http://www.extractorlive.com/upload_demo.html

Then I get the following output – which I think is pretty accurate:

Keyphrases:

• CoP
• community
• employee
• Practice
• forum
• utilising
• management

Highlights:

• This short paper outlines the use of the Community of Practice (CoP) to lever organisational knowledge from the perspective of the employee.
• The paper questions the value of the CoP to the employee and provides a brief analysis of factors that may adversely affect the knowledge creating operation of a CoP.
• When utilising a Community of Practice as part of a KM schema, the aim is to utilise the employee’s knowledge, capture and exploit the rich media of the organisation in order to create value (Beccerra-Fernandez & Sabherwahl, 2001).
• Knowledge Management literature is awash with encouraging theorem to introduce KM, but few practical guides commit advice on how to achieve this, excepting the wealth of studies concerning the role of the Communities of Practice (CoP) such as Davenport & Hall (2002).
• In order for knowledge interaction to occur, the CoP must attain a viable membership of the forum, with regards to an organisational CoP the issue of low membership may be overcome by managerial pressure or placing knowledge within the community that is necessary for staff to fulfil their roles (Hildreth et al., 2000).

A key use of this would be tackling the problem of sorting through old documentation on shared drives – something which every enterprise has plenty of.  It would be interesting to know if anyone is carrying this out?

This short paper outlines the use of the Community of Practice (CoP) to lever organisational knowledge from the perspective of the employee. The paper questions the value of the CoP to the employee and provides a brief analysis of factors that may adversely affect the knowledge creating operation of a CoP. The paper draws upon findings of a case study conducted within a pharmaceutical company and we conclude by hinting that the CoP may in fact force organisational knowledge into a subjective and closed state.

Introduction

Knowledge management (KM) is the appliance of current research and experimentation within the fields of the knowledge and information realm. It is a fair assumption to note that knowledge forms the basis of a businesses competitive edge and drive, indeed neglecting knowledge and the associated organisational inferences is proclaimed to result in a lower financial return (Nonaka & Takeuchi, 1995). KM represents a high level strategy (Fuller, 2002) that when applied to a organisation offers benefits and opportunities that would not be realised within conventional working patterns. The authors take the view that KM can encourage the proliferation and dissemination of knowledge through the use of flexible guidelines, however only when certain environmental and commercial constraints have been identified and bridged. As such the following mini-paper challenges the use of the Community of Practice to afford innovation from an employee-focused stance, and debates whether the CoP should reside at the forefront of knowledge related strategies.

Organisational Knowledge

Knowledge is undoubtedly a cornerstone of an organisation (Malhotra, 2003), yet knowledge is inherently complex and organisational knowledge appears to rest in a state of flux between tacit and explicit knowledge. It is a common observation that tacit knowledge lies ill defined and withheld from systems designed to map and exploit the staff’s knowledge (Davenport & Prusak, 1998). The governing logic and reasoning behind knowledge based tools and systems pales, when an attempt is made to apply such rules to the complexity of organisational and subjective knowledge (Gunnlaugsdottir, 2003). When utilising a Community of Practice as part of a KM schema, the aim is to utilise the employee’s knowledge, capture and exploit the rich media of the organisation in order to create value (Beccerra-Fernandez & Sabherwahl, 2001). Knowledge transfer is said to occur when knowledge is passed between employees and an act or process follows from that transfer utilising the acquired knowledge (Darr & Kurtzburg, 2000). Evidently KM aims to address this critical juncture, yet the notion of taming organisational knowledge through the use of a Community of Practice may fall short.

The Role of the Community of Practice

Knowledge Management literature is awash with encouraging theorem to introduce KM, but few practical guides commit advice on how to achieve this, excepting the wealth of studies concerning the role of the Communities of Practice (CoP) such as Davenport & Hall (2002). Johnson’s (2001) review of CoPs provides a worthy definition of the CoP and examines their area of potential application, as to attempt a thorough review would be beyond the scope of the paper. Briefly modelling a CoP in accordance with Hildreth et al.’s (2000) definition, it is noted that a CoP may be used to aggregate both external and internal sources of knowledge through employee interaction. Due to the ambiguity of the term CoP the paper concentrates upon the use of an electronic forum based CoP. However as a generalised statement the CoP possesses an evolutionary quality through the use of communicative media and traditional face-to-face interaction, to become a working community capable of allowing knowledge creation, transfer and retention. Investigative research by Cortada & Woods (2000) acknowledges the community model intends to model human interaction within the virtual realm. KM certainly views the CoP as an employee centred KM strategy, yet there remain very few practical strategies detailing how to implement the CoP successfully. Work on this elusive side by William & Cothrel (2000) proposes three management strategies to promote a CoP, firstly you must encourage and develop membership, secondly the CoP must be actively managed and thirdly the community must strive to build both internal and external relationships. Further strategies within which to augment the value of a CoP are offered by Ardichvilli et al. (2003) and include the provision of live interactive chat sessions, the availability of reasoned feedback on members contributions and a Q&A session concerning the use and merit of the CoP. Addressing these aspects the KM practitioner is assured, will provide a greater return on value than simply allowing the community to run unabated. Nevertheless when considered against the knowledge needs and potential requirements of the employee a rather muddled stance is unearthed, perched somewhere between the needs of the organisation and the conflict of interest of the individual.

Knowledge Interaction within the CoP

Research recognises knowledge generation is based upon interaction of the employees within the CoP, and commonly known issues such as a lack of trust (McEvily & Zaheer, 2004) may adversely affect the depth of knowledge sharing. In light of extensive research the review suggests that trust poses a considerable imbalance geared towards the retention of subjective knowledge. The common belief that knowledge and information presented to the employee will spawn further knowledge interaction and generation may be largely unfounded (Fuller, 2002). In order for knowledge interaction to occur, the CoP must attain a viable membership of the forum, with regards to an organisational CoP the issue of low membership may be overcome by managerial pressure or placing knowledge within the community that is necessary for staff to fulfil their roles (Hildreth et al., 2000). A key finding of our case study was that staff felt compelled to participate within the forum, and their knowledge needs were not addressed even though they participated. The proviso of a computer-mediated environment in which to share knowledge should provide the employee with another means to share and disseminate their knowledge from an organisational perspective (Fuller, 2002). Yet as within our case study we found little evidence that the needs of the knowledge workers had been addressed, Easterby-Smith et al. (1998) stresses we must first ask why? Who? What? And when? Before introducing a knowledge-based forum. The case study findings were in keeping with research by Wenger & Snyder (2000), whom noted that the organisation views the CoP as a group of personnel who are informally bound by the desire to share expertise and knowledge. Yet analysing the CoP from the employee perspective yields one of mistrust (Porras et al. 2004), wavering motivation (Kwok & Gao, 2004), bewildering design and unfamiliar technology (Preece, 2001) and an arena dominated by status and knowledge retention (Thomas-Hunt et al, 2003). Surmounting these obstacles may yield a worthy medium for knowledge interaction, though the CoP is far from the knowledge production line envisaged by Preiss (1999). Indeed collaboration with external agents raise increased tensions within a CoP (Tell, 2004) and may further weaken an employee’s persuasion to share knowledge.

Conclusion

Introducing a KM strategy which utilises a CoP, aims to capture and leverage the knowledge within the individual and allow this subjective knowledge to be proliferated throughout the CoP. Yet our findings followed Huysman & De Wit (2002) research, which concludes that a KM project may hinder an organisations knowledge capability, by confining knowledge formation to the closed ranks of the employee and hence occluding the organisation of a tangible gain. Our study observed the CoP users would quickly revert to traditional knowledge channels when the forum lacked the required knowledge. The CoP is heralded as atypical of this scenario and should allow the leverage of knowledge through a computer-mediated medium, however due to the nature of the CoP, the employees tentative knowledge interaction within the CoP is governed by opposing factors such as trust and motivation. These factors ultimately transfer the knowledge discussion beyond the regulated CoP medium, to be continued within traditional channels which staff are familiar and comfortable in utilising. McElroy (2003) suggests KM should not compartmentalise knowledge, one conclusion of the case study is the CoP directly contributes to true segmentation. In conclusion the authors can only take the view that the CoP while inherently useful as a primer to knowledge discussion, can only hint at a solution to the intricacies of knowledge manipulation. The CoP may instead form cause to dispatch the discussion from within the organisations control to the archetypal traditional mediums, which KM seeks to eradicate. Relating this to the organisation is challenging as our work has outlined the need of the organisation to retain and centralise knowledge via CoPs. Whereas the requirements of the knowledge worker are almost certainly to adopt a decentralised knowledge model where knowledge is unrestricted by artificial boundaries and the employee may gain advice and knowledge from a wide range of sources in order to fulfil their role. References

Ardichvili, A., Page, V. & Wentling, T. (2003). Motivation and barriers to participation in virtual knowledge-sharing communities of practice, Journal of Knowledge Management, 7 (1), 64-77.

Beccerra-Fernandez, I. & Sabherwahl, R. (2001). Organisational knowledge management: a contingency perspective, Journal of Management information Systems, 18(1), 23-55.

Collier, J. & Esteban, R. (1999). Governance in the participative organisation: freedom, creativity and ethics, Journal of Business Ethics, 21 (2/3), 173-188.

Cortada, J. & Woods, J. (2000). The Knowledge Management Yearbook, 1999-2000, Butterworth-Heinemann: Boston.

Darr, E. & Kurtzberg, T. (2000). An investigation of partner similarity dimensions on knowledge transfer, Organisational Behaviour and Human Decision Processes, 82 (1). 150-169.

Davenport, E. & Hall, H. (2001). New knowledge and micro-level online organisation: ‘Communities of practice’ as a development framework, 34th Annual Hawaii International Conference on Systems Sciences, IEEE.

Davenport, T. & Prusak, L. (1998). Working Knowledge: How Organizations Manage What They Know, Harvard Business School Press: Boston, MA.

Easterby-Smith, M., Snell, R. & Gherardi, S. (1998). Organisational learning: diverging communities of practice?, Management Learning, 29 (3), 259-272.

Fuller, S. (2002). Knowledge Management foundations, Butterworth-Heinemann: Boston, MA.

Gunnlaugsdottir, J. (2003). Seek and you will find, share and you will benefit: organising knowledge using groupware systems, International Journal of Information Management, 23, 363-380.

Hildreth, P.,Kimble, C. & Wright, P. (2000). Communities of practice in the distributed international environment, Journal of Knowledge Management, 4 (1), 27-37.

Huysman, M. & De Wit, D. (2002). Knowledge Sharing in Practice, Kluwer Academic Publishers: Lancaster.

Johnson, C. (2001). A survey of current research on online communities of practice, The Internet and Higher Education, 4, 45-60.

Kwok, J. & Gao, S. (2004). Knowledge sharing community in P2P network: a study of motivational perspective, Journal of Knowledge Management, 8 (1), 94-102.

Malhotra, Y. (2003). Measuring knowledge assets of a nation: knowledge systems for development, a Keynote Presentation at United Nations Advisory Meeting of the Department of Economic and Social Affairs, New York, 4-5th September 2003.

McElroy, M. (2003). The new knowledge management: complexity, learning and sustainable innovation, KMCI Press: Hartland , VT.

McEvily, B. & Zaheer, A. (1999). Bridging ties: a source of firm heterogeneity in competitive capabilities, Journal of Strategic Management, 20, 1133-1156.

Nonaka, I. & Takeuchi, H. (1995). The knowledge creating company: how Japanese companies create the dynamics of innovation, Oxford University Press: New York, NY.

Porras, S., Clegg, S. & Crawford, J. (2004). Trust as networking knowledge: precedents from Australia, Asia Pacific Journal of Management, 21, 345-363.

Preece, J., (2001). Online Communities: Designing Usability, Supporting Sociability, Wiley: Chichester, England

Preiss, K. (1999). Modelling of knowledge flows and their impact, Journal of Knowledge Management, 3, 36-46.

Tell, R. (2004). What do organisations know? Dynamics of justification contexts in R&D activities, Organisation, 11 (4), 443-471.

Thomas-Hunt, M., Ogden, T. & Neale, M. (2003). Who’s really sharing? Effects of social and expert status on knowledge exchange within groups, Management Science, 49 (4), 464-477.

Wenger, E. & Snyder, W. (2000). Communities of practice: the organisational frontier, Harvard Business Review, Jan.

Williams, R. & Cothrel, J. (2000). Four smart ways to run online communities, Sloan Management Review, 41 (4), 81-91.

The constant flow of people leaving and joining an organisation is one we are all used to. Valued employees retire and newcomers find themselves awash in a sea of information for which they are now responsible.

The more experience and expertise the leaver has, the harder it is for their replacement to start their role. All organisations have their specialists and people who are critical to supplying the products to the customer. Their knowledge may be product based or they may be a key contact with your valued customers. Either way, they play a critical role.

If your organisation has robust processes to manage this knowledge and information transfer then great, if not, then do consider how this type of activity can help.

Information and Knowledge Retention and Transfer follows a 6 stage process:

1. First we identify with you where your high-risk information and knowledge lies.
2. Secondly we identify where in the business this information is used and who are the customers for the expertise.
3. Thirdly we gather this information by a process of interviews, workshops, sifting through emails and folders.
4. The fourth stage can be thought of as a sanity check. Here we review all the information and knowledge gathered with the person’s peers, their managers and the customers using workshops and collaborative sessions.
5. The fifth stage is the handover to the recipient. The gathered information forms the basis of an action plan to ensure that the transfer process occurs.
6. The sixth stage monitors the handover and ensures that the change over is a smooth as possible.

Above all, Information and Knowledge Retention is all about helping you to work more effectively.

If you are interested in holding a similar exercise then please contact us. Activities can be tailored to focus upon KM related issues, collaboration or innovation and we guarantee a fun time!