Page 185 -

174 MANAGING KNOWLEDGE WORK AND INNOVATION

These features help to explain why even writers who are more positive about
managed communities believe that they can only be successful if managers find
new ways of managing. Wenger (1998), for example, argues that managed com-
munities can only succeed if managers limit their tendency towards controlling
activities. Managed communities need to be cultivated rather than controlled.
Such cultivation might involve a number of activities, including public events
such as ‘knowledge fairs’ that bring the community together; multiple forms of
leadership, including ‘thought leaders’, networkers and people who document
practice; inter-community learning projects; and the creation and dissemination
of artefacts such as documents, tools, stories, websites and so on.
Cultivation is not without cost. Not only does it require investment in new IT
systems and event organization, but it may also involve the creation of new spe-
cialist roles. This was demonstrated in the Buckman Labs case described in the
HRM chapter where the company developed what were in effect managed com-
munities. These were based on underlying communities that emerged around
the online problem-solving forums created by the K’Netix system.
As these informal networks of specialists evolved, and their value to the
company became apparent, Buckman sought to cultivate them by providing
additional resources, including specialist support roles. Thus the role of ‘forum
specialist’ was created to maintain and update the community knowledge base.
If a request to the community went unattended for a few hours, for example,
the forum specialist would pick up the request, identify the potential experts
and informally forward it to them for attention. Another, more formal, route
involved bringing in ‘section leaders’ – that is, a group of experts who have
volunteered to tackle some of the more stubborn problems in particular areas.
These different specialists enabled the free flow of discussions on the company’s
problem-solving forums to be captured and recycled for future use. For exam-
ple, when a particular topic was considered ‘dead’ or finally resolved, forum
specialists and section leaders would process it further, validating and verifying it
before it was uploaded into the knowledge base to be ready for distribution and
reuse (Buckman, 1998).

6/5/09 7:19:35 AM
9780230_522015_09_cha08.indd 174 6/5/09 7:19:35 AM
9780230_522015_09_cha08.indd 174