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Norman, D. (1993). Chapter 6: Distributed cognition. In _Things that
makes us smart_ (p. 139-153). Cambridge: Perseus Books.
A rather elegant and straightforward (for Norman) discussion of the
way in which environmental cues help to shape understanding and
decision making. Old school cognitive science considered human
cognition to occur in a disembodied brain, separated from the
environment. This model proves difficult when we consider how much
that brain would have to do to make decisions. A newer model casts the
brain as a participant in the environment where the environment helps
by providing cues that effectively acts as filters on the enormous
number of signals a brain would need to process. What's especially
nice about this model is that it allows for information processing to
not be perfect: it just needs to be good enough.
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Lesser, E. L. & Prusak, L. (2000). Communities of practice, social
capital and organizational knowledge. In E.L. Lesser, M.A.
Fontaine & J.A. Slusher, _Knowledge and communities_ (p.
123-131). Boston: Butterworth Heinemann.
Communities of practice are collections of individuals who associate
to more effectively face similar issues. In the workplace these are
often informal clusters of workers who share organizational knowledge
(both formal descriptive knowledge of how things should be done as
well as representations of practice: how things _are_ done) that allows
them to get their work done. Lesser and Prusak distinguish their
discussion by placing communities of practice within the context of a
larger economic and sociological principle: social capital. Social
capital is defined as "the sum of the actual and potential resources
embedded within, available through, and derived from the network of
[inter-personal] relationships possessed by an individual or social
unit." From an economic standpoint social capital is the intangible
currency by which members of a community of practice share and gain
value. This is done through shared language and values, concrete
personal relationships and the sharing of stories. All of these help to
create knowledge. Knowledge creation in the workplace can be valuable for
organizations. In order for managers to capitalize on the ability of
communities of practice to manage knowledge they should: identify
existing or potential communities of practice, provide those
communities with a means to meet face to face, provide tools that
facilitate the growth and function of the community, identify experts
within the community and enable their leadership, and remember that
the social capital in communities of practice need investment to grow.
By flexibly following these guidelines organizations should be able to
further their ability to manage knowledge. -cjd
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Wenger, E., & Snyder, W. (2000). Communities of practice: the
organizational frontier. _Harvard Business Review_
(January-February 2000), 139-145.
An article for managers encouraging them to carefully cultivate
communities of practice (CoP) in the workplace as they may reinvent
companies the same way that teams did "not so long ago". After
describing what a community of practice is and how it can help the
company to be effective by being "the hidden fountainhead of knowledge
development", the authors then describe how management must
be careful to not disrupt the informal, emergent nature of the CoPs
when trying to exploit them. Strategies for supporting the communities
without killing them are provided.
-=-=-
You know, like plants. In a field. Fertilized.
Wouldn't it be marvelous if we lived in a world where management and
management consultants weren't constantly attempting to co-opt the
methods by which workers empower themselves?
Communities of practice, to my eye, form because the existing social
structure of a corporation is not providing what is needed. CoPs
transcend organizational divisions and hiearchies because the members
want to get things done. Corporations would do well to pay attention
to this resistance to hierarchies.
CoPs also have a tendency to resist formal methods. While it is
obvious that corporations must have some policies and methods to get
the job done (and deal with regulations) they would benefit from
taking a critical thinking approach to problems instead of a
prescriptive approach: empower individuals and groups to think. I
suppose this is what drives the desire to cultivate CoPs.
In general corporations, instead of paying so much attention to the
emergence of CoPs should instead pay attention to what causes them to
emerge. Why are they needed? How can we adjust the organization so
that its nature supports what the CoPs step in to do?
Or, honestly, let's work harder to get rid of corporations and
specious distinctions between workers and managers. Everyone is a
worker and everyone should be a manager. People should be responsible
for themselves in a community of common goals. That's what's so ironic
about managerial desire to hop on the CoP bandwagon: CoPs are people
taking responsibility for themselves in the face of a system that
believe it has to do it for them, and is failing.
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Brown, J.S. & Duguid, P. (2000). Organizational learning and
communities of practice: Toward a unified view of working,
learning and innovation. In E.L. Lesser, M.A. Fontaine & J.A.
Slusher, _Knowledge and communities_ (p. 99-121). Boston:
Butterworth Heinemann.
Brown and Duguid attempt to show working, learning and innovation as
interrelated and compatible activities. This is contrary to commonly
accepted views where learning is separate from (and generally prior to)
work and innovation is a process which changes the other two.
Attending to noncanonical practicies which are shared in communities
and how those communities do their sharing reveals that learning,
working and innovation are closely related. Canonical practices are
akin to a road map describing, in an abstract sense, the process of
getting from one place to another. These abstract guidelines can fail
in the face of concrete, detailed reality and thus communties emerge
to share descriptions of reality which help the members of the
community cope with that reality. Since reality is constanting
changing the community must change to continue coping. Thus a cycle is
generated in which there is constant learning, improved working, and
frequent innovation which feeds back into the cycle.
-=-=-
Brown and Duguid make much of the difference between abstract and
concrete descriptions of work. In a footnote they say, "informants,
like most people in our society, tend to privilege abstract
knowledge." This is key to their entire discussion. Informal
communities share stories. Informants, when queried, share
descriptions of the activites they perform.
The latter, being already abstract, is difficult to abstract further
into a generality.
Thus the value of specific research of "stuff". With data we can
identify patterns, make comparisons, innovate, learn, work.
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Zerubavel, E. (1991). The social lends (p. 61-81). _The fine line:
making distinctions in everyday life_. Chicago: University of Chicago
Press.
Expands on the discussion of making distinctions to provide a large
number of examples of how individual distinction making behavior is
strongly influenced by social context and social upbringing.
-=-=-
Two things to mention from this chapter.
At the start:
Such discontinuity, however, is not as inevitable as we
normally take it to be.
Who is this "we"? If Zerubavel is going to spend so much ink to
distinguish disctinctions as socially constructed it is probably a
good idea to avoid the ambiguous. In my margin notes I have "who?"
...objecting to experimentation with Jews would have been as
the objection to experimentation with animals seem to many of us
today.
This statement indicates that distinctions can change with time. Will
there come a time when experimenting with animals is absurd? (I don't
wish to draw any moral equivalencies here, only parallels.)
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