Knowledge Sharing and Communities of Practice

  • Once knowledge has been captured and codified, it needs to be shared and disseminated throughout the organization.
  • people prefer personalization strategy
  • feedback is important to gain 'metaknowledge' about how searching future information
  • provides avenue for tacit-to-tacit knowledge transfer
  • context is important

Community of Practice

  • it refers to a group of people having common identity, professional interests and that undertake to share participate and establish a fellowship
  • also can be defined as a group of people, along with their shared resources and dynamic relationships who assemble to make use of shared knowledge

The Social Nature of Knowledge

  • Group members produce knowledge by their interactions and a group memory is created.
  • Social constructivism views knowledge not as an objective but as subjective
  • Individuals and groups of people communicate, they mutually influence each other's view and create or change shared constructions of reality.
  • Since individuals memory is limited we need to embed this knowledge in useful, more permanent from such as email.

Sociograms and Social Network Analysis

  • is the mapping and measuring of relationships and flow between people, groups, organizations, computers or other information/knowledge processing entities.
  • provides both a visual and a mathematical analysis of complex human systems to identify patterns of interaction.
  • enables relationships between people to be mapped in order to identify knowledge flows.

Knowledge Sharing Communities

  • Provide access to data and documents - good knowledge management system should include information not just on the people who produced the knowledge but also to those who will make use of it.
  • one way to facilitate knowledge sharing is by making the knowledge socially visible

Community Yellow Pages :

  • One of the earliest KM applications
  • use software to create profile of individual's expertise and connections between people
  • can provide significant organizational benefit

Visible interactions help creates :

  • mutual awareness
  • mutual accountability
  • mutual engagement

Roles and Responsibilities in CoPs

Key Roles in CoP :

  • Visitors : visit without joining
  • Novices : new members, who typically keep to themselves at first until they have learned enough about the community and the other members.
  • Regulars : member who provide regular contribution and who interact with other member on a sustained basis.
  • Leaders : member who take an official role
  • Elders : member who taking to subject matter experts, can maintain community history, familiar with knowledge area and community.

Obstacles to Knowledge Sharing

  • people are usually rewarded for what they know


  • Lack of trust between provider of knowledge and receiver of knowledge

Undernet

  • Knowledge sharing may be occurring informally
  • Knowledge lows well when there is a climate of trust and knowledge exchange is bidirectional

Organizational Learning and Social Capital

  • Human capital refers to a person's education, skills and background necessary to be productive in an organization or profession.
  • Social capital refer to the institutions, relationships and
    norms that shape the quality of an organization's social interactions

Strategic Implications of Knowledge Sharing

Important benefits of knowledge sharing include :

  • connecting professionals across platforms, across distances
  • Standardizing professional practices
  • Avoiding mistakes
  • Leveraging best practices
  • Reducing time to talent
  • Building reputation
  • Taking on stewardship for strategic capabilities