Abstract
The purpose of this study is to provide a multi-level framework to diagnose the structural healthiness of CoPs and present a new metric, Bottleneck Impact Score (BIS), to measure the seriousness of bottlenecks in knowledge sharing activities among CoPs members. After analyzing knowledge sharing activities of 4,414 members from 59 CoPs, we confirm that while only a small number of CoP members actively engage in both transferring and receiving knowledge, most experts are not core players and they are reluctant to share their knowledge with others. We also find that only few CoPs can be classified as knowledge “sharing” community while most of CoPs suffer from inactive participation of employees with high expertise and are diagnosed as having at least one of master-apprenticeship and knowledge drain bottlenecks. Interestingly, we also find that CoPs members in field division such as Iron&Steel, Rolling, and Maintenance department more actively participate in knowledge sharing than CoPs members in Staff department. Finally, BISs are used to measure and compare the seriousness of six different types of bottlenecks in CoPs and departments.
Recommended Citation
Lee, Suchul; Suh, Euiho; and Seog Kim, Yong, "Health Diagnosis of Communities of Practices (CoPs)" (2012). AMCIS 2012 Proceedings. 8.
https://aisel.aisnet.org/amcis2012/proceedings/DecisionSupport/8
Health Diagnosis of Communities of Practices (CoPs)
The purpose of this study is to provide a multi-level framework to diagnose the structural healthiness of CoPs and present a new metric, Bottleneck Impact Score (BIS), to measure the seriousness of bottlenecks in knowledge sharing activities among CoPs members. After analyzing knowledge sharing activities of 4,414 members from 59 CoPs, we confirm that while only a small number of CoP members actively engage in both transferring and receiving knowledge, most experts are not core players and they are reluctant to share their knowledge with others. We also find that only few CoPs can be classified as knowledge “sharing” community while most of CoPs suffer from inactive participation of employees with high expertise and are diagnosed as having at least one of master-apprenticeship and knowledge drain bottlenecks. Interestingly, we also find that CoPs members in field division such as Iron&Steel, Rolling, and Maintenance department more actively participate in knowledge sharing than CoPs members in Staff department. Finally, BISs are used to measure and compare the seriousness of six different types of bottlenecks in CoPs and departments.