A Community of Practice... what can we learn
When trying to launch a new collaboration model, what could technology companies learn from communities of practices within management consultancy firm's
Hej, thanks for stopping by.
I wrote extracts in this piece as part of a research study and I share it here to deepen understanding in Community of Practice (CoP) from a corporate context. Consultancy firms identify practice leaders as experts in Industry or Capability areas and engage in knowledge transfer practices within their firms. These practices have roots in the CoP concept.
I had an opportunity and interest in understanding if technology companies, with their large portfolios across industries and lines of businesses (LoBs), could adopt knowledge transfer via communities of practices and if so, what could be learnt from consultancy companies. I wondered if technology companies that offered consultancy/advisory services similar to consultancy services at firms like McKinsey, BCG, or Bain could benefit from adopting knowledge sharing practices.
This is an invitation to consider ways of organising and collaborating with respect to knowledge creation processes and organisational structures/sub structures. The fact that technology and consultancy companies are units in this analysis is not the central focus. Rather consider how these ideas could map to ways of working that are important to you and your organisational eco-system.
What does the data say…
To support my research, I spoke to between 20-30 people from several consultancy and technology companies and share a snapshot of my insights here with you. Research was conducted between 2023 and 2024.
During the initial analysis 3 themes emerged; connect, share and create. It was an iterative process and I allowed for additional themes to be added. For the connect theme, participants related connecting to people and roles. For the share theme, the following additional themes emerged; sharing knowledge, sharing knowledge between people and sharing knowledge between people through platforms. For the create theme, participants talked about content creation and a knowledge infrastructure to support the assets created.
To support the thematic analysis, a radar chart was used as a high level thematic comparison of the multiple labels (Tufte, 1983, 179). Figure 1 shows high thematic scoring for connect and share themes. Lower thematic scoring emerged for the create theme and the sub themes sharing knowledge between people and sharing knowledge between people through platforms.
Additionally, I used Voyant tools to get an overview of the highest term frequency and related phrases from a subset of my qualitative data (in person or online interviews). Findings below show that the top 3 terms were know, industry and knowledge. Term frequency was 106, 40 and 35 respectively. The highest 4 phrases that relate to the term know, based on a count frequency were know the, know you, know a, and know if. The lowest 4 phrases that relate to the term know, based on count frequency include know whether we have, know we, know like, know in. The 4 phrases that relate to the term industry were industry that, industry practice, industry knowledge, and industry experts. For the term knowledge the 4 phrases related were knowledge sharing, knowledge of, knowledge management and knowledge and.
To summarise, qualitative textual data from which these thematic codes emerged from the related strategic, tactical or general lines of semi structured, open ended interview questions. When participants talked about Practices they articulated the need to connect to expertise, develop knowledge and to a lesser extent, expressed views on knowledge documentation as a part of a content creation and curation process.
What does the literature have to say …
J. Lave and E.C Wenger were contributors and popularly cited researchers for the search criteria; “community of practice”. While Lave and Wenger (1991) provide definitions and participation insights in CoPs, Rensis Likert (1961) provides a management model for groups in an organisation.
It is Wenger’s (2011) definition of Practice that is used to support this piece. He defined a Practice as “Members of a community of practice [that] are practitioners. They develop a shared repertoire of resources: experiences, stories, tools, ways of addressing recurring problems—in short a shared practice” (Wenger, 2011, 2). Wenger and Lave (1991) coined the term community of practice (CoP) while studying the apprenticeship learning model.
Wenger defines a CoP and lists 3 identifiable characteristics; domain, community and practice (Wenger, 2011, 1-2). The term community of practice is defined as “groups of people who share a concern or a passion for something they do and learn how to do it better as they interact regularly” (Wenger, 2011, 1). The term domain is defined as the “identity defined by a shared domain of interest. Membership therefore implies a commitment to the domain” and community is defined as a group “pursuing their interest in their domain, members engage in joint activities and discussions, help each other, and share information”. All three identifiable characteristics need to be present for the term community of practice to apply to the formation of the groups of people.
In Lave and Wenger’s (1991) book, they argue that learning is a social activity that occurs within real-life contexts and CoPs. They contextualised learning as ‘situated learning’. They highlighted apprenticeships as an example of situated learning because novices learn through participation in the real world scenarios alongside experienced practitioners, part of a CoP (Wenger, 2000, 91-94). They highlight how apprentices learn through interactions with other apprentices and community members. They explain apprentices are able to interact in peripheral participation situations alongside practitioners to develop expertise within a specific CoP and domain.
Likert (1961) argued that communication and collaboration between individuals/groups at various organisational levels are important for achieving organisational effectiveness. He introduced the linking pins model as a management framework for how individuals and groups could connect on levels of an organisation (Likert, 1961, 113). To explain the model, one could imagine a number of units (e.g, project groups, CoPs) joined to other units at the point in which a leader from one unit joins the leader of another. These leaders are the linking pins, facilitating information flow and decision making between levels of the organisation. While this model offers insights into a way of organisational management, digital factors introduce new organisational phenomena. New models should also be considered along with new ways to collect and manage information flows.
Whats next …
Next, I recommend continue by listening to the Digital Coffee Sessions podcast to hear how guests talked about communities of practice, consortiums, and digital ecologies in relation to collaboration and co-ordination.
Continue listening,
Digital ecologies with Attila Márton
Blockchain use cases with Jonas Sveistrup Søgaard
Blockchain Healthcare use cases with Filippo Frangioni
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