Social Networks and Communities of Practice

This topic will focus on the discussion of social networks and communities of practice and the differences between the two concepts. I will also have a discussion on the difference between communities of practice and an organisational group or team.

Social networks

Social network is a group of individuals who are interconnected and interact in different ways in different environments. These can be in different scales. From a small family to a far wider group of individuals such as a whole country or even the whole world can be a social network. It is not necessary to have common interests or common goals for the individuals involved in a social network. They can have their own views or interests, political views, etc. These individuals can be even from different social backgrounds speaking different mother languages. The purpose of a social network cannot be always defined as specific. It can either have a specific purpose or it can be just interaction with each other.

With the rapid improvement in the technology the concept social network have become more and more popular as the technology today plays a critical role opening lots of new paths to communication. For an example Internet it self can be called as a social network. There are lots of social network tools in use around the world, such as Facebook, HI5, Secondchance, etc. The question is that do all these social network tools do a good job for the people or the societies? Even though it’s out of the scope in this topic it is a critical question that needs to answer. While I agree that they do a tremendous job to the society and individuals by keep them connected, I also think these social network tools bring bad influences as well to the societies.

Communities of practice

“Communities of practice are groups of people who share a concern or a passion for something they do and learn how to do it better as they interact regularly.” (Wenger, 1998).

According to Wenger (1998) who introduced the concept of concept of communities of practice (CoP), in his paper on “Communities of Practice”, there should be 3 main characteristics in Communities of practice. They are Domain, Communities and practice. These describes that CoP is not simply just a network of connections between people or a club of friends. CoPs have an identity with a shared domain of interests. So the members require a commitment or a dedication to the domain. Members share their knowledge; help each other, which will build relationships among the members to learn. The members should be practitioners in that domain. The individuals in a CoP is necessarily should share there experience, stories, any tools they use or approaches for a specific problem.

In our class sessions we found out lots of different definitions that would explain CoP. Our group came up with our definition after understanding the concept behind. In the presentation all four groups made their points which basically mentioned that “A group of people work for a specific goal.” Then the question was raised by out lecturer which was “The difference between an organisation and a CoP”. It was then we understood what we have been missing from our findings. My understandings of Communities of practice are a knowledge sharing process of informal groups of people with common interests. As an example our classroom is a Community of Practice, where a group of individuals with a common interest of the subject domain “Knowledge Management” share each others ideas and experience.

They are more closely related with practice based perspective in knowledge, that the people involved in a CoP are having knowledge which is embedded into each individual and inseparable from the activities they carry out (Hislop, 2005). Apart from been informal CoP typically are ad hoc and these communities are mostly develop out of the communications and interactions. Unlike an organisation CoPs have limited control and also there are no specific social or organisational boundaries. A CoP can exist in two different boundaries sharing knowledge at the same time. The following diagram illustrates a CoP existing in two different frameworks.

CoP are now been implemented vastly in the cyber world. The World Wide Web is use frequently for communication. IM services, blackboard, and even some social network tools are been used for communicate topics on special domains. Furthermore IP Telephony, Video conferencing are also widely using CoP technologies.

How an organisation differs from Communities of Practice?

The main difference I understand is that an organisation works for a specific goal. Even a formal team in an organisation works for that same goal. So the members in an organisation focus on that target. It is totally different from the members of a CoP who share knowledge on a commonly interested domain. In an organisational team the members may not even have the same interest at all. This is one reason for a lacking of knowledge sharing in an organisational context. The following table describes more on the difference between a CoP and a formal work group.

	Communities of Practice	Organisational work group/ team
Objective	Evolving Shaped by common values Internally negotiated	Clear, Formally defined Externally determined
Focus of efforts	Collective practice /Knowledge	Provides specific service or product
Membership	Voluntary	Typically formalized and delegated
Time frame	Indefinite, Internally negotiated	Permanent, or with finite time-frame/ objective

Adopted from (Hislop, 2005)

CoP is extremely a valuable concept. It explores and distributes knowledge immensely. Share best practices. The members are enriched with different experience and solutions which eventually will help them individually to look at a problem more confidently which they could not before. The next topic will continue with a discussion on social network technologies and how communities of practice should be implemented in an organisation for better outcome.

References

• Etienne Wenger, 1998, “Communities of Practice”, http://www.ewenger.com/theory/
• Hislop Donald, 2005, "Knowledge management in organizations"
• Lynne Stallard, 2006, “Work based learning and communities of practice”, http://www.icvet.tafensw.edu.au/ezine/year_2006/nov_dec/litreview_workplace_learning.htm