Critical Analysis
Turning to a critical analysis of the theoretical works and applied research, there have been varied contributions to the body of knowledge.
Informal Learning Literature
Marsick and her colleagues have been prolific contributors on the subjects of informal learning, workplace learning, and learning organizations. Their contributions have been well-informed and grounded in the research that came before them, and they have encouraged further research by other scholars (e.g., Wallace & Colbert). Their communication style is clear and complete, displaying scholarly rigor as well as helpful implication considerations for practitioners. For Marsick and colleagues’ research to be even more compelling, it would be helpful to incorporate quantitative research methods in addition to the qualitative research studies they have been performed. Many organizations look to quantitative studies to prove results; this is a challenge that confronts not only Marsick and colleagues, but all those who study learning and knowledge. Marsick, Watkins, Callahan, & Volpe (2006) themselves acknowledge this limitation in the current research and recommend cross-company and industry studies, “research aimed at learning what works to enhance this type of learning,” as well as research to examine “the impact of new distributed working arrangements (including telecommuting, outsourcing, and use of contingency workers) on informal and incidental learning in workplaces” (p. 799).
Communities of Practice Literature
Turning to a critical analysis of the theoretical works and applied research on CoPs, let us focus on Wenger’s contributions from the theoretical perspective and Zboralski et al.’s contributions from an applied research perspective.
Wenger.
Some strong points of Wenger’s work include his solid work to conceptualize CoPs and emphasize the need for them to be very flexible, organic, and evolving in nature. In addition, his writing is approachable and appealing to readers, with many statements possessing good face validity, e.g., “intuitively, everybody knows what knowledge is. When you have it, you are likely to understand situations and do the right thing; when you don’t, you are in trouble” (Wenger, 2004, p. 1). However, his published work (including the materials cited in this paper) focuses more on the practitioner than the scholar; thus Wenger’s materials are sometimes lacking in scholarly rigor. For example, much of his published work is targeted to practitioners and most of his articles and materials were not published in peer-reviewed journals. Despite this, Wenger’s material has become the seminal work on CoPs.
Wenger’s 2004 article was particularly disappointing. While the “doughnut” analogy for his model may make it feel more accessible to practitioners, he may be doing a disservice to the discipline of knowledge management—made all the worse by the fact that he begins the article stating that the field has had to deal with numerous skeptics and detractors. But then he goes on to state, “I will argue that when it comes to knowledge, management is a doughnut…and noting that the center of the doughnut is empty, I will argue that knowledge management is primarily the business of those who actually make the dough—the practitioners” (Wenger, 2004, p. 1). Again, perhaps this is an approachable analogy, but the light-heartedness of its description may make the reader question if knowledge management is a respectable discipline. Then in looking more closely at the writing of this article, the model is not directly linked to the structure of the paper. Ensuring the article’s structure directly followed the model (e.g., with consistent terminology and labeling of sub-sections) and illustrating all the concepts on the model would have greatly improved the quality and coherence of Wenger’s article and model.
Zboralski et al.
In contrast, Zboralski et al.’s (2006) article was particularly impressive for not only its contribution to quantitatively proving a relationship between CoPs and organizational performance, but also in its thorough scholarly approach. The article begins with a thorough literature review, establishing a strong relation between Zboralski et al.’s research and the existing body of knowledge. However, like most research projects in the social sciences, there were some weaker areas. For example, Zboralski et al.’s sampling is somewhat problematic. Within the selected multinational company, there were 220 CoPs that met the researchers’ criteria; yet over a four month timeframe they were only able to get questionnaire responses representing 36 of those CoPs. The researchers claimed that their coverage of “about 31% of all active community members…can be considered a valid representation of the overall population” (Zboralski et al., 2006, p. 542). However, it is not entirely clear by what objective criteria this claim can be made. The questionnaire for their measurement model was pre-tested, resulting in revisions prior to releasing the questionnaire to the sample population. However, the authors did acknowledge that a common method bias could not be ruled out. In addition, the study is somewhat limited in that it was based on one German multinational company with an extensive number of CoPs, and the measures were based on the CoP members’ perception of the CoPs’ effects on organizational performance. Overall, Zboralski et al.’s conclusions were justified by the results; however, they could be strengthened further by replicating the research with other companies plus comparing the results to the perceptions of non-members of CoPs or to objective performance measures that could not be influenced by the participants’ perception.
Next:
We'll discuss the implications of the research on informal learning, communitiies of practice, organizational learning, and knowledge management and how it can be applied.
References:
http://www.blog.klpnow.com/2008/03/references_knowledge_creation.html
- Robin
Copyright Robin Donnan 2008. All Rights Reserved.
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