Web-based Learning Solutions for Communities of Practice

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Conditions and Key Success Factors for the Management of Communities of Practice
ties of practice, thus identifying existing ones,
extracting results from previous experience and
fostering new ones, as needed. However, as mentioned
earlier, the cornerstone of communities is
people and their willingness to share knowledge.
Therefore, the real organizational challenge is to
strengthen, develop, cultivate, and support these
organic groups and try to translate their energy
and results to an organizational level. Moreover,
although their creation and maintenance must be
monitored, it must also be clear that the objective
should not to design, implement, and analyze
results, but rather to build on a day-to-day basis,
even if it seems otherwise.
Interest in the Creation of
Communities of Practice: Individual
or Organizational?
Following our answers to the previous questions,
another difference in how communities are created
is where the idea originates from. According to
theory, it could be said that communities are an
individual (or group) initiative, but organizational
initiatives were also documented in the experiences
studied in our case analysis.
The initiative of implementing knowledge
management programs can be at an organizational
level and it may include the implementation of
communities of practice (U.S. Department of
Defense, for instance). If the initiative is taken
at an individual level, at least there will be an
important motivation at the beginning, even if
members do not manage to sustain the community
due to lack of organizational support (Andersen
Consulting Education).
There are also companies that compensate participation
in communities in order to motivate their
staff (DaimlerChrysler). In this case, individual
motivation could depend on the recognition and
not on the interest in the practice or in the members
of the community and, as a result, it may disappear
when the recognition ceases to satisfy the
compensation objectives of the staff. Furthermore,
it is possible that competition between personnel
is being encouraged by detecting who contributes
the most to the community, etc. This does not
mean that members’ motivation will assure by
itself more sustainable CoP’s just because the
interest is in the practice or in the members, al
least, emphasizing organizational purposes and
goals. There could be members who leave the
community, or the practice and customs could
change along time, thus influencing the members
as well. The fact of having an organizational support
could help to overcome these necessaries and
frequent changes in corporate evolution. Also, if
a firm tries to achieve a broad scope of staff committed
with the project, it should be considered
that each individual shall be taken into account.
The point is that it is not the same for motivations
to be financial or to be intangible, and that there
will be people who will not work without being
compensated and others who will.
In our research, the experiences studied are
coherent with McDermott’s (2000) earlier analysis
and conclusions. The long-term operation of a
community requires an important commitment
from the leader but it would never exist without
the commitment from its members, since their
contributions sustain the community. This commitment
of each member to the community is part
of the Community challenge, but our research
also suggest that it should be useful to integrate
as a community challenge getting the organization
support to the CoP so that their members
can obtain the resources (flexibility, financing,
and infrastructure) necessary to continue its
activities.
We don’t under valuate the importance of community
identity and trust that are also important
and relevant issues related to this challenge. If
members do not feel that they are part of the
group and do not trust other members, it will be
difficult for them to contribute to the transfer of
knowledge.
We have also proved that the content and even
process of knowledge sharing are very different