Abstract:

Every industry has a certain level of competition in the workplace, and it is becoming quite interesting and impressive in scope. However, many organizations must harness and reevaluate all of their assets and resources carefully and realize their overall value and importance to their position in their own competitive industry, as well as the marketplace in general. Consequently, many business have realized that their human capital is truly the most valuable commodity, but they must seize the opportunity to guide, nurture, and reward their human capital or they may lose out to their competitors. In this regard, the way in which they approach their human capital is important, as well as how they facilitate learning and development with their employees. It appears that one common practice used by many business and academic institutions is the use of a new social type of engagement that can be accomplished with the organization’s own Intranet called “communities of practice”. Wenger (2006) defined communities of practice as being a formation of “people who engage in a process of collective learning in a shared domain of human behavior . . .” (para. 3). These communities can nurture, create, share, maintain, encourage, develop, and evaluate all types of knowledge and value gained and realized through various activities, such as problem solving, sharing developments, documenting and working on projects. Therefore, not all communities of practice are active or sharing as initially intended, so organizational culture and assumed leadership of these communities can have a major impact on the overall community, as well as the overall organization. Some of these communities of practice can create and develop strategies to implement that can help the organization to develop even further, but they can also develop strategies that might even hinder or deter the organizational goals. In particular, the key question to be address here is whether or not these communities of practice can actually work as a practical and viable entity to help the overall organization to gain knowledge from their actions, interactions, and communications. While some lessons learned can be valuable and add to an organization’s form of knowledge management, some of these actions may not be as useful or recognized for their value. The intended outcome of this presentation is to focus not only on what is the role and function of the communities of practice in terms of their strategic impact, but can they add value to an organization’s knowledge management practices and institutional memory?

Keywords:

Communities of Practice, Human Capital, Institutional Memory, Value.