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Virtual communities of practice: examining the motivations and constraints in their knowledge creation and knowledge transfer preocesses
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Orientador(es)
Resumo(s)
The rapid pace of change compels organizations to be innovative in order to maintain a sustainable
competitive advantage. Such innovation is supported by the generation of new ideas, which in turn
depends on access to new knowledge. Innovative solutions and processes are unlikely to be developed by
an individual but rather by a group of people, working together. As Newell et al. (2006) point out,
innovation depends on managing knowledge transfer and situated learning (Lave and Wenger 1991). One
group of people that share and create new knowledge is a Community of Practice (CoP). Communities of
Practice are places which provide a sound basis for organizational learning. This encourages knowledge
creation and acquisition, thus improving organizational performance, leveraging innovation and
consequently increasing competitiveness.
Virtual Communities of Practice (VCoPs) can perform a central role in promoting communication and
collaboration between members who are dispersed in both time and space (Bradshaw et al. 2004).
Nevertheless, it is known that not all the CoPs and VCoPs have the same performance or results. This
means that there are factors that enable or constrain the process of knowledge creation. With this in mind,
we developed a case study in order to identify both the motivations and the constraints that members of
an organization experience when taking part in the knowledge creating processes of the VCoPs to which
they belong.
Our results show that when the organizational culture values knowledge sharing and creation, employees
tend to feel it is part of their professional ”duty” to contribute towards organizational development, by
supporting their colleagues and making available their personal knowledge; together, they are
contributing to the success of the organisation. VCoPs are, also, understood to be important for
professional and personal development; opportunities for development and organizational culture are
motivating factors for participation in these structures. Contrary to previous reports in the literature, no
interviewee referred to direct financial rewards as a motivation factor for participation in VCoP but all
found it difficult to identify any constraints. Most identified the difficulty in aligning objectives
established by the management with justification for the time spent in the VCoP. The interviewees also...
Descrição
Paper accepted for the OKLC 2009 - International Conference on Organizational Learning,
Knowledge and Capabilities (26-28th, April 2009, Amsterdam, the Netherlands).
Palavras-chave
Virtual communities of practice