Communicating Practice

What is a community of practice?


The world's leading management consulting firm McKinsey think: enterprise information systems 

will support from transaction processing, integration of business logic and workflow to support 

employee communication and online learning system transfer function. This flexible technology and 

systems to support communities of practice, the needs of this new era of knowledge management. 

What is a community of practice it?

Integrated with some points, so we can define it, communities of practice by a group of participants 

(which may be members, outside experts, and even consumer), for some common purpose, theme, 

hobbies, or even a bit of relevance (which may be a part of the work, a series, etc.), and come 

together in an informal, unstructured networking community.

For this definition, we need to focus on three things: 1. First, it is a community. The so-called 

community, is a collection of people, people's organizations, it reflects the relationship between 

people. String 3

 Second, it is a virtual community, that is, contact between people is through the network, rather 

than face to face in the traditional sense. 3. Finally, communities of practice, which is an informal 

group consisting of management often speak of our organization. In organizations, formal business 

relationship with the team because of work built up a collective, and informal groups are those 

groups than by formal working relationship formed. Since no formal responsibilities assigned, so it is 

a loose organization. Clearly, in a business, these two groups will always arise. Typically 

communities of practice may be provided by a number of people doing the same job composition 

may also include employees from different companies, different departments, but they have similar 

skills and expertise, such as CIO clubs and so on.

There are many communities of practice statement, although varied, in fact, is a content, such as: 

learning community (LC, Learning Community), a special interest group (SIG, Special Interest 

Group) and so on, but not as CoP frequency of use is high. Specific communities of practice include 

the following three elements: field, community and practice. 1. Field: is the subject of concern to 

everyone.

2, the community, including: the definition of the border, experts, novices and experts Adv.

3, practice, including: learning outcomes, community knowledge and Tacit Knowledge


Why do we need a community of practice?

1.Emotional exchanges

2.Share knowledge, skills

3.It helps to improve management efficiency