The Paradox of Communities of Practice

2011 ◽  
pp. 36-46 ◽  
Author(s):  
Donald Hislop
Keyword(s):  
Communities Of Practice ◽  
Knowledge Sharing ◽  
Case Studies ◽  
Social Relationship ◽  
Close Collaboration ◽  
Community Interactions ◽  
Community Knowledge ◽  
The Social ◽  
Shared Infrastructure ◽  
Community Contexts

This chapter examines knowledge sharing between Communities of Practice, a relatively neglected topic of study. Theory and evidence is presented to suggest that knowledge sharing between communities is likely to be more complex than intra-community knowledge sharing, due to the lack of shared consensual knowledge or shared sense of identity which typically exists in inter-community contexts. In such situations, the development of trust is seen to be a key foundation which requires to be developed before effective knowledge sharing can occur. Three brief case studies are presented to illustrate the arguments made. Practitioner implications flowing from this chapter are twofold. Firstly, to facilitate effective inter-community knowledge sharing requires effort to be invested in developing the social relationship (and hence trust) between members from the communities. Secondly, organizations need to balance their efforts at building Communities of Practice with supporting inter-community interactions; otherwise they risk developing isolated and inward looking communities. ‘The shared infrastructure of activity that makes cooperation the norm within particular communities of activity can act as a barrier to close collaboration with outsiders’ Blackler, Crump, & McDonald, 2000, p. 282

scholarly journals Pronouns, Address Forms and Politeness Strategies in Odia

2013 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 29-46
Author(s):  
Kalyanamalini SAHOO
Keyword(s):  
Communities Of Practice ◽  
Speech Acts ◽  
Social Relationship ◽  
Politeness Theory ◽  
Address Forms ◽  
Socially Constructed ◽  
The Social ◽  
Politeness Strategies ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Linguistic Usage

This study discusses how various politeness strategies are implemented linguistically and how linguistic usage is related to social and contextual factors in the Indic language Odia. The study extends the validity of politeness theory (Brown & Levinson, 1978) with reference to Odia speech-patterns and shows that Odia usage of politeness would be more differentiated according to the social relationship and gender than the content of the message.  In Brown and Levinson’s model, individual speech acts are considered to be inherently polite or impolite.  However, in Odia, it is found that communities of practice, rather than individuals, determine whether speech acts are considered polite or impolite. Thus, politeness should be considered as a set of strategies or practices set by particular groups or communities of practice as a socially constructed norm for themselves.

scholarly journals Supporting CSCW and CSCL with Intelligent Social Grouping Services

2009 ◽  
pp. 1629-1641
Author(s):  
Jeffrey J.P. Tsai ◽  
Jia Zhang ◽  
Jeff J.S. Huang ◽  
Stephen J.H. Yang
Keyword(s):  
Social Network ◽  
Communities Of Practice ◽  
Social Relationship ◽  
Computational Models ◽  
Peer To Peer ◽  
Social Grouping ◽  
Important Relationship ◽  
The Social

This article presents an intelligent social grouping service for identifying right participants to support CSCW and CSCL. We construct a three-layer hierarchical social network, in which we identify two important relationship ties – a knowledge relationship tie and a social relationship tie. We use these relationship ties as metric to measure the collaboration strength between pairs of participants in a social network. The stronger the knowledge relationship tie, the more knowledgeable the participants; the stronger the social relationship tie, the more likely the participants are willing to share their knowledge. By analyzing and calculating these relationship ties among peers using our computational models, we present a systematic way to discover collaboration peers according to configurable and customizable requirements. Experiences of social grouping services for identifying communities of practice through peer-to-peer search are also reported.

scholarly journals Supporting CSCW and CSCL with Intelligent Social Grouping Services

2012 ◽  
pp. 420-433
Author(s):  
Jeffrey J.P. Tsai ◽  
Jia Zhang ◽  
Jeff J.S. Huang ◽  
Stephen J.H. Yang
Keyword(s):  
Social Network ◽  
Communities Of Practice ◽  
Social Relationship ◽  
Computational Models ◽  
Peer To Peer ◽  
Social Grouping ◽  
Important Relationship ◽  
The Social

This article presents an intelligent social grouping service for identifying right participants to support CSCW and CSCL. We construct a three-layer hierarchical social network, in which we identify two important relationship ties – a knowledge relationship tie and a social relationship tie. We use these relationship ties as metric to measure the collaboration strength between pairs of participants in a social network. The stronger the knowledge relationship tie, the more knowledgeable the participants; the stronger the social relationship tie, the more likely the participants are willing to share their knowledge. By analyzing and calculating these relationship ties among peers using our computational models, we present a systematic way to discover collaboration peers according to configurable and customizable requirements. Experiences of social grouping services for identifying communities of practice through peer-to-peer search are also reported.

The Social Network and Community Approach for Enterprise 2.0

2012 ◽  
pp. 662-685
Author(s):  
Mariano Corso ◽  
Antonella Martini ◽  
Fiorella Crespi
Keyword(s):  
Social Network ◽  
Knowledge Sharing ◽  
Case Studies ◽  
Social Enterprise ◽  
Enterprise 2.0 ◽  
Network Development ◽  
Community Approach ◽  
Sales And Marketing ◽  
The Social

Enterprise 2.0, or E2.0, refers to a set of organisational and technological approaches steered to enable new organisational models based on open involvement, emergent collaboration, knowledge sharing, and internal/external social network development and exploitation. It aims to respond to the new features and needs of people and boosts flexibility, adaptability, and innovation. Based on evidence from 52 case studies, a survey and a co-laboratory approach conducted by the Observatory on E2.0, the chapter analyses the social enterprise approach, which is one of the emerging E2.0 models. Specifically, this chapter reports the application areas (such as social network and community and unified communication & collaboration), the barriers for sales and marketing, and finally, the managerial guidelines.

Structural health assessment of communities of practice (CoPs)

2014 ◽  
Vol 18 (6) ◽  
pp. 1198-1216 ◽  
Author(s):  
Suchul Lee ◽  
Yong Seog Kim ◽  
Euiho Suh
Keyword(s):  
Communities Of Practice ◽  
Knowledge Sharing ◽  
Health Assessment ◽  
Management Teams ◽  
Manufacturing Companies ◽  
Preventive Action ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Structural Health ◽  
Structural Health Assessment ◽  
The Social

Purpose – This paper aims to provide organizational knowledge management teams with a new metric, the bottleneck impact score (BIS), a valuable tool for evaluating the structural health of communities of practice (CoPs), by detecting the seriousness and pervasiveness of the bottlenecks occurring in knowledge-sharing activities among CoP members. Design/methodology/approach – This paper uses the social network analysis method to analyze the activities of organizational members in CoPs and classify organizational members into four types based on their degree of involvement in knowledge creation and consumption. CoPs are also categorized into four types based on the proportion of member types they contain to identify the characteristics of CoP member types and of CoP types. Findings – Data analysis of the knowledge-sharing activities of 4,414 members from 59 CoPs within one of the largest steel manufacturing companies finds that few CoPs are active in both knowledge creating and consuming and that most CoPs suffer from the insufficient participation of their most experienced employees and experts and hence are vulnerable to master–apprentice and knowledge drain risks. Originality/value – The proposed BIS metric successfully quantifies the seriousness and pervasiveness of such structural risks and thus can help management teams take preventive action to reduce the identified structural risks.

Utilizing Communities of Practice to Facilitate Knowledge Sharing in the Digital Age

2016 ◽  
pp. 198-224 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kijpokin Kasemsap
Keyword(s):  
Information Technology ◽  
Communities Of Practice ◽  
Knowledge Sharing ◽  
Organizational Performance ◽  
Digital Age ◽  
Knowledge Sharing Behavior ◽  
The Social ◽  
Modern Business ◽  
Strategic Goals ◽  
Sharing Behavior

This chapter explains the overview of knowledge sharing; the perspectives of knowledge sharing behavior; the barriers to knowledge sharing; the overview of communities of practice (CoPs); the relationships among CoPs, knowledge sharing, and information technology; and the utilization of CoPs to facilitate knowledge sharing in the digital age. CoPs can create the valuable opportunities for members to explicitly discuss the productivity of their participation in the group toward sharing knowledge in modern business. The strong CoPs facilitate the social interactions and encourage the members' willingness to share knowledge and ideas in the workplace. CoPs help promote a growing cycle of knowledge sharing activities that allow for the members to regularly meet, reflect, and evolve in the knowledge management (KM) environment. The chapter argues that utilizing CoPs to facilitate knowledge sharing has the potential to improve organizational performance and reach strategic goals in the digital age.

Introduction

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
James McElvenny
Keyword(s):  
Case Studies ◽  
History Of Ideas ◽  
Political Issues ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of

This chapter sets the scene for the case studies that follow in the rest of the book by characterising the ‘age of modernism’ and identifying problems relating to language and meaning that arose in this context. Emphasis is laid on the social and political issues that dominated the era, in particular the rapid developments in technology, which inspired both hope and fear, and the international political tensions that led to the two World Wars. The chapter also sketches the approach to historiography taken in the book, interdisciplinary history of ideas.

Reflections on Lawrence Freedman’s ‘Deterrence’

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Patrick M. Morgan
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Social Cohesion ◽  
Social Relationship ◽  
International Security ◽  
First Century ◽  
Social Aspects ◽  
Post Cold War ◽  
Social Strategy ◽  
The Social ◽  
The One

This chapter focuses on the social aspects of strategy, arguing for the importance of relationships in strategy and, in particular, in understanding of deterrence. Deterrence, in its essence, is predicated upon a social relationship – the one deterring and the one to be deterred. Alliance and cooperation are important in generating the means for actively managing international security. Following Freedman’s work on deterrence in the post-Cold War context, ever greater interaction and interdependence might instill a stronger sense of international community, in which more traditional and ‘relatively primitive’ notions of deterrence can be developed. However, this strategic aspiration relies on international, especially transatlantic, social cohesion, a property that weakened in the twenty-first century, triggering new threats from new kinds of opponent. The need for a sophisticated and social strategy for managing international security is made all the more necessary.

Realism 2.0

2019 ◽  
pp. 663-679
Author(s):  
Augusta Rohrbach
Keyword(s):  
Web 2.0 ◽  
Knowledge Sharing ◽  
Real Time ◽  
Social Reform ◽  
Data Modeling ◽  
Political Consciousness ◽  
Web 2.0 Technologies ◽  
Reform Agenda ◽  
Social Purpose ◽  
The Social

This chapter looks to the future of teaching realism with Web 2.0 technologies. After discussing the ways in which technologies of data modeling can reveal patterns for interpretation, the chapter examines how these technologies can update the social-reform agenda of realism as exemplified by William Dean Howells’s attempted intervention into the Haymarket Riot in 1886. The advent of Web 2.0 techologies offers students a way to harness the genre’s sense of social purpose to knowledge-sharing mechanisms to create a vehicle for political consciousness-raising in real time. The result is “Realism 2.0,” a realism that enables readers to engage in their world, which is less text-centric than it was for previous writers.

“Tradition,” Vernacularism, and Learning to Be a Folk Musician With Social Media

2020 ◽  
pp. 442-466
Author(s):  
Simon Keegan-Phipps ◽  
Lucy Wright
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Digital Media ◽  
Case Studies ◽  
Folk Music ◽  
Learning Mechanisms ◽  
Media Technologies ◽  
Arts And Humanities ◽  
The Arts ◽  
The Social ◽  
Social Shaping

This chapter considers the role of social media (broadly conceived) in the learning experiences of folk musicians in the Anglophone West. The chapter draws on the findings of the Digital Folk project, funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (UK), and begins by summarizing and problematizing the nature of learning as a concept in the folk music context. It briefly explicates the instructive, appropriative, and locative impacts of digital media for folk music learning before exploring in detail two case studies of folk-oriented social media: (1) the phenomenon of abc notation as a transmissive media and (2) the Mudcat Café website as an example of the folk-oriented discussion forum. These case studies are shown to exemplify and illuminate the constructs of traditional transmission and vernacularism as significant influences on the social shaping and deployment of folk-related media technologies. The chapter concludes by reflecting on the need to understand the musical learning process as a culturally performative act and to recognize online learning mechanisms as sites for the (re)negotiation of musical, cultural, local, and personal identities.

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