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238 MANAGING KNOWLEDGE WORK AND INNOVATION

that has demonstrated the performance benefits or whether these are substan-
tively different to teams and projects. The KIN study in Chapter 8 highlighted
that many of these managed communities had developed elaborate governance
structures and formal positions which made them appear to be indistinguish-
able from project teams. However, there was some evidence of performance
benefits when the communities were given sufficient time to interact on a face-
to-face basis (particularly at the outset) and when training was provided for the
leaders. Since they tend to emerge out of informal interaction, communities
cannot be managed in conventional ways – they require assiduous cultivation,
not heavy-handed control. All this is not to say that promoting ‘communities
of practice’ are a panacea for the management of knowledge work. The com-
munity approach is also more appropriate in situations where the goal of the
joint activity is relatively intangible and context-dependent. This applies particu-
larly to interdisciplinary projects that focus on both technical and organizational
change, such as the process innovation projects described in the Medico, LiftCo
and BankCo cases. In these situations, knowledge is much more tacit and dif-
ficult to capture in explicit forms. Nevertheless it is important to remember that
communities can also represent sites of conservatism, inertia, entrenchment and
resistance – for example, their social boundaries and restricted codes may actu-
ally retard innovation projects that cut across different communities.
Chapter 5 highlighted that sharing knowledge and learning across proj-
ects is very difficult. The major problems centre on three main issues. First,
often projects operate highly mechanistically and project team members work
inter-dependently but individually such that collective knowledge about the
project does not emerge. The influence of payment and promotion systems can-
not be overlooked here. The 1990s saw a major shift in HRM policies towards
individual performance as the basis for pay, this was happening at the same time
as a shift towards project and team-working which demands greater knowledge
sharing amongst team members which is somewhat contradictory. As many orga-
nizations quickly realized, focusing too narrowly on individually based reward
places collaboration and knowledge sharing within teams in great jeopardy – and
with it the collective willingness to exchange ideas and experience which is criti-
cal. ScienceCo’s reward system based on individual revenue targets and divisional
revenue targets appeared to effectively manage this tension between individual
and group-based rewards.
Secondly, project teams often fail to actively seek out knowledge beyond the
confines of the project that may be helpful unless they have explored all avenues
internally within the project. Finally attempts that are made to ‘capture’ the
knowledge and lessons learned are typically codified and do not capture the
‘softer’ lessons – the process including the trials and tribulations experienced
in actually doing the work – consequently the information is not perceived as
particularly helpful by other projects. Programme managers were highlighted in
Chapter 5 as playing an important role in aiding knowledge sharing across proj-
ects. These intermediaries or boundary spanners often oversee several projects
and can then potentially identify how knowledge that has been created on one

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