Communities of Practice (CoP) Evaluation Report - Essay Example

Communities of Practice (CoP) Evaluation Report We find communities of practice strewn everywhere with different forms and names and everyone must have been part of one in one way or the other. When we have people interacting at work, there is a transfer of the knowhow from one person to the other within that environment. It is mostly based on informal interactions and on contact basis. This is a sort of acquired learning and becomes the essence of interactions around the place of work. CoPs are not teams or taskforces.

The main objective inherent in any knowledge management practice is to simply manage knowledge. This however, is complicated by the forms such a practice takes. There are two known types of knowledge: that which is reflected on the inner side of any individual encompassing his or her capacity to act on such knowledge and that which is articulated and could be recorded consistently. Thus, the expressed notion of knowledge that is implicit, explicit and tacit. The most important aspect in any organization is its capacity to design processes, manage them and improve further based on acquired or developed knowledge (Wenger, McDermott and Snyder 101-119).

The cultural aspect of CoPs is geared towards the interest of members seen in their quest to develop a given practice and keep the community intact. CoPs have a culture of change and this is sustained through innovation which mainly bases their realization on qualities of human beings expressed through ideas and the commitment or determination to do so. This knowledge which is geared towards fostering innovation does generate unique and new ideas and finds solutions to present as well as past issues or problems that might have been encountered.

This could explain the reasons behind managerial support for CoPs within their respective organizations to gain competitive advantage (Lea and Nicoll 182-195). The identified CoPs for this paper are the Peers and Colleagues of Apple Inc. this group normally agrees on the problems within Apple Inc. when it comes to the inefficiency they might have realized in the system of R&D. They co-mingle with the same interest geared towards improvement of quality standards of this inefficient system, changes are proposed and ways of how they happened to work out the evolving system are presented.

They share these ideas of the system through emails, calls or at times organize lunch sessions. The revised ideas get presented through the process of chain interactions where one person transmits it to the next. This goes as far as making them keep abreast with new trends within Apple Inc., like when a new iPhone is to be launched or new software is coming into the market. This kind of interaction leads to new knowledge being created and other new ways of doing things are identified. For instance, when we look at the Apple’s launch of iPhone 2G is quite different from how iPhone 4 was launched.

This shows the extent to which CoPs within organizations could revitalize them and make them gain competitive edge in the global market if well managed (Apple Inc.). CoPs could have a better say on what goes on in an organization. However, such communities cannot be engineered. The best an organization could do once such a community is identified is to provide formal training and combine this with their social learning practices so as to make sure that such critical and important knowledge that comes from these CoP is comprehensively spread across the organization and thus beyond the confines of this group (Gibson and Cohen 59-86) as has been seen in Apple Inc.

Works CitedApple Inc. Apple Info. 2011. 05 09 2011 .Gibson, C.B. and S.G. (Eds.), Cohen. Virtual Teams that Work. : . San Francisco, CA: Wiley & Sons, 2003.Lea, M. and K. (Eds.), Nicoll. Distributed Learning: Social, Cultural Approaches to Practice. London: Routledge/Falmer, 2002.Wenger, Etienne, Richard McDermott and William, Snyder. Cultivating communities of practice: A guide to managing knowledge. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Business School Press, 2002.