Communities of practice, their benefits and management challenges - Essay Example

?Introduction Organisations the world over have been utilising Communities of Practice for the last 2 decades in order to have sound knowledge-management systems. It is however important to note that CoPs have existed for centuries within management circles but their full formal attention in a modern organisational setup only emerged in the early 1990s. A CoP is comprised of a group of people willing to share their knowledge and expertise for a considerable amount of time. Organisations have used them to develop their human resources and encourage innovation and new approaches to problem solving. The intensifying of globalisation trends in the 1990s triggered heightened global competition. In order to survive firms are supposed to be creative and innovating which has driven them to appreciate the role that knowledge plays in organisational development. CoPs assist in diffusing knowledge and leverage a firm’s intellectual advantages. Knowledge-based organisations therefore require CoPs in developing their knowledge strategies. As such CoPs also have their limitations in respect to management of a firm. This paper will look into Communities of Practice, their benefits and a number of management challenges that they pose in a knowledge-based organisation. A community of practice has numerous benefits to an organisation. Formerly, many firms used information systems in knowledge management but the results were disappointing. CoP offers relatively new approaches where people interact and learn together. Due to the benefits that this approaches have most firms have adopted CoPs (Wenger and Snyder 2000). Some of the key benefits are as follows; Help with challenges It is clear that all firms experience challenges in their day-to-day running. However, these challenges need to be dealt with and a community of practice should be established to do just that. CoP solves problems by pooling of expertise, knowledge and skills from a number of employees. It is important to note that their winding down and eventual shutting down happens when problems they were dealing with are solved and consequently their purpose is fulfilled. Access expertise Organisations that treasure CoP are predominantly knowledge-based meaning that they require a great deal of expertise to carry out their tasks. In order to have a successful CoP its membership should be comprised of knowledgeable and experienced people. In case a firm is short of such workforce it is forced to source for them. In doing this a firm attains a pool of experts within its workforce which works to improve on its performance and profitability. Enhancement of team spirit Members in a community of practice need to work together to achieve set goals. They are not necessarily people who share the same ideals or beliefs but they are required to have similar interests in order to ensure a solid group (Llewellyn and Hindmarsh 2010). This facilitates teamwork in decision making and strategy formulation. Saving on cost an time of searching for information A CoP is established in order to deal with problems or to develop solutions. A small team is assembled which analyses the way forward. The smaller the team, the less the time they take in coming up with a solution. A small team is also easily managed and it is relatively cheap to maintain. This saves a great deal of time that inter-departmental meetings would have taken for consultations. It also offers time for the rest of the employee to continue with their normal duties while just a handful of them are picked to deal with pending issues (Wenger and Snyder 2000). The opportunity cost would be too high in taking many workers’ time in decision making. Improvement in quality of decisions A CoP is comprised of carefully selected people who bring to the table high-level skills and expertise. This assures the firm that the discussions made are meaningful and that decisions arrived at have high likeliness of being the best for the particular situation. Firms that have many CoPs tend to have better operational strategies which translate to better performance. Improved innovation There are higher chances that a firm will improve on its innovation with the establishment of CoPs. Members are experts and are well versed with issues at hand. They are also able to develop new ideas that are later incorporated in production or service delivery. Ability to keep up with emerging trends When a pool of like-minded people is set to task they are likely to research further in order to develop air-tight solutions (Llewellyn and Hindmarsh 2010). In the process they come across new developments in their fields which they incorporate in drafting solutions. This assists a great deal those firms whose operations are technologically demanding. There is also the ability to venture into emerging markets through the advice of the experts in the CoP. More perspectives to issues at hand Members in a CoP bring forth their own skills and expertise which are not necessarily the same. This facilitates different understandings of problems thereby different solutions. A firm therefore has an advantage of picking the best among them. Enhances confidence in approach to problems When a management requires a team of employees to analyse a problem and develop solutions, it simply transfers a managerial task to them. This creates a considerable level of confidence among the CoP members (Ardichvili, Page and Wentling 2003). In the process they also gain problem solving skills which can be applied in their personal lives thereby uplifting their emotional and psychological wellbeing for the benefit of the organisation. Meaningful participation Each employee has their own task for which they were hired to do. However, there is need for them to cooperate in order to achieve collective objectives of the firm. CoP facilitates this endeavour by offering them a chance to participate in higher level tasks in decision making and problem solving. They are also exposed to higher-level organisational challenges driving them to appreciate the work of top-level management thereby reducing conflicts in the hierarchy of command. Retention of talent CoPs offer employees with talents to exploit for the benefit of the firm. As mentioned earlier these talents grow as they participate. Employees also feel valued which makes them feel as part and parcel of the organisation. Employees at this stage find it hard to leave an organisation for which they have worked so hard to build. There is however a number of management challenges that the concept of Community of Practice poses for a knowledge-based organisation. It is important to note that the benefits of this CoP approach to management outweigh its limitations. Some of the challenges are as follows; Time constraints Communities of practice need to have ample time to engage in prolonged discourse. Current organisations have lean workforce so as to improve on efficiency and reduce on cost of operations. It is therefore almost impossible to engage a number of employees on prolonged discussions for weeks. The current business environment is highly competitive and balancing all activities and maintaining a competitive ground is difficult (Hildreth, Kimble and Wright 2000). Managers therefore are left with few options on whether to allow more time to CoPs at the expense of overall performance of a firm or to shorten CoP’s time and compromise on its effectiveness. Organisational hierarchies Organisations that have active communities of practice are usually fully-fledged meaning that they already have well established hierarchies of command. Communities of practice do not appear in a chain of command meaning their role is less formal while their usefulness is vital. This situation is worse in organisations where employees in all levels are more concerned with maintaining the hierarchies of command than the functioning of CoPs. CoPs operating in such environments do not thrive and are therefore not beneficial. Members of the CoP are not derived from equal-ranking employees meaning that within the CoP some people are ahead of others in organisational chart. Socio-cultural environment or regional culture An organisation functions within a wider society which its employees come from. Therefore, a society’s characteristics easily trickle down to affect its functioning. A society that values an individual less than the community as a whole is likely to produce employees who are willing to run a CoP effectively (Wenger 1999). In looking into the world in general, societies from the east are quite different from those from the west in regards to the group philosophy. Western cultures are egocentric while the eastern ones are allocentric. CoPs in western countries are therefore less effective as compared to those from the east. Conclusion Communities of practice have been in existence for a long time but organisations started adopting them in the early 1990s. They bring together employees with similar goals and interests in order to disseminate ideas and share expertise which go a long way in solving pressing organisational problems. CoPs enhance development of organisational capabilities with innovation and retention of staff among others. They also improve business outcomes by facilitating decision making, reducing time and cost of searching for information and bringing more perspectives in solving problems among others. Managers should therefore ensure they handle the few challenges that CoPs pose to their firm especially if it is knowledge-based. References Ardichvili, A, Page, V and Wentling, T 2003, ‘Motivation and barriers to participation in virtual knowledge-sharing communities of practice’, Journal of Knowledge Management, vol. 7, no. 1. pp. 64-77. Hildreth, P, Kimble, C and Wright, P 2000, ‘Communities of practice in the distributed international environment’, Journal of Knowledge Management, vol. 4, no. 1. pp. 27-37. Llewellyn, N and Hindmarsh, J 2010, Organisation, interaction and practice: Studies of ethnomethodology and conversation analysis, Cambridge University Press. Wenger, E 1999, Communities of practice: Learning, meaning, and identity, Cambridge University Press. Wenger, E and Snyder, W 2000, ‘Communities of practice: The organisational frontier’, Harvard Business Review. Read More