Evaluation and Classification Dimensions in Knowledge Communities
- Naama Berkovitz
- Dec 1, 2008
- 5 min read
Knowledge communities are one of the most common solutions implemented in organizations. This is evidenced by the findings of the 2008 Knowledge Management Survey in Israel, where approximately 40% of organizations involved in the field reported implementing this solution. Most research in knowledge communities is based on various case study descriptions. While these descriptions provide a respectable starting point, they still fall short in two areas. First, they do not allow for systematic comparison across clear community dimensions. Additionally, information sources are scarce in the field, as organizations are not readily willing to open their doors to examine the functioning of their knowledge communities. The purpose of this review, based partly on Andriessen & Verburg's (2004) article "Development and application of the community assessment toolkit," is to systematically examine the various dimensions for evaluating and classifying knowledge communities.
Strategy and Purpose
Communities' roles can be viewed from the perspective of their defined strategy. Two main strategies are content/codification-based strategy, focusing on the externalization and storage of information in a knowledge base, versus people/personalization-based strategy, focusing on the social exchange of knowledge. Most communities do not implement these strategies in their perfect form, and each community exists at a different point along the continuum of dimensions. The first evaluation dimension, therefore, refers to how well it implements its defined strategy, whether through technological tool support for required information coding and convenient retrieval or through the level of interaction created within it.
The second dimension we'll address is the purpose of the knowledge community. Knowledge communities are typically attributed to a central purpose of knowledge sharing (as their name suggests). However, knowledge sharing can serve additional purposes, such as personal learning, expert identification, or insight development. When considering learning as a specific outcome, we can distinguish between two main types of learning:
Adoption of existing knowledge from others, suggesting that learning should improve something existing - this is first-order or independent learning. The purpose of learning is to use the existing knowledge available to the employee.
Learning is the development or discovery of new knowledge, suggesting that it enables new things, such as second-order or mutual learning. The purpose of learning is to search for new knowledge.
Therefore, the second evaluation dimension is the extent to which the community enables exposure to existing knowledge (document, expert, etc.) or the creation and development of new knowledge. Naturally, in addition to the community's defined purposes, one must examine the activities that serve these purposes and their outcomes.
Community Type
Andriessen and Verburg argue that five main types of knowledge communities differ in the following characteristics: purpose, level of formality (of motivation and roles), boundaries (open or closed), composition (experts only or mix of experts and non-experts), virtuality (face-to-face or mediated), and size. The five typical communities based on these characteristics are:
"The Daily Practice Community" includes experienced and new employees who often work in separate project teams but are near each other. They meet frequently face-to-face to discuss their daily experiences.
"The Formal Expert Community" - A community including a limited number of experts separated geographically or organizationally, whose purpose is to exchange or develop strategic knowledge.
"The Informal Network Community" - A highly accessible informal community, including people who convene to discuss their interests. Generally, its members are geographically or organizationally distant from each other, and communication occurs mainly through various media.
"The Problem Solving Community" - A community that includes all company employees with the same discipline. An example could be all 500 Oracle employees working on the ERP system. Through the network, they exchange questions and answers regarding practical problem-solving.
"The Latent Network Community" - A community that includes a group of participants working in different organizations. They know each other but make contact mainly on special occasions such as conferences or various committees. The group, therefore, meets very infrequently. Their shared knowledge and interpersonal interaction are high, but their interaction and identity as a group are low.
Therefore, the third evaluation or classification dimension refers to the community type as a function of integrating the dimensions of purpose, formality level, boundaries, composition, virtuality, and size.
Formalization and Management Support
To enable new knowledge development and sharing, community members need an arena where they can explore the field and encounter other enthusiastic members to brainstorm together. However, many organizations cannot avoid wanting direction for these communities; direction is manifested through a selection of community members, the roles they will fill, and, most importantly, the outputs they must provide. The paradox is that although communities are characterized by a high level of self-organization and resistance to control processes, they still need some degree of management to develop and integrate themselves into the organization. Therefore, the fourth evaluation dimension is the degree of organizational involvement in managing existing communities within it. Organizations must, therefore, find the golden path between required level of interest and involvement versus direct guidance and strong focus on outputs, which could stifle knowledge exchange and creativity.
Knowledge Processes
According to the model developed by Nonaka and Takeuchi, knowledge exchange and creation, as well as knowledge learning, occur through four knowledge processes based on a well-known distinction between tacit and explicit knowledge:
"Socialization": The process of sharing tacit knowledge between people working together
"Externalization": The process of converting tacit knowledge to explicit by translating these experiences into explicit work tools
"Combination": The process of assembling explicit knowledge from various sources
"Internalization": The process of converting explicit knowledge to tacit knowledge
All four of these processes can be expressed within the community; therefore, the fifth evaluation dimension is the prominence of each of these processes in the community.
Social Identity, Cohesion, and Willingness to Share Knowledge
The question arises of whether effective knowledge sharing requires a small, cohesive group where individuals have developed shared identities and trust each other or whether effective knowledge transfer can occur in a larger group with looser connections. Examination of the field shows that some knowledge communities can succeed even if they are large, where their members don't create close interaction, and their identities frequently change. However, the ability to create such communication depends on:
Type of organizational culture: In a company like SHELL, all two thousand of its drilling employees, although globally dispersed, have a strong sense of identity to their role as a driller in SHELL and, therefore, are motivated to help their colleagues on the other side of the world find solutions to problems.
Community type and purpose: "Problem-Solving" communities require less cohesion and internal trust than "Formal Expert" communities.
Therefore, the degree of mutual trust and consolidated identity is the sixth evaluation dimension.
While identity and trust relate to the socio-emotional integration of groups, "Cognitive Distance" refers to how people differ in knowledge and shared understanding (due to different backgrounds, cultures, or disciplines). For learning to occur, the cognitive distance should be neither too small, as there is nothing to learn from each other, nor too large, as there isn't a sufficiently similar thought framework and understanding. For first-order learning to occur, the cognitive distance should be relatively small, but for second-order learning requiring greater creativity, the distance should be larger. Cognitive distance is, therefore, the seventh and final evaluation dimension.
These evaluation and classification dimensions will give us a more complete and comprehensive view of the "knowledge community" solution.
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