dimensions:

1. What it is - joint enterprise as understood and negotiated by its members
2. Function - mutual engagement bind members together into social entity
3. What it achieves - shared pool of communal resources (routines, styles, vocabulary etc) that members have developed over time

He further argues that what the community practices is reflected by things that matter as interpreted by the members' own understanding of what is important. In a sense, CoPs are "self-organising systems".

Importance of CoPs in organizational context

We first need to note that there are subtle differences between organizations and CoPs. Organizations have a formal structure, CoPs are more informal. CoPs can exist within or outside the organization's boundaries, but in one way or the other, can have significant influence on an organization's activities. When existing inside an organization boundary, they should not be confused with internal structures such as functional units or project teams. If outside, they should not be confused with networks. (Wenger 1998) shows how a CoP is different from:

• Business or functional unit. CoP members develop among themselves an understanding of what their practice is all about. Thus the boundaries of a CoP are more flexible than those of organizational unit. The flexibility the CoP offers allows members to participate in different ways and varying degrees, creating many opportunities of learning.
• A team. CoP is defined by knowledge valuable to its members, a team by a particular task or project to be undertaken within a certain deadline. CoPs take time to come into being, and may live longer than a team that disbands after the project is accomplished.
• A network. While a network is about relationships, a CoP has an identity as a community with a purpose - shared practice of collective learning.

Having said that, in an increasing competitive environment, organizations have recognized knowledge as a crucial factor in attaining a competitive edge. They are constantly looking for ways and means to harness and utilize this key resource in order to attain their overall objectives. Effective organizations have come to the realization that indeed, the concept of CoP is one vehicle that can be used to achieve this goal of creating, sharing and reusing knowledge, which in turn boosts performance.

To get an insight of how an organization's performance can be improved, let us take two examples. A recent detailed research to establish the relationship between CoPs and performance was carried out by (Schenkel and Teigland, 2008) on a multi-billion dollar construction project involving construction of a bridge linking Sweden and Denmark by Sundlink Contractors. Four CoPs in Caisson, Piershaft, High Bridge Deck/Girder and Pylon sections were studied. The results showed how the first three CoPs "exhibited improved performance" as a result of the CoPs ability to create and share the collective memory through informal face to face interactions. In Pylon section where the fourth CoP was and where there was reduced face to face interactions as a result of some CoP members being moved to the sea, they found that there was a "negative impact on the structural dimensions and cognitive processes" when compared to the other first three CoPs - implying that the split of the CoP degraded performance.

Another study conducted by (Lesser and Storck, 2001) on seven organizations where CoPs were acknowledged to create value, linked four broad business performance areas that were influenced by the CoPs. The organizations studied were two multinational lending institutions, one manufacturing company, a pharmaceutical firm, a software development company, a speciality chemical company and a telecom company. The four broad business performance areas were:

1. Decreasing the learning curve of new employees
2. Responding more rapidly to customer needs and inquiries
3. Reducing rework and preventing "reinvention of the wheel"
4. Spawning new ideas for products and services

This comprehensive study demonstrated how the CoPs, irrespective of the industry where their organization belonged, greatly influenced some of the factors that are critical to an organization's success.

Because shared knowledge and practices are central themes in CoPs, effective organizations should nurture and support CoPs by recognizing the valuable role they play in an organization's success.

Is a CoP just another buzzword?

Not really. From my personal viewpoint, I concur with this term of CoP, which is a cut above the rest of other terms like networks, clubs, merry-go-rounds etc. Looking back, the SDA church choir that I used to see every Tuesdays and Thursdays evenings in downtown Nairobi on my way from work is, I belief, a good example of a CoP. The informal manner in which they practised and honed their hymns and songs, and the willingness shown by each member, contributed greatly to the nice renditions sang during the church's Sabbath School.

I benefited greatly from a CoP I participated (even though I wasn't consciously aware that it was a CoP). We had great interest in programming skills with Borland Delphi - an object oriented programming and development platform. I learned quite a lot from my colleagues (especially the stepping-through process of debugging some nagging lines of code which had syntax and logic errors that were difficult to detect on my own). The clues gained helped me in the development and implementation of a comprehensive custom built application for the service and workshop departments while working at Car and General (K) Ltd.

References:

Lesser E., Storck J. (2001). Communities of practice and organizational performance. IBM Systems Journal, Vol. 40 No. 4. Available at http://www.research.ibm.com/journal/sj/404/lesser.html. Accessed on[06/02/2009]

Schenkel, A., Teigland, R.(2008), "Improved organizational performance through communities of practice", Journal of Knowledge Management, Vol. 12 No. 1, pp.106-118

Wenger, E.(1998). Communities of practice:Learning as a social system. The Systems Thinker, June 1998. Available at http://www.co-i-l.com/coil/knowledge-garden/cop/lss.shtml. Accessed on [22/01/2009]