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Introduction
Governments and businesses need to successfully manage projects and day-to-day business activities, to learn from success and failure, and to capture, disseminate and apply lessons learned (Burr, 2009; GAO, 2002; Klakegg et al. , 2015; Ministry of Defence, 2010; NASA, 2012). An organisation needs to consider its current knowledge and determine how to acquire and access additional knowledge (ISO, 2015). In practice, organisational learning from projects rarely happens, and when it does, it fails to deliver the intended results (Atkinson et al. , 2006; Kerzner, 2009; Klakegg et al. , 2010; Milton, 2010; Schindler and Eppler, 2003; Williams, 2008; Williams et al. , 2012). Nevertheless, some organisations in the sectors of healthcare, nuclear power, rail and aviation have demonstrated their ability to apply lessons learned by way of Reason's (1997, 2000) Swiss cheese model. This model enables these organisations to conceptualise how safety and accident prevention know-how is not stored in one spot but rather distributed across a network of interconnected organisational faculties and systems.
In this paper, we demonstrate the application of a conceptual model, hereafter referred to as the systemic lessons learned knowledge (Syllk) (pronounced Silk) model (Duffield and Whitty, 2012; Duffield and Whitty, 2015), which is a variation of Reason's (1997, 2000) Swiss cheese model. Whereas the Swiss cheese model appropriately fits accident causation, the Syllk model is better suited to the organisation managing projects and day-to-day business activities. Put simply, in aviation, the Swiss cheese model enables lessons learned data to be collected from aviation events so that the aviation industry can improve the safety of how planes fly tomorrow. For organisations, the Syllk model will enable lessons learned to be disseminated and applied so that the organisation can improve its future project and day-to-day business delivery performance (Duffield and Whitty, 2015).
At the centre of this research is a government organisation that identified a need for a trial online community of practice (CoP). The trial focused on conducting a single online CoP in a controlled environment implementing a governance framework. The trial identified the barriers and success factors for conducting a successful online CoP within the organisation and the robustness, appropriateness and applicability of the governance framework for future ongoing online CoPs. The organisation considered that the application...