Proceedings of the 12th European Conference on Knowledge ...

Ettore Bolisani, Francesca Gambarotto and Enrico Scarso
processes to manage its activities. To incentive participation and increase members’ effort to attain
goals, a formal project aggregating all <strong>the</strong> seven work groups was presented to <strong>the</strong> university
administration board. The project results, i.e. s<strong>of</strong>tware products and new procedures, were collected
in a white paper published online with creative commons copyright to share experience and
knowledge with everybody interested in <strong>the</strong> project. However, <strong>the</strong> enthusiasm and motivations <strong>of</strong> <strong>the</strong>
participants hit with an organizational deficit: <strong>the</strong> university management did not understand <strong>the</strong>
innovativeness <strong>of</strong> this organizational experience and <strong>the</strong>y did not promote <strong>the</strong> embeddedness <strong>of</strong> <strong>the</strong>
CoP. Identity is a lacking factor still now, even though it has been decided that ICT technicians can
dedicate one day and half <strong>of</strong> <strong>the</strong>ir monthly working time to <strong>the</strong> CoP.
The CoP is intensely used for problem-setting and problem-solving. Members <strong>of</strong> <strong>the</strong> CoP post <strong>the</strong>ir
issues, and o<strong>the</strong>rs interact sharing <strong>the</strong>ir experience or knowledge. In this way <strong>the</strong>y have begun to
recognize each o<strong>the</strong>r, to share tacit knowledge and build up a cognitive alignment. The selection
process <strong>of</strong> best practices stems from discussions and testing. However <strong>the</strong>re is no repository <strong>of</strong> all <strong>the</strong>
shared solutions and ideas. The community functioning is very similar to a social network, and <strong>the</strong>re is
lack <strong>of</strong> shared goals in terms <strong>of</strong> KM. A new idea or project can be shared with <strong>the</strong> co-ordination group
and submitted to <strong>the</strong> ICT academic group. Face-to-face meeting can be used beside <strong>the</strong> Internet
communication.
At <strong>the</strong> beginning, <strong>the</strong> CoP did not receive any funding. One year later it received funds by means <strong>of</strong> a
University project including <strong>the</strong> seven working teams that have defined goals. The monthly working
hours (around 10%) formally recognized to technicians for participating in <strong>the</strong> CoP by <strong>the</strong> university
management can be considered an implicit recognition <strong>of</strong> <strong>the</strong> economic value <strong>of</strong> <strong>the</strong> community.
However, <strong>the</strong>re is no explicit economic assessment <strong>of</strong> costs and benefits <strong>of</strong> <strong>the</strong> CoP. Moreover, <strong>the</strong>
time dedicated to CoP activities produces an uncertain effect: it is positive because it can incentive
ITC technicians to share or acquire knowledge, but on <strong>the</strong> o<strong>the</strong>r hand it is negative because it can
increase participation <strong>of</strong> free riders that de-motivate smart individuals to participate to <strong>the</strong> CoP. There
is no rule system to monitor and assess <strong>the</strong> participation to <strong>the</strong> CoP. This is partly due to <strong>the</strong> weak
interest <strong>of</strong> <strong>the</strong> management and partly to <strong>the</strong> informal nature <strong>of</strong> <strong>the</strong> CoP.
To communicate and exchange information <strong>the</strong> CoP adopted different tools: mailing list, website, and
wiki. However, as a natural selection, only <strong>the</strong> mailing list succeeded. Additional open source s<strong>of</strong>tware
supports <strong>the</strong> mailing list for scheduling activities, meetings or to test preferences about particular
issues. The choice <strong>of</strong> <strong>the</strong> mailing list may depend on <strong>the</strong> fact that <strong>the</strong>re wasn’t a content manager or a
formal facilitator. Moreover, this choice can be interpreted as <strong>the</strong> social need to meet colleagues and
to come out <strong>of</strong> isolation.
The social outcome is apparently important as much as <strong>the</strong> technological one. The mailing list was
very useful to discover technical attitudes and interests <strong>of</strong> colleagues scattered around all <strong>the</strong>
academic departments, and it has stimulated co-operation for exploiting and exploring knowledge.
5. Conclusion
We contrasted a CoP created by a private company and one made in a public institution. It is always
difficult to draw general conclusions, but our purpose is to provide food for thought to planners and
managers <strong>of</strong> CoPs in public organisations hoping that <strong>the</strong>y can get inspiration from <strong>the</strong> experience <strong>of</strong>
a leading company compared to <strong>the</strong> case <strong>of</strong> a state institution.
On <strong>the</strong> whole, <strong>the</strong> study addresses <strong>the</strong>se questions: why Eni’s CoP can be considered a success
while University CoP is more problematic? Can this be associated to some characteristics <strong>of</strong> <strong>the</strong>
public environment? What elements can shed some light on this? Our analysis was conducted based
on separate points that we report below (table 2).
5.1 Organisational aspects
As regards <strong>the</strong> relationship with <strong>the</strong> existing organisational structure, while it is important for a CoP to
avoid conflicts with <strong>the</strong> exiting system <strong>of</strong> authorities, this can reduce its visibility and recognition by <strong>the</strong>
rest <strong>of</strong> <strong>the</strong> organisation. This conflict exists in both <strong>the</strong> cases, but <strong>the</strong> situation appears much more
complicated for <strong>the</strong> university. This is probably due to <strong>the</strong> fact that this structure is more bureaucratic
and formal: it is harder for a CoP to remain in <strong>the</strong> grey area between formal structuring and
completely informal organisation (like at Eni). To avoid conflicts with <strong>the</strong> bureaucratic system, <strong>the</strong>
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