As we already finished both the lecture and
tutorial for chapter 4, we moved on to the Lecture 5 which is about Knowledge
Sharing and Communities of Practice (CoP). We have been told by the lecturer
that this topic is quite important for us in this syllabus.
So, basically we need to know about several
learning outcomes, which are:
·
Describing
the key components of a community practice
·
Must
define the major roles and tasks in a community of practice
·
And
finally, identifying the enablers and obstacles to knowledge sharing
First of all, we must say that once knowledge
has been captured and codified, it need to be shared and spread among the
organization.
Figure
1: Intergrated KM Cycle
In tradition, knowledge has been shared by
‘word of mouth’. Since
the socializing comes naturally to us, there are fewer
opportunities
in today’s expended global companies. We must agree that
knowledge sharing these days is faster, more global, more mobile
and of course
more connected, thanks to the Internet.
Figure
2: Meaning of CoP
Figure 3: CoP
Cycle
Besides that, we also learnt about Social
Network Analysis (SNA). Basically SNA is about the mapping and measuring of
relationship and flows with whomever that in charges for knowledge processing.
SNA also identifies the networks so that it can improve the knowledge flow and
performance, identify key brokers and hoarders. There are few techniques for
SNA, which are:
·
Visualization tools used in conjunction with surveys
·
Cluster analysis – identify highly integrated subgroups
·
Can be automated (e.g. email mapping)
Figure 4: SNA nodes
A part from that, we also
studied about the Community Yellow Pages (1 of the earliest KM applications),
Knowledge Sharing Communities, Social Computing, Social Presence, Facilitating
Knowledge Sharing, Obstacles to Knowledge Sharing, Undernet and so on.
So, in conclusion of this
chapter, we can say that
·
Knowledge sharing occurs quite efficiently and effectively in
communities of practice where members share a professional interest and goal.
·
Virtual communities are the primary sources of social capital produced
that are of value to the organization.
·
Social network analysis can be used to visualize the people and their
connections in virtual communities.
·
Some of the key obstacles to knowledge sharing are notions such as
knowledge is property, knowledge is power, credibility of the content and the
source, organizational culture, and the presence of undernets .
