Communities of Practice: Knowledge Management for the Global Organization

Headnote

Abstract

Social networks are emerging as a powerful tool in a variety of Internet and Intranet domains. A less well-known application of social networks is the Community of Practice (CoP). These networks are groups of people within a common professional domain, often supported through a company Intranet, to facilitate fluid communication and collaboration of geographically dispersed professionals. By providing a venue for engagement of like-minded professionals who can communicate, share best practices, and collaborate on specific activities, CoP can significantly increase the productivity of knowledge workers and overcome many of the challenges of geographic and temporal separation. This effort must be managed systematically in order to achieve effective distributed cognition and enhanced collaboration.

Keywords:

Community of Practice, knowledge management, collaboration, globalization, distributed cognition

1. Background

Social networks, as described in [1] [2] connect individuals with common interests for a variety of purposes, including personal communication, information sharing, collaboration, and many others. While social networks have existed in their basic form since the beginning of civilization, they have recently gained attention in the corporate world because of the power of technologically mediated social networks. By providing technological support, such as corporate Intranets, email communication, data mining, and knowledge management systems [7], the capabilities of social networks to dramatically enhance organizational performance in a positive manner is emerging as a new competitive advantage.

Since the intrinsic nature of a global organization is rooted in being dispersed and distributed, it faces complexities and challenges resulting from its increased mobilization in terms of communication and knowledge sharing. Communities of Practice (CoP) are organizational social networks through which individuals can dynamically communicate and collaborate within an area of professional practice [2]. They allow members to share information and best practices, identify and address knowledge gaps, and create a shared knowledge repository within an area of expertise. CoPs are an evolving collaboration vehicle that address these rising complexities in order to sustain and continue growth. They allow global organizations to operate as a unified, integrated entity while positively impacting the level of performance. These communities have the potential to add significant value to an organization by enhancing the contribution of all members. As described in [2], there are many specific benefits provided by a community of practice:

* Communities of...