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Glossary 463

als, teams, and the enterprise as a whole. Ultimately, the goal of the CLO is to transform an
enterprise into a learning organization.

Chunking A chunk can be a letter, syllable, word, phrase, or even a sentence. Chunking is
defi ned as the organization of blocks of content that are conceptually related. The amount of
information that is processed as a chunk depends on the learner ’ s ability, maturity, motivation,
and prior knowledge related to the content being processed. For example, to a poor or beginning
reader, a chunk may be a letter. Good readers generate chunks in the form of words. S-t-u-d-y
becomes study. The effect of prior knowledge on processing speed is obvious when we try to
read a complex article outside of our area of expertise. Short-term memory can usually handle
only about seven chunks.

Climate The prevailing psychological state (e.g., “ the climate of opinion, ” “ the national mood
had changed radically since the last election ” ).
Closed questions Questions that set limits on the type, level, and amount of information a
respondent provides, often used to validate content and can be answered by a fi nite number of
responses such as yes/no (e.g., is it true that this project was initiated by yourself?).
Cluster analysis Generic term for a set of statistical analysis techniques that elicit or produce
classifi cations from seemingly unordered data.
Codifi cation costs Costs incurred in rendering tacit knowledge explicit.
Coercive incentive Failure to act in the desired manner brings about some form of punish-
ment — physical force, fi ring, disbarment, and so on.
Cognitive maps Theoretical representations of how humans organize and process some type of
knowledge.
Collaboration A coalition of diverse people with diverse values and expectations working
together at the community level to solve problems. A social skill involving working together
with two or more persons. Collaboration is the process of shared creation: two ore more individu-
als with complementary skills interacting to create a shared understanding that none had previ-
ously possessed or could have come to on their own.
Combination The reassembling of existing explicit knowledge into new, systematically orga-
nized forms such as a database, a summary document, or a trend analysis.
Community of practice (CoP) An affi nity group or information network that provides
a forum where members can exchange tips or generate ideas; a group of professionals who
try to face common problems to solve and who strive to improve their profession and
thereby themselves. An informal network or forum where tips are exchanged and ideas generated.
A group of professionals, informally bound to one another through exposure to a common
class of problems or in a common pursuit of solutions, and thereby themselves embodying
a store of knowledge. A group of practitioners held together by shared practices and common
beliefs.