About Communities of Practice [CoP]

This concept was first put forth by two anthropologists, namely Barbara Rogoff (1985) and Jean Lave. Later Lave along with Etienne Wenger developed this concept furthermore coined the term Communities of Practice. (Wikipedia 2006) and this is not a new concept, most of us are a part of at least one such community or group knowingly or unknowingly. Communities of Practice is a group of people who share common interests and they come together to achieve common goals. It also helps people to solve problems in their area of expertise.(Hass., et al 2002) The intension behind starting or joining a community of practice may vary from person to person.
Staring a community of practice in an organization is a very difficult task. It requires a lot of motivation and support from the management.


Communication in CoP is both formal and informal and they are not a static group but they evolve and adapt continuously. The authors also give a example of Chrysler group which is basically a vehicle manufacturing company where CoP is put to best use and they call it as Electronic Book Of Knowledge [EBOK] Here they use the concept of "Lessons Learned" or "Best Practices"which is adapted from the ideas put forth by Wenger and snyder in 2000. And the engineers at Chrysler refer to it as tech clubs where they share the knowledge. Chrysler is also well know for its outstanding success story for reusing the lessons learned and best practices and significantly reducing the cost and process simplification. (Ackerman., et al 2003)

Its a way of sharing knowledge.
And now this CoP is adapted by most of the organizations as the means of improving the knowledge.

And this was our group's [VOSAPA] view about CoP which we discussed in the seminar.


In the above photo the dots which appear like the nodes of a hexagon are individuals,
they have two way arrow between each other which represents the two way communication among the individuals of a organization, the square represents the CoP and the organization is placed inside a CoP, the mesh that can be seen inside the hexagon represents the network that is present between the individuals of the organization.

References:

1. Wikipedia 2006 Website : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Community_of_practice

2. Roland Hass, Wilfried Aulbur and Sunil Thakar and edited by mark Ackerman, Volkmar pipek and Volker Wulf Sharing Expertise - Beyond Knowledge Management 2003