Support your local communities of practice

Abstract

Purpose – This paper provides considerations for organizations interested in supporting knowledge sharing among employees based on experiences and recent research. Experiences emphasize the need to discover and recognize unofficial communities of practice; support distributed leadership; support control of the communities by their members; enable interaction and learning opportunities; consider social media carefully; leaving choices up to the community members; and an approach to calculating the value of communities of practice (CoPs) based on knowledge management. Design/methodology/approach – The approach of this paper focuses on six basic themes from research and experiences in the literature with CoPs. Lessons learned and recommendations are provided. Findings – Lessons from CoPs focus on the need for distributed leadership or all engage, participate and share responsibilities; control of the community belongs to the members, and they decide membership; interaction and learning opportunities are essential to support competitive advantage for the organization and continuous development for the community members. Social media is unproven in the workplace and should be approached carefully, as the CoP must determine benefits and advantages. An approach to calculating value is proposed, based on calculating the value of knowledge management. Practical implications – As CoPs continue to evolve, organizations play a key role in supporting their development which in turn provides competitive advantage for the organization. Continuous learning and development are the key aspects of these communities, including opportunities for leadership, decision-making and professional development. Technology can play an important role in CoPs, but must be supported by the membership. The return on investment (ROI) may be significant and learning opportunities provide the potential for personal development and the enhancement of organizational performance. Originality/value – This review offers insights into experiences and findings from CoPs, supports distributed leadership and control of the community among the members, strongly recommends interaction and learning opportunities and addresses social media as a possibility to support the CoP. The ROI potential supports and encourages organizations to develop employees and enhance overall performance.

Excessive Use of WeChat at Work Promotes Creativity: The Role of Knowledge Sharing, Psychological Strain

“…Community of practice is a group that interacts regularly to share knowledge and experiences (Amin and Roberts, 2008 ). It motivates individuals to participate in collective knowledge generation by providing an opportunity for continuous and timesaving learning (Bandow and Gerweck, 2015 ). By setting up a community of practice that is based on WeChat group chatting for employees who work in similar jobs, members can share tips and tools, ask questions, and come up with answers online, which may help improve employees' creative performances.…”

Leading learning and innovation in organizations: a distributed leadership perspective

“…Distributed leadership, as opposed to individual-based leadership models, is an emergent process where different individuals in a team take up and let go of leadership roles dynamically as per the demands of the situation (Carson et al , 2007). The approach fits well in learning and innovation contexts where individuals need to share knowledge and collectively develop solutions (Bandow and Gerweck, 2015; Cannatelli et al , 2017; Tandon and Nair, 2020). A distributed leadership approach implies that based on the knowledge and skill requirement, and the stage of the learning process, different individuals assume the leadership role, influencing others, directing, supporting, and motivating them.…”

Empirical Investigation of How Social Media Usage Enhances Employee Creativity: The Role of Knowledge Management Behavior

“…In addition, the results of this study indicate that work-related social media usage can inhibit employees' knowledge manipulation behavior and promote knowledge sharing behavior. Organizations can support employees using social media to share work-related information by establishing online groups based on social media to create a virtual community of practice (Bandow and Gerweck, 2015) [90] for collective knowledge contribution. The results of this study also show that the influence of work-related social media usage on knowledge manipulation is greater than knowledge sharing.…”