Strengths, weakness and missing elements of the theory of communities of practice

Strengths, weakness and missing elements of the theory of communities of practice

We can discuss that the strengths of a community of practice are to provide a framework of ideas regarding the “how” to organise a system in which members can share ideas and develop themselves to proficient professionals. For example, without Wenger’s model, I would have overlooked the role those business developers could exercise in a community of practice as brokers of ideas and information.

In the downside, even though the idea of a dynamic community of practice, in which once the domain grows, a new community of practice could emerge is discussed, the framework does not provide with clear guidelines of what is really a new domain, with the risk of new CoPs being born only because of internal conflicts and point of views of the senior members.

The business side of communities of practice is missing from the framework, which is of great importance, as the time and materials required by the community of practice of my case of concern cannot survive without the financial commitment of upper management.

Last, I have been missing some ideas regarding how to gradually implement a community of practice and overcome the initial scepticism of the members. In my case of concern, an atmosphere of pessimism is present , and commitment is low to activities such as “Lunch & Learn” with small technical presentations while lunch is provided. In this environment implementing a community of practice requires small and incremental steps over time and engage a considerable number of members to participate in order to start our system.

Design proposal for an intervention

To implement a Community of Practice in a company, we should initiate a set of brainstorming meetings in order to identify some common and specific interest. Once identified a small list of topics, some “leaders” should be appointed. The leadership role is not static, and their part will be to manage and arrange the space to exchange ideas.

In parallel, an online tool should be implemented to provide a space for communication. The main requirement of this space is to provide a place for asynchronous communication, for example, a forum.

After the first iteration of workshops, seminars and conversations in the forum, it is expected that the community will select its own leaders or representatives and that the list of interest will mutate, showing its dynamic nature. The mutation of the list can be grouped into two categories attending to the source of the influence: (1) internal and (2) external.

• (1) Internal changes of the list are caused because of consensus on the community of practise and represent the interest of the members

• (2) External changes can be understood as innovations in the domain of interest. The innovation is brought into the community via the sensing capabilities of the brokers.

Please note that both, the initial designation of “leaders” and “topics” are to initiate the system of social learning, but over time, both leaders and topics will mutate to the desired and agree state reached inside the system, making it self-sustained.

Last, it is important to match the activities of the CoP with the benefit of the company, creating feedback between the two subsystems: the profitability of the company and our community of practice. A failure in linking both systems will destroy the CoP overtime due to the lack of funding for the practice activities.