ORGANIZATIONAL BENEFITS OF COMMUNITIES OF PRACTICE: A TWO-STAGE INFORMATION PROCESSING MODEL

The concept of Communities of Practice (CoPs) has been recognized as a means to foster knowledge sharing and learning in organizations. In this article, we first address the challenge of measuring the value of CoPs. Second, we develop and test a two-stage information processing model including information generation through CoP participation and information processing into the organization. An enhanced network position of CoP-members in relation to the primary organization is identified as a critical means to facilitate information processing. We analyze data from 222 community members from different communities of a multinational company, using partial least square structural equations modeling.

[1]  Abraham Carmeli,et al.  Assessing Core Intangible Resources , 2004 .

[2]  M. Tushman,et al.  Boundary Spanning Individuals: Their Role in Information Transfer and Their Antecedents , 1981 .

[3]  M. Sawhney,et al.  Communities of Creation: Managing Distributed Innovation in Turbulent Markets , 2000 .

[4]  Chun Wei Choo,et al.  The Strategic Management of Intellectual Capital and Organizational Knowledge , 2002 .

[5]  Andrew C. Inkpen,et al.  Social Capital, Networks, and Knowledge Transfer , 2005 .

[6]  M. McLure Wasko,et al.  "It is what one does": why people participate and help others in electronic communities of practice , 2000, J. Strateg. Inf. Syst..

[7]  J. Brown,et al.  Organizational Learning and Communities-of-Practice: Toward a Unified View of Working, Learning, and Innovation , 1991 .

[8]  Mark Thompson,et al.  Structural and Epistemic Parameters in Communities of Practice , 2005, Organ. Sci..

[9]  Line Dubé,et al.  The impact of structuring characteristics on the launching of virtual communities of practice , 2005 .

[10]  I. Nonaka A Dynamic Theory of Organizational Knowledge Creation , 1994 .

[11]  H. Saint‐Onge,et al.  Leveraging Communities of Practice for Strategic Advantage , 2002 .

[12]  Paul Hildreth,et al.  Dualities, distributed communities of practice and knowledge management , 2005, J. Knowl. Manag..

[13]  R. L. Taylor,et al.  The technological gatekeeper , 1975 .

[14]  G. Probst,et al.  Wissen managen-wie Unternehmen ihre wertvollste Ressource optimal nutzen , 1998 .

[15]  J. Storck,et al.  Knowledge Diffusion through “Strategic Communities” , 2000 .

[16]  Etienne Wenger,et al.  Situated Learning: Legitimate Peripheral Participation , 1991 .

[17]  Patricia Gongla,et al.  Evolving communities of practice: IBM Global Services experience , 2001, IBM Syst. J..

[18]  C. Shalley,et al.  The Social Side of Creativity: A Static and Dynamic Social Network Perspective , 2003 .

[19]  Stuart Macdonald,et al.  Beyond the boundary: An information perspective on the role of the gatekeeper in the organization , 1993 .

[20]  Wenpin Tsai Knowledge Transfer in Intraorganizational Networks: Effects of Network Position and Absorptive Capacity on Business Unit Innovation and Performance , 2001 .

[21]  D. Leonard,et al.  The Role of Tacit Knowledge in Group Innovation , 1998 .

[22]  野中 郁次郎,et al.  The Knowledge-Creating Company: How , 1995 .

[23]  E. Wenger Communities of Practice: Learning, Meaning, and Identity , 1998 .

[24]  E. Wenger Communities of practice: learning as a social system , 1998 .

[25]  J. Swan,et al.  The Construction of `Communities of Practice' in the Management of Innovation , 2002 .

[26]  Davide Nicolini,et al.  Toward a Social Understanding of How People Learn in Organizations , 1998 .

[27]  B. Kogut,et al.  Knowledge of the Firm, Combinative Capabilities, and the Replication of Technology , 1992 .

[28]  Thomas J. Allen,et al.  International technological gatekeeper. , 1971 .

[29]  J. Brown,et al.  Knowledge and Organization: A Social-Practice Perspective , 2001 .

[30]  William Snyder,et al.  Cultivating Communities of Practice: A Guide to Managing Knowledge , 2002 .

[31]  Stephen Fox Communities Of Practice, Foucault And Actor‐Network Therory , 2000 .

[32]  Michael J. Muller,et al.  Understanding the benefit and costs of communities of practice , 2002, CACM.

[33]  Paul Hildreth,et al.  Communities of practice in the distributed international environment , 2000, J. Knowl. Manag..

[34]  S. Ghoshal,et al.  Social Capital, Intellectual Capital, and the Organizational Advantage , 1998 .

[35]  R. Fildes Conditioning Diagnostics: Collinearity and Weak Data in Regression , 1993 .

[36]  Wynne W. Chin The partial least squares approach for structural equation modeling. , 1998 .

[37]  E. Wenger,et al.  Communities of Practice: The Organizational Frontier , 2000 .

[38]  Thomas H. Davenport,et al.  Book review:Working knowledge: How organizations manage what they know. Thomas H. Davenport and Laurence Prusak. Harvard Business School Press, 1998. $29.95US. ISBN 0‐87584‐655‐6 , 1998 .

[39]  M. Schoen,et al.  Gestaltung und Unterstützung von Communities of Practice , 1999 .

[40]  D. Harhoff,et al.  Profiting from Voluntary Information Spillovers: How Users Benefit by Freely Revealing Their Innovations , 2003 .

[41]  H. Winklhofer,et al.  Index Construction with Formative Indicators: An Alternative to Scale Development , 2001 .

[42]  Georg von Krogh,et al.  Towards knowledge networking , 1999, J. Knowl. Manag..

[43]  S. Ghoshal,et al.  Social Capital and Value Creation: The Role of Intrafirm Networks , 1998 .

[44]  Klaus North,et al.  Wissenserzeugung und -austausch in Wissensgemeinschaften: Communities of practice , 2004 .

[45]  L. Lindkvist Knowledge Communities and Knowledge Collectivities: A Typology of Knowledge Work in Groups , 2005 .

[46]  P. Adler,et al.  Social Capital: Prospects for a New Concept , 2002 .

[47]  Morten T. Hansen,et al.  Knowledge Transfer in Intraorganizational Networks : Effects of Network Position and Absorptive Capacity on Business Unit Innovation and Performance , 2007 .

[48]  P. Drucker Post-Capitalist Society , 1993 .

[49]  Etienne Wenger,et al.  Communities of Practice: Learning, Meaning, and Identity , 1998 .

[50]  Eric L. Lesser,et al.  Communities of practice and organizational performance , 2001, IBM Syst. J..

[51]  Jean Lave,et al.  Situating learning in communities of practice , 1991, Perspectives on socially shared cognition.

[52]  Bo Hedberg,et al.  Learning in Imaginary Organizations , 2001 .

[53]  Eric L. Lesser,et al.  Chapter 8 – Communities of Practice, Social Capital and Organizational Knowledge* , 2000 .

[54]  P. Rousseeuw,et al.  Wiley Series in Probability and Mathematical Statistics , 2005 .

[55]  Robert Kevin Grigsby "Wellsprings of Knowledge: Building and Sustaining the Sources of Innovation" , 1996 .