Page 162 -

Knowledge Sharing and Communities of Practice 145

tacit knowledge transfer, as this type of knowledge is seldom rendered explicit or
captured in any form of document.
These studies all point to one key dimension, and that is that learning is a pre-
dominantly social event ( Cohen and Prusak 2001 ). Present day organizations have
diffi culty providing opportunities for such social one-to-one knowledge exchanges to
continue to exist in their traditional form, that is, as informal hallway, water cooler,
coffee machine, or even designated smoking area chats due to the large number of
employees and/or the fact that they may not all be in close proximity to one another.
Technology offers a new medium through which employees who share similar profes-
sional interests, problems, and responsibilities can share knowledge. This is typically
through e-mail groups, discussion groups, and other interactions in some sort of
virtual shared workspace that is typically hosted by the organization ’ s intranet and
they are often referred to as CoPs.
A community of practice refers to “ a group of people having common identity, pro-
fessional interests and that undertake to share, participate and establish a fellowship ”
( American Heritage Dictionary 1996 ). Communities of practice can also be defi ned as a
group of people, along with their shared resources and dynamic relationships, who
assemble to make use of shared knowledge, in order to enhance learning and create
a shared value for the group ( Seufert, Von Krogh, and Bach 1999 ; Adams and Freeman
2000 ). The term community suggests that these groups are not constrained by typical
geographic, business unit, or functional boundaries, but rather by common tasks,
contexts, and interests. The word practice implies knowledge in action — how individu-
als actually perform their jobs on a day-to-day basis as opposed to more formal policies
and procedures that refl ect how work should be performed. The concept of a com-
munity of practice as a knowledge-sharing community within organizational settings
originated with Lave and Wenger (1991) . Many organizations have implemented com-
munities of practice.
Demarest (1997) distinguished two basic orientations to KM: information-based
(codifying and storing content) and people or interaction-based KM (connecting
knowers). Information-based approaches focus primarily on knowledge capture and
codifi cation, as we saw in chapter 4. The information-based approach tends to empha-
size explicit knowledge over tacit and favors the externalization objective. The learner
is viewed as a tabula rasa or blank slate and into this container content is simply
poured in. Rodin ’ s “ The Thinker ” is an image that captures this notion well — an indi-
vidual, alone, deep in thought. This narrow focus, or “ tunnel vision, ” neglects context,
background, history, common knowledge, and social resources. As noted in Seely
Brown and Duguid (2000, xxv), “ information and individual are inevitably and always