© 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
1

© 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
2

© 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
3

© Mario Pérez-Montoro
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
4

© Mario Pérez-Montoro
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
5

© Mario Pérez-Montoro
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
6

© 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
7

© Mario Pérez-Montoro
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
8

© Mario Pérez-Montoro
• 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
9

© Mario Pérez-Montoro
• 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
10

© Mario Pérez-Montoro
• 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
11

© Mario Pérez-Montoro
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
12

© Mario Pérez-Montoro
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
13

© Mario Pérez-Montoro
Thanks for your attention!
14