Proceedings of the 8th International Conference on Intellectual ...

Eli Hustad and Aurilla Aurelie Bechina
However, lately several business managers and researchers have realized a need for embedding
‘communities <strong>of</strong> practice’ as a proactive knowledge management initiative by cultivating <strong>the</strong>m as <strong>the</strong>
keystone <strong>of</strong> <strong>the</strong> knowledge management strategy (Wenger et al. 2002). In this sense, <strong>the</strong> concept
itself is undergoing a change, from being a ‘pull’ informal knowledge initiative from <strong>the</strong> employees to a
‘push’ and formalized knowledge initiative from <strong>the</strong> management’s strategy agenda. Therefore, it is
important to understand <strong>the</strong> role <strong>of</strong> <strong>the</strong> leadership in <strong>the</strong> building and <strong>the</strong> sustainability <strong>of</strong> <strong>the</strong>
communities <strong>of</strong> practice and more specifically in a DNoK. In particular, a distributed setting is
challenging since <strong>the</strong> existence <strong>of</strong> different pr<strong>of</strong>essional cultures and attitudes prevail.
In addition, considering <strong>the</strong> fact that innovation usually happens at boundaries between disciplines or
business units <strong>the</strong>re is a need to investigate fur<strong>the</strong>r <strong>the</strong> potential <strong>of</strong> knowledge flow and <strong>the</strong>ir
challenges across pr<strong>of</strong>essional boundaries (Carlile 2004). The group structure, interaction and
relationship amongst people across boundaries <strong>of</strong> a distributed community need to be redefined by
applying <strong>the</strong> Boundary spanning principles. Boundary spanning involves activities that occur at
internal or external boundaries <strong>of</strong> organizations. The main challenge relies on <strong>the</strong> need to find
adequate leaders who are able to bring toge<strong>the</strong>r people across traditional boundaries and convincing
people who are separated in terms <strong>of</strong> location, division or function to share knowledge and contribute
to a lasting working relationship (Ansett 2005; Stanton & Stam 2003).
Our research study aims to ga<strong>the</strong>r an understanding on to cultivate and facilitate DNoKs to enable
<strong>the</strong>m to share and create knowledge, and <strong>the</strong> following research questions are focused in this
research: How can organizations manage distributed networks <strong>of</strong> knowledge to ensure effective
knowledge sharing and knowledge creation? How should <strong>the</strong> role <strong>of</strong> a “leader” within a community act
to stimulate <strong>the</strong> participants to share and create knowledge across boundaries? To answer <strong>the</strong>
research questions, we intend to explore <strong>the</strong> boundary management perspective in order to better
grasp an understanding <strong>of</strong> <strong>the</strong> community building and how to sustain <strong>the</strong>m over <strong>the</strong> time. More
specifically, we aim to investigate <strong>the</strong> role and <strong>the</strong> style <strong>of</strong> <strong>the</strong> Boundary Spanner in cultivating <strong>the</strong>
DNoKs.
To this end, we investigated <strong>the</strong> leadership styles in four different distributed networks <strong>of</strong> knowledge
<strong>of</strong> a Norwegian multinational company operating in <strong>the</strong> marine insurance industry. We utilize
perspectives <strong>of</strong> boundary management to explain our findings.
The paper is organized as follows. The following section focuses on <strong>the</strong> concept <strong>of</strong> DNoK and
knowledge sharing across boundaries. Section three provides an overview <strong>of</strong> <strong>the</strong> Boundary Spanner
role and its relevance for DNoKs. Section four describes <strong>the</strong> research context and method, and
section five reports <strong>the</strong> main results from this study. In section six, we discuss our findings and finally
in <strong>the</strong> last part we provide our conclusion and implications.
2. Sharing knowledge across boundaries – distributed networks <strong>of</strong> knowledge
Due to <strong>the</strong> current changing business environment, organizations are facing challenges <strong>of</strong> global
competitiveness. The quest for competitiveness and sustainability has led to recognition <strong>of</strong> innovation
as a vital ingredient for survival and pr<strong>of</strong>itability in <strong>the</strong> knowledge-based economy. Knowledge is seen
by many as a key source <strong>of</strong> competitive advantage and innovation in organizations.
In order to cope with those challenges, organizations need to be able to manage <strong>the</strong> highly distributed
diversified knowledge. Companies understanding <strong>the</strong> need to harness knowledge are aware about
<strong>the</strong> decisive issue <strong>of</strong> creating a work environment that foster knowledge sharing mechanisms and
learning capabilities within and across organizations. It is recognized as well that knowledge sharing
and learning mechanisms are highly complex processes to promote in <strong>the</strong> organization (Allix 2003).
With <strong>the</strong> realization <strong>of</strong> <strong>the</strong> value <strong>of</strong> knowledge and learning, organizations have begun looking at how
to increase organizational knowledge to gain competitiveness (Husted & Michailova 2002;
Michailova & Gupta 2005). An important ingredient <strong>of</strong> a rounded knowledge management initiative is
<strong>the</strong> application <strong>of</strong> <strong>the</strong> concept <strong>of</strong> <strong>the</strong> community <strong>of</strong> knowledge where people share expertise and
insights.
A broad typology <strong>of</strong> communities has emerged, ranging from epistemic communities (Haas 1992) to
communities <strong>of</strong> practice (Wenger & Snyder 2000). Several research studies highlighted <strong>the</strong> benefits
and drawbacks <strong>of</strong> building communities <strong>of</strong> practices in order to foster knowledge sharing within <strong>the</strong>
context <strong>of</strong> related discipline or within an organization. However, <strong>the</strong>re is still a need to investigate <strong>the</strong>
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