This document discusses communities of practice in public administration. It identifies four stages in the life cycle of communities of practice - nascent, developing, consolidated, and mature. It provides indicators for classifying communities at each stage and lists factors for success, including having community objectives aligned with the organization, providing training and resources to members, and ensuring institutional commitment to support proper evolution of the community over time.

1. © Mario Pérez-Montoro
5th International Conference on Intellectual Capital,
Knowledge Management & Organisational Learning
New York Institute of Technology, New York, USA
9-10 October 2008
Success Factors of Communities of Practice in
Public Administration
Dr. Mario Pérez-Montoro
Department of Information Science
University of Barcelona
Jesús Martínez Marin
Center for Legal Studies and Specialist Training
Generalitat de Catalunya
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2. © Mario Pérez-Montoro
1. Introduction
2. Communities of Practice in Public Administration
3. Life cycle of Communities of Practice
4. Indicators for the classification of communities
5. Success factors
6. Conclusions
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3. © Mario Pérez-Montoro
1. Introduction
• Organizations:
• Depositories of large quantities of information and
knowledge
• Organizational structures and culture do not enable
knowledge to be properly exploited
• KM project in the Justice Department of the Generalitat de
Catalunya:
• 14 communities of practice, 27 working groups and more than
2000 people
• Success factors of Communities of Practice in public
administration
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2. Communities of Practice in Public Administration
• Public administration:
• Different organizational groups and structures
• Model for classification of units capable of hosting communities of
practice :
• Size and specialization of the professional grouping
• Level of obsolescence of the professional knowledge
• Level of organizational hierarchies
• Level of involvement of information technologies and
communication
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Need for constant Non Small size Direct link with
innovation and hierarchical professional ICTs to carry out
knowledge structure grouping work
Psychologists x x x
Legal experts x x
Professors x
Art instructors x x
Prison educators
Youth Justice Professionals x x
Youth Justice Mediators x x
Youth Justice Educators
Youth Justice legal advisors X x x
Legal librarians X x x x
Legal registrars x x x x
Language teachers x x
Table 1: Classified professional groupings
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3. Life cycle of communities of practice
• Communities of Practice:
• Not always take root in the same way within an organization
• Standard life cycle of communities of practice in public
administration :
• Nascent or seed community
• Developing community
• Consolidated community
• Mature community
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7. © Mario Pérez-Montoro
Proto-Community • Group of enthusiastic people
First Stage of Practice • No action for knowledge transfer
• Genuine Community of Practice
Developing Community • Actions for knowledge transfer
Second Stage of Practice • Exchanges of information normally presence based and do
not correspond to a pre-fixed schedule
• Leader or moderator with a range of responsibilities
• Members with role in discussions and a shared schedule of
Consolidated Community
Third Stage of Practice
presence based meetings
• Computer system for discussions and exchanges through
virtual strategies
• Community highly consolidated, invisible and integrated into
the day to day processes
Mature Community
Fourth Stage of Practice
• Organization acts as a large community of practice
• Community of practice becomes an important part of the
organization’s DNA
Table 2: Development of a community of practice in public administration
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4. Indicators for the classification of communities
• Indicators for nascent or seed community of practice:
• Characteristics of the professional grouping:
• High level of institutional commitment, concern for the
problems and proposals for innovation and improvement
• Collaborative work process and production of knowledge:
• Value placed on collaborative work, desire to find
responses in their own colleagues, lack of coordination,
and absence of collective production of knowledge
• Institutional facilitators and external support elements:
• Absence of workplace or institutional conflict and absence
of a leader or moderator
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• Indicators for developing community of practice:
• Characteristics of the professional grouping:
• High level of institutional commitment, concern for the
problems and proposals for innovation and improvement
• Collaborative work process and production of knowledge:
• Value placed on collaborative work, desire to find
responses in their own colleagues, coordination for
knowledge exchange, nascent of collective production and
dissemination of knowledge
• Institutional facilitators and external support elements:
• Absence of workplace or institutional conflict, formalized
incentives policy, knowledge exchange meetings (no
schedule) and existence of a leader or moderator
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• Indicators for consolidated community of practice:
• Characteristics of the professional grouping:
• High level of institutional commitment, concern for the
problems and proposals for innovation and improvement
• Collaborative work process and production of knowledge:
• Consolidation of collective production and dissemination of
knowledge and application of the knowledge to the
organization
• Institutional facilitators and external support elements:
• Formalized incentives policy, programmed knowledge
exchange meetings, virtual environment to KM, and
presence of a moderator and an external facilitator
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• Indicators for mature community of practice:
• Characteristics of the professional grouping
• Collaborative work process and production of knowledge
• Institutional facilitators and external support elements:
• Elements integrated within the culture and operating
processes managed by the organization
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5. Success factors
• Reactive (or pull) factors of success:
• Creation of a communities of practice only in especial contexts
• Institutional commitments with the correct evolution of the
community
• Proactive (or push) factors of success:
• Community objectives in line with the organization
• External expert and programmed physical meetings
• Training (information literacy and communication techniques)
• Human resources available to communities
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6. Conclusions
• Mature community of practice not detected
• Absence of workplace or institutional conflict
• External expert and training
• Physical meetings and incentives policy
• Increasing quality standardization and institutional commitment
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Thanks for your attention!
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