Management Of Knowledge Management And The Environment Of Communities Of Practice ( Cop )

In order to manage knowledge successfully, it is essential to clarify the essence of knowledge before identifying the importance of knowledge management. The perception of knowledge has been varied broadly; however, one of the generally accepted defintion is from Davenport and Prusak (1998). According to their points of view, knowledge is defined as a set of experience and values, it either comes from individuals ' mind or roots in the organisation, which can be found in the documents, routines, practices and norms, and is assumed to flow between individuals through various networks, being used to assess and embody new

A community of practice is an aggregate of people who come together around mutual engagement in an endeavor. Ways of doing

Hislop, D. (2013). Knowledge management in organizations: A critical introduction (3rd ed.). Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.

As our world becomes increasingly complex, it is important for today’s leaders to develop a network of committed individuals who are willing to share knowledge and wisdom, challenge beliefs, and invest in each other’s success. These networks or communities of practice take many different forms, such as professional learning communities (PLC), professional learning networks (PLN), mentoring, coaching, social media groups, or social media chats. Even though each community may take many different shapes and forms, they share common characteristics, such as a mutual interest, meaningful interaction, and the investment of time. Although communities of practice require a significant investment of time, interaction, and commitment, I

A community of practice is a group or groups of people who share a concern or passion in what they do and learn how to do it better as they interact. A good example of micro-level knowledge is the knowledge required to execute a task on a project. An example of a community of practice can be an association of specific professionals who meet to discuss challenges, trends in their fields and collaborate to help each other. Mentors can be viewed as individuals who are sharing their micro-level knowledge in a community of practice that can be defined by boundaries such as the workplace or a

Communities of practice should be setup to foster knowledge sharing through discovery and telling stories of experience. For instance, the RM committee will comprise of designates from all the main departments in the university responsible for record management.

The community of practice framework emphasizes two central principles: firstly, knowledge relies on experience or situated learning; and secondly, the experience is comprehended via an in-depth reflective practice (Lave &Wenger, 1991; Matusov, Bell, & Rogoff, 1994; Roberts, 2006). The first principle of community of practice ‘situated learning’ is known as “socio-cultural phenomenon rather than an isolated activity in which individual acquires knowledge from decontextualized body of knowledge” (Barab & Duffy, 2000; as cited in Buysse, 2003, p. 267). This principle renders a change that stimulates forces for collective and collaborative learning among the member of communities of practices (Mittendorff, Geijsel, Hoeve, de Laat, & Nieuwenhuis,

Themes and patterns were extracted from interview transcripts through content analysis, and data were analyzed in relation to the main study questions. Findings indicated that virtual communities of practice could be successful, information sharing could be limited but was evolving, and information shared was generally perceived to be accurate but may not have been routinely updated. The results included positive and negative aspects of the virtual community of practice within an organization, through which the organizational leaders could gain a deeper understanding of the uses of virtual communication in the company. Increased efficiency, improved collaboration strategies, and a deeper understanding of the uses of virtual communities of practice within organizations have implications for positive social change. Recommendations for further research include specific guidelines and an action research project for virtual communities of

Community of practice refers to a group of people who share some common values, interest and knowledge and have the sense of togetherness among them. These communities are formed involuntarily and are non-hierarchical who meet to share their common ideas. They are normally more willing to share their knowledge among them in comparison to other groups. These groups don’t have any entry and exit barriers.

The technology is changing rapidly; it is used for the survival of the companies in the market. There are different IT based tools used by the different organisations according to their structure and requirements of the organisation. Some of the IT based tools are: internet, brainstorming sessions, video-conferencing, knowledge maps, and many others.

Wasko and Faraj (2000) describe three kinds of knowledge: "knowledge as object", "knowledge embedded within individuals", and "knowledge embedded in a community". Communities of Practice have become associated with finding, sharing, transferring, and archiving knowledge, as well as making explicit "expertise", or tacit knowledge. Tacit knowledge is considered to be those valuable context-based experiences that cannot easily be captured, codified and stored (Davenport & Prusak

Knowledge as Power: Since the emergence of knowledge based economy, one’s power has been considered in association with his/her possession of knowledge (Heizman, 2011; Mudambi&Navarra, 2004). Knowledge and power are intrinsically related. This is because knowledge creates space for the exercise of power; the exercise of power, in return, makes the control of knowledge possible (Foucault, 1980).Such relationship constitutes the knowledge-as-power argument, which implies that keeping knowledge circumscribed confers power. It is considered to be a major focus area in knowledge and learning industry in the fast growing competitive world. Knowledge Management Development and sharing helps the organization to develop group dynamics and group activity

This skill extended as a natural way to embrace the management of explicit knowledge. The professionals working with experts subject to collecting, harvesting, and set the organization's intellectual capital. There are at least three important features of this process which makes it unique in the professional information. Firstly, the precious knowledge created by someone working for the first time should be identified in detail, using a taxonomy or model that describes the business objects and processes in the organization. Second, the representation of organizational knowledge must include both the content and the context in which that knowledge is to be made sense of. Thirdly, the objective of codification and representation of knowledge in the organization is allowed to access and retrieve, also facilitated the sharing, reuse, reflection and continuous learning. The professionals have the knowledge and training to them in shaping the content representation scheme that reflects the information needs of the organization. More and more organizations have found it useful to develop their own taxonomy to describe their processes, practices, projects, products, and customers. The structure resulting from content category, title and

However, Community of Practice Theory explains the development of knowledge and membership through a social practice. On the same ground, the theory is based on four premises. First, humans are social beings. Second, knowledge is situated competence in valued undertakings or their importance to the assigned task. Third, knowing involves active engagement or their participation and last, learning ultimately produces meanings or their interpretation in every term (Lave and Wenger, 1998).

Recent empirical studies have found support for the direct impact of knowledge on performance (e.g., Applyard, 1996; Decarolis and Deeds, 1999; Yeoh and Roth, 1999), Vera and Crossan (2003) suggest that the conclusion from these studies is not that more knowledge leads to greater performance, but the knowledge that is relevant may have positive effects on the organization performance. Therefore, knowledge management (KM) has been introduced to manage the relevant knowledge.