Tuesday, January 15, 2008
Questions for discussion: Q4
1- Do we have the right to own our spoken speech? Is it ethical for others to write about what we have said without our permission?
Questions for discussion: Q3
1- Imagine that you are a member in VCoP about alcoholic addiction, then a friend or a colleague in work came to you and told you, “I heard from John that you are a member in a VCoP. I didn’t know that you are facing troubles with alcohol. What is your reaction in this situation to know that everyone knows about you since you intended to join that VCoP secretly?
Questions for discussion: Q2
1- Imagine that you worked a lot in this project with the rest of the members in a VCoP, but at the end you are not able to get the intellectual right to have the component of that medicine. How do you feel to buy that medicine just like any others and doesn’t have the right to own it and you worked hard at the beginning of the project? Do you think that it’s ethical that only one person will obtain the component of that medicine from the whole community or is it the managers of VCoP have the right to obtain it?
Questions for discussion: Q:1
1- Imagine that you are in a group of communities and members are coming from different organizations top share the same domain which might be a scientific project. You all worked together in collecting, analyzing data and only one member was able to come out with the final outcomes to find out the effective component to invent a medicine for one of the fatal diseases. Who is going to have the intellectual property to own that medicine since members are from different countries?
Ethical codes in Sharing and obtaining Information in Virtual Communities of Practice
Welcome to our Virtual conference which is part of our second assignments in FET8605, Building Communities of Practice.
The group of Ethics members discussed different issues related to Ethics in CoPs. With a productive discussion with all the group, I decided to write a paper about "Ethical codes in Sharing and obtaining Information in Virtual Communities of Practice". You are welcome to join our reference and read papers presented by Ethics members group. Your comments and participation is this conference is highly appreciated to succeed it. You are welcomed to post your comments here or in the WebCT discussion where this paper is also posted there.
Regards,
Laila
-------------------
The internet make it flexible for members from different places, cultures, nationalities, education levels to join Virtual Communities of Practice (VCoP) (Ardichvili et al, 2003), to share expertise and passion about a topic and interact on an ongoing basis to further their learning in a shared domain (Wenger & Snyder, 2004).
VCoP are simply Communities of Practice (CoP) whose members utilize various technologies to communicate virtually with one another. According to Allen et al (2003), they define VCoPs as “physically distributed groups of individuals who participate in activities, share knowledge and expertise, and function as an interdependent network over an extended period of time, using various technological means to communicate with one another, with the shared goal of furthering their ‘practice’ or doing their work better." In VCoPs, members use virtual communication as a resource to solve problems, complete tasks, improve the quality and volume of information exchange, and generally do their jobs better, rather than a social outlet. Besides, VCoPs are very important in scientific communities to solve larger-scale problems, and initiating breakthrough science (Bos, et al. 2007).
VCoP members express frustration when the community is not focused on the objectives they were expecting it to focus on. When their expectations are not met, members stop using the community, and the quantity and quality of information decreases, then stops. Therefore, the need to have a code of ethics in VCoPs is necessary to keep the success of any VCoP. The attention of members should be drawn regarding the ethics of codes before joining any VCoP. Members should be aware about VCoPs objectives and goals and to not discuss topics beyond the control of the community members, or to air personal gripes and complaints. The benefit of having these ethics is to make members aware about how the process is going on in these VCoPs.
This papers spots the light on the ethical side of sharing and obtaining information in VCoPs. While Joyce Arnold, my colleague in my Ethics group, has introduced the definition and importance of code of Ethics, my paper discusses the ethical side of sharing and obtaining knowledge in VCoPs. Some issues related to sharing information and confidentiality and privacy are discussed within this paper.
Sharing Information and Knowledge
Sharing knowledge is a give and take process between members of CoPs and an increasing link of community of knowledge (Hinton, 2003). In other words, knowledge is managed by sharing it with the community’s members (Allen, S. Ure, D. Evans, S, 2003). It’s our responsibility to share information with others and it’s not ethical to keep the answers for ourselves if we know the answer of a particular question. We should also share the resources with others. There are different methods to share information in VCoPs including the following methods:
- Asking and answering questions- This technique is one of the salient methods to share information because it leads to problem solving. Members tell their problems and that can be through telling a story or ask a question related to their problems. In return, other members interact to solve that problem through answering and interacting with them. This kind of information leads to create ‘Soft Knowledge’ (Kimble et al, 2000). This knowledge is codified and stored to share it with others who may have the same problem in the future at different time.
- Chatting with experts- In VCoPs, members can have the opportunity to chat with experts whether through the synchronous chat or asynchronous discussion forums. These experts usually are the leaders or managers of the community or senior members in that community who have long experience regarding issues related to their community.
- Creating sub communities around special interest topics- if the community is big, members can have sub communities within their VCoPs (Wenger, McDermott, & Snyder, 2002; Bos, et al. 2007) to make the process of sharing and exchanging information much flexible and organized.
- Collaborating and sharing best practices- sharing knowledge is a give and take process between members of CoPs (Corlett et al., 2006). In other words, knowledge is managed by sharing it with the community’s members. Therefore, in VCoP, members collaborate with other members to gain some of their experience and in return share their own best practice with other members related to their jobs, research or any other issue they apply their successful practice on.
- Sharing knowledge is not only about the process of transferring information between members in a community, but rather it helps researchers in some CoPs to extend their research process and gain knowledge in expanding their research outcomes through exchanging ideas and thoughts with different researchers (Corlett et al., 2006). Most importantly, researchers gain confidence in starting the process of publishing their research through their interaction in CoPs.
It’s not enough that members should be aware of following the previous mentioned methods in sharing and exchanging information, thus, it’s essential for members to know the ethical side of sharing information in their communities as it’s discussed below:
1. Publish as fact only that which you believe to be true.
If you are a member and you want to post facts, post only facts you are sure about them. For example, in scientific research, if you posted wrong information, that will affect every member in the community who are working in a similar research. So, it’s preferable to post the best of your knowledge to be used effectively in some research outcomes.
2. If material exists online, link to it when you reference it.
Linking our information with references will give other members the opportunity to enhance their knowledge regarding a particular topic. Besides, your posts will be respected from other members because it’s real and supported with references and this is how we are creating collective network of information and knowledge (Blood, nd). As a matter of fact, this paper has been written based in the effective discussion by the Ethics group in Building Communities Practice course (FET8605) who contributed in raising up issues and provide links to support them.
3. Publicly correct any misinformation.
If you find that you have linked to a story that was untrue, make a note of it and link to a more accurate report.
4. Write each entry as if it could not be changed; add to, but do not rewrite or delete, any entry.
History can be rewritten, but it cannot be undone. Changing or deleting words is possible on the Web, but possibility does not always make good policy. Think before you publish and stand behind what you write. If you later decide you were wrong about something, make a note of it and move on (Anon, n.d.) because deleting a whole entry may annoy other members who build arguments and new thoughts in your entry.
Behaviors in driving knowledge
Behaviors is very important in driving knowledge in organizations. The first thing in any CoP that members should be aware of that they have to share knowledge with others or without it, knowledge will be limited. However, the first things that any CoP can do in encouraging members to share their knowledge is to trust others (Walker et al, nd) and then start sharing their knowledge with members in the community.
DeLong (1997) refers to these salient points regarding knowledge oriented behaviors.
- Sharing and Teaching- ethics in CoP should also teach members what’s the right and effective way of interaction, the process, the creation, sharing and using of knowledge.
- Dealing with mistakes – what really matters how CoP will be able to recognize mistakes and fix them instead of hampering the process of interaction and sharing knowledge.
We can have the freedom and liberty in sharing our information and according to Berlin (1969), there are two forms of liberty. Negative liberty is the right for the individual to choose an Individualist position. For example, some members insisted in following their own individual strategy instead following the strategy of a community where all members work together in sharing and exchanging information. These members who like to work individually join the community for their own benefit only and they tend to take but never give or share information. One the other hand, positive liberty is the paternalist position that protects individuals from giving into their base desires. It helps us achieve a higher level of ourselves, self determination and cooperative behavior.
In addition, Leaders and managers in VCoPs should work hard in implementing these following strategies (Walker et al., nd) to build effective groups of members in VCoPs:
1. Establish an ‘open’ climate within the group. Welcome diversity, innovation and the
embrace the pedagogy of trust (DeLong1997).
2. Avoid the isolation of the group. Particularly from those groups which are critical of it. No matter if the community has many sub-communities, it’s important not to isolate them from the whole community to encourage the process of transferring information with other sub-groups within the same community.
3. Assign the role of critical evaluator to an experienced and skilled member of the group who could lead the group to be productive in their discussions and thinking.
4. Avoid being too directive or prescriptive in terms of the development of the group. In other words, members are joining these VCoPs voluntarily and they are informal communities where they don’t expect to be directed as if you are the boss and they are your employees.
5. The group leader should encourage group members to challenge and push each other for the purpose of enhancing each others' critical thinking.
6. The group should utilize procedural strategies for reaching group decisions within a
"competitive" work environment
Confidentiality and Privacy
Members in VCoPs expect that they will have privacy and confidentiality and the information they will share with the rest of the members will be private because most of the VCoPs have electronic forum and each member has a membership with password to be able to log in to the VCoP. However, members should be careful to not share some personal details about their credit cards, bank accounts online (Dyson, 2007) no matter even if they are intending to share them with close members because the internet is not a secured place to share such details.
It’s not ethical for other members to reveal the names of some of the community members who have discussed salient issues so far with other VCoPs outside the community. Revealing such information may cause problems to members in their jobs or lives. For example, an employee lost a job for blogging disdainfully about her employer and posting pictures of the residents (Blood, nd). The employee has set her blog to "public". Therefore, it’s very important to include the code of Confidentiality and Privacy in VCoPs. We need Confidentiality and Privacy in VCoPs because some members may share highly sensitive personal information.
Intellectual Property and Knowledge Ownership
It might be easy to protect information in general and other organizations, but how can we protect information in VCoPs since it’s not formal but rather a voluntary groups that members joined the community who share the same interest.
Mish Angrist and Robert M. Cook- Deegan in their article “ Who owns the Genome?” have raised interesting points who should have the right to search and keep information. They referred to the fact that private research works differently, even when the experiments themselves are similar. Fame and fortune are driving forces in both the commercial and scientific- academic worlds, and the role of ethics in VCoP is to aware members about these two forces to not affect the work of the community in case the CoP was about a group of academics or scientists working in an important research or experiments.
Some members join VCoPs from different companies in order to be able to discuss how to improve a specific production. That’s why we could see the same product in the market but sold by different firms and each firm competes with each other by setting prices (Lai, 1998). Therefore, to protect the intellectual property for the VCoP, the original resource of obtaining that copyright of the production’s latest development should go for the VCoP. But again the same question will be raised who obtain the right to own the knowledge and the Intellectual Right copyright? Are they the persons who manage and run the VCoP?
Members in CoPs feels that they have the right to obtain knowledge because they are belonging to that community and helped in creating the knowledge, however, some members may act irresponsibly towards these information (Schwen, T. M., & Hara, N., 2003; Quinn, M., 2006). Members can have the right to use information but under some circumstances and ethics not to use such resources in negative way and against the benefit of their community and the rest of the members.
Downes (2004) in his presentation referred to some salient points and issues related to CoP including the Ethics of "Who owns the Knowledge in virtual world" We are all participating in the same virtual box and then you realized that there is only one who obtains that box which contains all the gained knowledge from all the members of the community, but it's not YOU. I found it reasonable that the information we use from our VCoPs should be coded in the name of the whole community so we could feel that it's enough fair for us. To have the feeling of being an active member in participating in creating part of the knowledge in any community is an honor for members because that will make them feel they are productive in knowledge. Therefore, it's preferable that members use the information of their community with the permission of their community not to get any obstacles or illegal issues when it comes to some illegal cases.
A list of Ethics of Codes:
According to some resources in literature (Cooper, 1997; Gearhart, 2006; Quéau, 2000; Anon, 2007) that have discussed ethics in sharing information, below are some summarized listed codes that members should be aware about sharing and obtaining information before joining any CoP:
- You should read Community goals and objectives before joining this group and be aware not to go beyond them.
- You should interact with the rest of the members to keep the process of exchanging information which lead to the success of your community.
- You should not reveal the private information of other members in your community confidential.
- You should not use any kind of information outside your community in a negative way that may cause harm.
- You should not attempt hacking members’ computers.
- You should not send threatening, obscene or harassing messages.
- You can obtain the knowledge within your community and used it for your own benefit but that should be with some limitations and circumstances.
- You should know the process of give and take knowledge in your community to be an active member.
- By reading the objectives and goals of your community, you agree to be a member in this community according to the ethical regulations and codes.
If you haven’t fulfilled the ethical codes of your community, your membership may temporary suspended or removed from the VCoP. Therefore, it’s essential to have the ethical codes in VCoPs to lead successful interactive communities.
References:
Allen, S. Ure, D. Evans, S. (2003). Virtual communities of practice as Learning Networks. Retrieved on 7/1/2008 from: http://www.masie.com/researchgrants/2003/BY_Final_Report.pdf
Angrist, M. and R.M. Cook- Deegan (2006). The New Atlantis. Retrieved on 7/1/2008 from: http://www.thenewatlantis.com/archive/11/TNA11-AngristCook-Deegan.pdf
Anon, E. (2007). Map@syst Code of Ethics [Electronic Version]. Retrieved 20/12/2007 from http://collaborate.extension.org/wiki/Map@syst_Code_of_Ethics.
Anon (nd) Berkely Zen Centre- Code of ethics, Retrieved on 6/1/2008 from: http://www.berkeleyzencenter.org/ethics.html
Ardichvili, A., MaurerM, Li, W., & Wentling, T. (2006). Cultural influences on knowledge sharing through online communities of practice. Journal of Knowledge Management, 10(1), 94-107 Retrieved EmeraldInsight, USQ library 21/12/2007.
Blood, R.,(nd) Weblog Ethics, Retrieved on 6/1/2008 from: http://www.rebeccablood.net/handbook/excerpts/weblog_ethics.html
Berlin, I. (1969) Four essays in Liberty, UK, Oxford University Press
Bos, N., Zimmerman, A., Olson, J., Yew, J., Yerkie, J., Dahl, E., et al. (2007). From shared databases to communities of practice: A taxonomy of collaboratories. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 12(2), article 16. http://jcmc.indiana.edu/vol12/issue2/bos.html
Brook, B and Gilding, A. (2001) Introduction in E-learning, ethics and equity conference proceedings Melbourne, Victoria University : p7
Cooper, T. (1997). Building an Ethical Community: Queensland University of Technology. available USQ library
Corlett, S., Bryans, P. & Mavin, S. (2006). Encouraging research through Communities of Practice. Encyclopedia of Communities of Practice in Information and Knowledge Management. Idea Group Reference. pp. 157-162
DeLong, D. (1997) “Building the knowledge- based organization: How culture drives knowledge behaviors,” Working Paper, Ernst & Young’s Center for Business Innovation, Boston. Retrived on 1/1/2008 from: http://www.providersedge.com/docs/km_articles/Building_the_Knowledge-Based_Organization.pdf
Downes, S. (2004). The Evolving Concept of the Community of Practice. Building distributed communities of Practice conference, Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. Retrieved on 23/12/2007 from http://www.slideshare.net/Downes/the-evolving-concept-of-the-community-of-practice/
Dyson, E. (2007) coment in World Question Centre, The Edge Retrived 1/1/2008 from: http://www.edge.org/q2008/q08_13.html#dysone
Gearthart, D. (2005). The Ethical Use of Technology and the Internet in Research and Learning. Submitted for the Faculty Research Category For the Center of Excellence in Computer Information Systems.
Hinton, B. (2003). Knowledge Management and Communities of Practice: an experience from Rabobank Australia and New Zealand. Paper presented (Rabobank Australia) to the IAMA.World Food and Agribusiness Symposium, Cancun, Mexico, June 20-21 2003. Retrieved 1/12/2007 at: http://www.ifama.org/conferences/2003Conference/papers/hinton.pdf
Kimble, C., Hildreth, P. and Wright, P. (2000) ‘Communities of practice: going virtual’, in KnowledgeManagement and Business Model Innovation, Chapter 13, pp. 220–234, Idea Group Publishing, Hershey (USA)/London (UK). Retrived 10/12/2007 athttp://www-users.cs.york.ac.uk/~kimble/research/13kimble.pdf
Lai, E.L-C. (1998). International intellectual Property Rights Protection and the Rate of Product Innovation. Journal of Development Economics, Vol. 55. (1998) 133-153. Reterived on 11/1/2007 from: http://personal.cityu.edu.hk/~efedwin/ipprot3k1.pdf
Schwen, T. M., & Hara, N. (2003). Community of Practice: A Metaphor for Online Design? The Information Society, 19, 257-270 Retrieved Googlescholar, 21/12/2007http://scholar.google.com.au/scholarq=ethics,+communities+of+practice&hl=en&lr=&start=10&sa=N
Quéau, P. (2000). Who owns Knowledge? Retrieved on December, 30, 2007 from: http://mondediplo.com/2000/01/14queau
Quinn, M. (2006). Ethics for the Information Age, 2nd edition. U.S.A. Pearson Addison Wesley
Virtual Conference in USQ: http://rpc2007.usq.edu.au/?q=node/4
Walker, G. Justesen, S, Robinson, P. Communities of Practice, In-groups, Out-groups and the Space Between. Retrieved on 23/12/2007 from http://communityknowledge.co.uk/Pdfs/Groupthink.pdf
Wenger, E., & Snyder, W. (2004). Learning in Communities. LINEZine Summer. Retrieved on December, 30, 2007 from: http://www.linezine.com/1/features/ewwslc.htm
25. Wenger, E., McDermott, R., & Snyder, W.(2002). Cultivating Communities of Practice: A guide to managing knowledge. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Business School Press
The group of Ethics members discussed different issues related to Ethics in CoPs. With a productive discussion with all the group, I decided to write a paper about "Ethical codes in Sharing and obtaining Information in Virtual Communities of Practice". You are welcome to join our reference and read papers presented by Ethics members group. Your comments and participation is this conference is highly appreciated to succeed it. You are welcomed to post your comments here or in the WebCT discussion where this paper is also posted there.
Regards,
Laila
-------------------
The internet make it flexible for members from different places, cultures, nationalities, education levels to join Virtual Communities of Practice (VCoP) (Ardichvili et al, 2003), to share expertise and passion about a topic and interact on an ongoing basis to further their learning in a shared domain (Wenger & Snyder, 2004).
VCoP are simply Communities of Practice (CoP) whose members utilize various technologies to communicate virtually with one another. According to Allen et al (2003), they define VCoPs as “physically distributed groups of individuals who participate in activities, share knowledge and expertise, and function as an interdependent network over an extended period of time, using various technological means to communicate with one another, with the shared goal of furthering their ‘practice’ or doing their work better." In VCoPs, members use virtual communication as a resource to solve problems, complete tasks, improve the quality and volume of information exchange, and generally do their jobs better, rather than a social outlet. Besides, VCoPs are very important in scientific communities to solve larger-scale problems, and initiating breakthrough science (Bos, et al. 2007).
VCoP members express frustration when the community is not focused on the objectives they were expecting it to focus on. When their expectations are not met, members stop using the community, and the quantity and quality of information decreases, then stops. Therefore, the need to have a code of ethics in VCoPs is necessary to keep the success of any VCoP. The attention of members should be drawn regarding the ethics of codes before joining any VCoP. Members should be aware about VCoPs objectives and goals and to not discuss topics beyond the control of the community members, or to air personal gripes and complaints. The benefit of having these ethics is to make members aware about how the process is going on in these VCoPs.
This papers spots the light on the ethical side of sharing and obtaining information in VCoPs. While Joyce Arnold, my colleague in my Ethics group, has introduced the definition and importance of code of Ethics, my paper discusses the ethical side of sharing and obtaining knowledge in VCoPs. Some issues related to sharing information and confidentiality and privacy are discussed within this paper.
Sharing Information and Knowledge
Sharing knowledge is a give and take process between members of CoPs and an increasing link of community of knowledge (Hinton, 2003). In other words, knowledge is managed by sharing it with the community’s members (Allen, S. Ure, D. Evans, S, 2003). It’s our responsibility to share information with others and it’s not ethical to keep the answers for ourselves if we know the answer of a particular question. We should also share the resources with others. There are different methods to share information in VCoPs including the following methods:
- Asking and answering questions- This technique is one of the salient methods to share information because it leads to problem solving. Members tell their problems and that can be through telling a story or ask a question related to their problems. In return, other members interact to solve that problem through answering and interacting with them. This kind of information leads to create ‘Soft Knowledge’ (Kimble et al, 2000). This knowledge is codified and stored to share it with others who may have the same problem in the future at different time.
- Chatting with experts- In VCoPs, members can have the opportunity to chat with experts whether through the synchronous chat or asynchronous discussion forums. These experts usually are the leaders or managers of the community or senior members in that community who have long experience regarding issues related to their community.
- Creating sub communities around special interest topics- if the community is big, members can have sub communities within their VCoPs (Wenger, McDermott, & Snyder, 2002; Bos, et al. 2007) to make the process of sharing and exchanging information much flexible and organized.
- Collaborating and sharing best practices- sharing knowledge is a give and take process between members of CoPs (Corlett et al., 2006). In other words, knowledge is managed by sharing it with the community’s members. Therefore, in VCoP, members collaborate with other members to gain some of their experience and in return share their own best practice with other members related to their jobs, research or any other issue they apply their successful practice on.
- Sharing knowledge is not only about the process of transferring information between members in a community, but rather it helps researchers in some CoPs to extend their research process and gain knowledge in expanding their research outcomes through exchanging ideas and thoughts with different researchers (Corlett et al., 2006). Most importantly, researchers gain confidence in starting the process of publishing their research through their interaction in CoPs.
It’s not enough that members should be aware of following the previous mentioned methods in sharing and exchanging information, thus, it’s essential for members to know the ethical side of sharing information in their communities as it’s discussed below:
1. Publish as fact only that which you believe to be true.
If you are a member and you want to post facts, post only facts you are sure about them. For example, in scientific research, if you posted wrong information, that will affect every member in the community who are working in a similar research. So, it’s preferable to post the best of your knowledge to be used effectively in some research outcomes.
2. If material exists online, link to it when you reference it.
Linking our information with references will give other members the opportunity to enhance their knowledge regarding a particular topic. Besides, your posts will be respected from other members because it’s real and supported with references and this is how we are creating collective network of information and knowledge (Blood, nd). As a matter of fact, this paper has been written based in the effective discussion by the Ethics group in Building Communities Practice course (FET8605) who contributed in raising up issues and provide links to support them.
3. Publicly correct any misinformation.
If you find that you have linked to a story that was untrue, make a note of it and link to a more accurate report.
4. Write each entry as if it could not be changed; add to, but do not rewrite or delete, any entry.
History can be rewritten, but it cannot be undone. Changing or deleting words is possible on the Web, but possibility does not always make good policy. Think before you publish and stand behind what you write. If you later decide you were wrong about something, make a note of it and move on (Anon, n.d.) because deleting a whole entry may annoy other members who build arguments and new thoughts in your entry.
Behaviors in driving knowledge
Behaviors is very important in driving knowledge in organizations. The first thing in any CoP that members should be aware of that they have to share knowledge with others or without it, knowledge will be limited. However, the first things that any CoP can do in encouraging members to share their knowledge is to trust others (Walker et al, nd) and then start sharing their knowledge with members in the community.
DeLong (1997) refers to these salient points regarding knowledge oriented behaviors.
- Sharing and Teaching- ethics in CoP should also teach members what’s the right and effective way of interaction, the process, the creation, sharing and using of knowledge.
- Dealing with mistakes – what really matters how CoP will be able to recognize mistakes and fix them instead of hampering the process of interaction and sharing knowledge.
We can have the freedom and liberty in sharing our information and according to Berlin (1969), there are two forms of liberty. Negative liberty is the right for the individual to choose an Individualist position. For example, some members insisted in following their own individual strategy instead following the strategy of a community where all members work together in sharing and exchanging information. These members who like to work individually join the community for their own benefit only and they tend to take but never give or share information. One the other hand, positive liberty is the paternalist position that protects individuals from giving into their base desires. It helps us achieve a higher level of ourselves, self determination and cooperative behavior.
In addition, Leaders and managers in VCoPs should work hard in implementing these following strategies (Walker et al., nd) to build effective groups of members in VCoPs:
1. Establish an ‘open’ climate within the group. Welcome diversity, innovation and the
embrace the pedagogy of trust (DeLong1997).
2. Avoid the isolation of the group. Particularly from those groups which are critical of it. No matter if the community has many sub-communities, it’s important not to isolate them from the whole community to encourage the process of transferring information with other sub-groups within the same community.
3. Assign the role of critical evaluator to an experienced and skilled member of the group who could lead the group to be productive in their discussions and thinking.
4. Avoid being too directive or prescriptive in terms of the development of the group. In other words, members are joining these VCoPs voluntarily and they are informal communities where they don’t expect to be directed as if you are the boss and they are your employees.
5. The group leader should encourage group members to challenge and push each other for the purpose of enhancing each others' critical thinking.
6. The group should utilize procedural strategies for reaching group decisions within a
"competitive" work environment
Confidentiality and Privacy
Members in VCoPs expect that they will have privacy and confidentiality and the information they will share with the rest of the members will be private because most of the VCoPs have electronic forum and each member has a membership with password to be able to log in to the VCoP. However, members should be careful to not share some personal details about their credit cards, bank accounts online (Dyson, 2007) no matter even if they are intending to share them with close members because the internet is not a secured place to share such details.
It’s not ethical for other members to reveal the names of some of the community members who have discussed salient issues so far with other VCoPs outside the community. Revealing such information may cause problems to members in their jobs or lives. For example, an employee lost a job for blogging disdainfully about her employer and posting pictures of the residents (Blood, nd). The employee has set her blog to "public". Therefore, it’s very important to include the code of Confidentiality and Privacy in VCoPs. We need Confidentiality and Privacy in VCoPs because some members may share highly sensitive personal information.
Intellectual Property and Knowledge Ownership
It might be easy to protect information in general and other organizations, but how can we protect information in VCoPs since it’s not formal but rather a voluntary groups that members joined the community who share the same interest.
Mish Angrist and Robert M. Cook- Deegan in their article “ Who owns the Genome?” have raised interesting points who should have the right to search and keep information. They referred to the fact that private research works differently, even when the experiments themselves are similar. Fame and fortune are driving forces in both the commercial and scientific- academic worlds, and the role of ethics in VCoP is to aware members about these two forces to not affect the work of the community in case the CoP was about a group of academics or scientists working in an important research or experiments.
Some members join VCoPs from different companies in order to be able to discuss how to improve a specific production. That’s why we could see the same product in the market but sold by different firms and each firm competes with each other by setting prices (Lai, 1998). Therefore, to protect the intellectual property for the VCoP, the original resource of obtaining that copyright of the production’s latest development should go for the VCoP. But again the same question will be raised who obtain the right to own the knowledge and the Intellectual Right copyright? Are they the persons who manage and run the VCoP?
Members in CoPs feels that they have the right to obtain knowledge because they are belonging to that community and helped in creating the knowledge, however, some members may act irresponsibly towards these information (Schwen, T. M., & Hara, N., 2003; Quinn, M., 2006). Members can have the right to use information but under some circumstances and ethics not to use such resources in negative way and against the benefit of their community and the rest of the members.
Downes (2004) in his presentation referred to some salient points and issues related to CoP including the Ethics of "Who owns the Knowledge in virtual world" We are all participating in the same virtual box and then you realized that there is only one who obtains that box which contains all the gained knowledge from all the members of the community, but it's not YOU. I found it reasonable that the information we use from our VCoPs should be coded in the name of the whole community so we could feel that it's enough fair for us. To have the feeling of being an active member in participating in creating part of the knowledge in any community is an honor for members because that will make them feel they are productive in knowledge. Therefore, it's preferable that members use the information of their community with the permission of their community not to get any obstacles or illegal issues when it comes to some illegal cases.
A list of Ethics of Codes:
According to some resources in literature (Cooper, 1997; Gearhart, 2006; Quéau, 2000; Anon, 2007) that have discussed ethics in sharing information, below are some summarized listed codes that members should be aware about sharing and obtaining information before joining any CoP:
- You should read Community goals and objectives before joining this group and be aware not to go beyond them.
- You should interact with the rest of the members to keep the process of exchanging information which lead to the success of your community.
- You should not reveal the private information of other members in your community confidential.
- You should not use any kind of information outside your community in a negative way that may cause harm.
- You should not attempt hacking members’ computers.
- You should not send threatening, obscene or harassing messages.
- You can obtain the knowledge within your community and used it for your own benefit but that should be with some limitations and circumstances.
- You should know the process of give and take knowledge in your community to be an active member.
- By reading the objectives and goals of your community, you agree to be a member in this community according to the ethical regulations and codes.
If you haven’t fulfilled the ethical codes of your community, your membership may temporary suspended or removed from the VCoP. Therefore, it’s essential to have the ethical codes in VCoPs to lead successful interactive communities.
References:
Allen, S. Ure, D. Evans, S. (2003). Virtual communities of practice as Learning Networks. Retrieved on 7/1/2008 from: http://www.masie.com/researchgrants/2003/BY_Final_Report.pdf
Angrist, M. and R.M. Cook- Deegan (2006). The New Atlantis. Retrieved on 7/1/2008 from: http://www.thenewatlantis.com/archive/11/TNA11-AngristCook-Deegan.pdf
Anon, E. (2007). Map@syst Code of Ethics [Electronic Version]. Retrieved 20/12/2007 from http://collaborate.extension.org/wiki/Map@syst_Code_of_Ethics.
Anon (nd) Berkely Zen Centre- Code of ethics, Retrieved on 6/1/2008 from: http://www.berkeleyzencenter.org/ethics.html
Ardichvili, A., MaurerM, Li, W., & Wentling, T. (2006). Cultural influences on knowledge sharing through online communities of practice. Journal of Knowledge Management, 10(1), 94-107 Retrieved EmeraldInsight, USQ library 21/12/2007.
Blood, R.,(nd) Weblog Ethics, Retrieved on 6/1/2008 from: http://www.rebeccablood.net/handbook/excerpts/weblog_ethics.html
Berlin, I. (1969) Four essays in Liberty, UK, Oxford University Press
Bos, N., Zimmerman, A., Olson, J., Yew, J., Yerkie, J., Dahl, E., et al. (2007). From shared databases to communities of practice: A taxonomy of collaboratories. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 12(2), article 16. http://jcmc.indiana.edu/vol12/issue2/bos.html
Brook, B and Gilding, A. (2001) Introduction in E-learning, ethics and equity conference proceedings Melbourne, Victoria University : p7
Cooper, T. (1997). Building an Ethical Community: Queensland University of Technology. available USQ library
Corlett, S., Bryans, P. & Mavin, S. (2006). Encouraging research through Communities of Practice. Encyclopedia of Communities of Practice in Information and Knowledge Management. Idea Group Reference. pp. 157-162
DeLong, D. (1997) “Building the knowledge- based organization: How culture drives knowledge behaviors,” Working Paper, Ernst & Young’s Center for Business Innovation, Boston. Retrived on 1/1/2008 from: http://www.providersedge.com/docs/km_articles/Building_the_Knowledge-Based_Organization.pdf
Downes, S. (2004). The Evolving Concept of the Community of Practice. Building distributed communities of Practice conference, Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. Retrieved on 23/12/2007 from http://www.slideshare.net/Downes/the-evolving-concept-of-the-community-of-practice/
Dyson, E. (2007) coment in World Question Centre, The Edge Retrived 1/1/2008 from: http://www.edge.org/q2008/q08_13.html#dysone
Gearthart, D. (2005). The Ethical Use of Technology and the Internet in Research and Learning. Submitted for the Faculty Research Category For the Center of Excellence in Computer Information Systems.
Hinton, B. (2003). Knowledge Management and Communities of Practice: an experience from Rabobank Australia and New Zealand. Paper presented (Rabobank Australia) to the IAMA.World Food and Agribusiness Symposium, Cancun, Mexico, June 20-21 2003. Retrieved 1/12/2007 at: http://www.ifama.org/conferences/2003Conference/papers/hinton.pdf
Kimble, C., Hildreth, P. and Wright, P. (2000) ‘Communities of practice: going virtual’, in KnowledgeManagement and Business Model Innovation, Chapter 13, pp. 220–234, Idea Group Publishing, Hershey (USA)/London (UK). Retrived 10/12/2007 athttp://www-users.cs.york.ac.uk/~kimble/research/13kimble.pdf
Lai, E.L-C. (1998). International intellectual Property Rights Protection and the Rate of Product Innovation. Journal of Development Economics, Vol. 55. (1998) 133-153. Reterived on 11/1/2007 from: http://personal.cityu.edu.hk/~efedwin/ipprot3k1.pdf
Schwen, T. M., & Hara, N. (2003). Community of Practice: A Metaphor for Online Design? The Information Society, 19, 257-270 Retrieved Googlescholar, 21/12/2007http://scholar.google.com.au/scholarq=ethics,+communities+of+practice&hl=en&lr=&start=10&sa=N
Quéau, P. (2000). Who owns Knowledge? Retrieved on December, 30, 2007 from: http://mondediplo.com/2000/01/14queau
Quinn, M. (2006). Ethics for the Information Age, 2nd edition. U.S.A. Pearson Addison Wesley
Virtual Conference in USQ: http://rpc2007.usq.edu.au/?q=node/4
Walker, G. Justesen, S, Robinson, P. Communities of Practice, In-groups, Out-groups and the Space Between. Retrieved on 23/12/2007 from http://communityknowledge.co.uk/Pdfs/Groupthink.pdf
Wenger, E., & Snyder, W. (2004). Learning in Communities. LINEZine Summer. Retrieved on December, 30, 2007 from: http://www.linezine.com/1/features/ewwslc.htm
25. Wenger, E., McDermott, R., & Snyder, W.(2002). Cultivating Communities of Practice: A guide to managing knowledge. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Business School Press
Saturday, December 15, 2007
Encouraging research through Communities of Practice.
Sharing Knowledge - The Process
Sharing knowledge is not only about the process of transferring information between members in a community, but rather it helps researchers in some CoPs to extend their research process and gain knowledge in expanding their research outcomes through exchanging ideas and thoughts with different researchers. Most importantly, researchers gain confidence in starting the process of publishing their research through their interaction in CoPs.
This kind of sharing knowledge is a give and take process between members of CoPs. In other words, knowledge is managed by sharing it with the community’s members.
This article reminds me of one of my colleagues who became depressed because he tried many times recently to publish some of his research but each time, it was rejected. In my opinion, if he could join one of these CoPs that has been referred to in this article, that would definitely help him in critiquing his submission, and others who have faced similar obstacles would perhaps, be able to share their experience and hopefully, together they could suggest some salient solutions to their problems in publishing their research.
This is an example of how Knowledge management encourages members in CoPs to search for solutions to some technical problems as well as share similar problems and desired outcomes. Hopefully members will find solution and be able to start to write their research and successfully publish it.
So, do you think as a member of a CoP, you would be better able to write a research paper with the support of new members you have met in this community? Will you let them help you by sharing their comments, criticisms, thoughts and ideas to solve some problems related to your research.
Sharing knowledge is not only about the process of transferring information between members in a community, but rather it helps researchers in some CoPs to extend their research process and gain knowledge in expanding their research outcomes through exchanging ideas and thoughts with different researchers. Most importantly, researchers gain confidence in starting the process of publishing their research through their interaction in CoPs.
This kind of sharing knowledge is a give and take process between members of CoPs. In other words, knowledge is managed by sharing it with the community’s members.
This article reminds me of one of my colleagues who became depressed because he tried many times recently to publish some of his research but each time, it was rejected. In my opinion, if he could join one of these CoPs that has been referred to in this article, that would definitely help him in critiquing his submission, and others who have faced similar obstacles would perhaps, be able to share their experience and hopefully, together they could suggest some salient solutions to their problems in publishing their research.
This is an example of how Knowledge management encourages members in CoPs to search for solutions to some technical problems as well as share similar problems and desired outcomes. Hopefully members will find solution and be able to start to write their research and successfully publish it.
So, do you think as a member of a CoP, you would be better able to write a research paper with the support of new members you have met in this community? Will you let them help you by sharing their comments, criticisms, thoughts and ideas to solve some problems related to your research.
For all my colleagues in USQ, you can have access to this article easily through USQ library, the Encyclopedia of Communities of Practice. I hope that you will be able to access this interesting article. My deepest apology for the rest for not having any direct link for this article. Comments are invited and appreciated :)
Regards,
Laila
Regards,
Laila
---------------------------------
Corlett, S.; Bryans, P. & Mavin, S. (2006). Encouraging research through Communities of Practice. Encyclopedia of Communities of Practice in Information and Knowledge Management. Idea Group Reference. pp. 157-162
Information transfer in CoPs
Knowledge Management and Communities of Practice: an experience from Rabobank Australia and New Zealand.
This article is very interesting to understand the relationship between Knowledge management and communities of practice. Although it’s an experience from Rabobank Australia and New Zealand, it has defined and referred to the strong relationship between knowledge management and communities of practice. The following summarizes the most important point of this article:
Knowledge management is a collective term for the facilitation of improvements to an organization’s capabilities, efficiencies and competitive advantage through the better use of its individual and collective knowledge and information resources. Knowledge management has become one of the most important key drivers that re-emergence communities of practice.
One of the important saying about knowledge management in the article according to Davenport and Prusak (1995), contend that: “Knowledge is a fluid mix of framed experience, values, contextual information, and expert insight that provides a framework for evaluating and incorporating new experience and information. It originates and is applied in the minds of knowers”.
This article has refers to information transfer as the increasing link in community knowledge and information. Therefore, in CoP, the knowledge management is the process of transferring and exchanging ideas, information, and experience between the members of the community. Besides, CoP can exist whenever there is a will to share information and experiences in helpful, like-minded community.
If you are a member in any CoP, how do you think the knowledge is transferred and shared between members?
Any thoughts?
Laila
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Knowledge Management and Communities of Practice: an experience from Rabobank Australia and New Zealand. Paper presented by Brad Hinton (Rabobank Australia) to the IAMA.World Food and Agribusiness Symposium, Cancun, Mexico, June 20-21 2003. Retrieved 1/12/2007 at: http://www.ifama.org/conferences/2003Conference/papers/hinton.pdf
Hard and Soft Knowledge
Communities of Practice: Going Virtual
by Kimble, C., Hildreth, P. and Wright, P
When we read about Knowledge management in CoP, we will find these two terms, Hard and Soft Knowledge. Hard knowledge is the one that exist and we learn it from books, internet resources and experts, but soft knowledge is the one that we can contribute in creating and forming it in CoP. This article has focus in Soft Knowledge in CoPs and how it began to exist. Telling a story we have it from our own lives as an experience and share it with others to arrive at solution to that problem that itself is a soft knowledge. Over time, that solution was passed around with other technicians and became part of the community’s stock knowledge. This knowledge is codified and stored to share it with others who may have the same problem in future in different time. There are three methods of Soft knowledge that exist in CoPs as the following:
First: The gathering of domain knowledge (for example, how to solve a particular tricky problem as I mentioned above that it starts by telling a story of the problem).
Second: the construction of knowledge of work practices specific to the community (for example, knowledge of the idiosyncrasies of an individual machine and how they are catered for)
Finally, there is the knowledge that the community constructs about the competencies of its members (for example, through the appraisal of their told stories)
What do you think about Soft Knowledge? Do you think it’s helpful to use in CoPs? Is it effective to use the same experience and solutions for some members of the same community but from earlier time in that community?
Regards,
Laila
----------------------------------
Kimble, C., Hildreth, P. and Wright, P. (2000) ‘Communities of practice: going virtual’, in KnowledgeManagement and Business Model Innovation, Chapter 13, pp. 220–234, Idea Group Publishing, Hershey (USA)/London (UK). Retrived 10/12/2007 athttp://www-users.cs.york.ac.uk/~kimble/research/13kimble.pdf
by Kimble, C., Hildreth, P. and Wright, P
When we read about Knowledge management in CoP, we will find these two terms, Hard and Soft Knowledge. Hard knowledge is the one that exist and we learn it from books, internet resources and experts, but soft knowledge is the one that we can contribute in creating and forming it in CoP. This article has focus in Soft Knowledge in CoPs and how it began to exist. Telling a story we have it from our own lives as an experience and share it with others to arrive at solution to that problem that itself is a soft knowledge. Over time, that solution was passed around with other technicians and became part of the community’s stock knowledge. This knowledge is codified and stored to share it with others who may have the same problem in future in different time. There are three methods of Soft knowledge that exist in CoPs as the following:
First: The gathering of domain knowledge (for example, how to solve a particular tricky problem as I mentioned above that it starts by telling a story of the problem).
Second: the construction of knowledge of work practices specific to the community (for example, knowledge of the idiosyncrasies of an individual machine and how they are catered for)
Finally, there is the knowledge that the community constructs about the competencies of its members (for example, through the appraisal of their told stories)
What do you think about Soft Knowledge? Do you think it’s helpful to use in CoPs? Is it effective to use the same experience and solutions for some members of the same community but from earlier time in that community?
Regards,
Laila
----------------------------------
Kimble, C., Hildreth, P. and Wright, P. (2000) ‘Communities of practice: going virtual’, in KnowledgeManagement and Business Model Innovation, Chapter 13, pp. 220–234, Idea Group Publishing, Hershey (USA)/London (UK). Retrived 10/12/2007 athttp://www-users.cs.york.ac.uk/~kimble/research/13kimble.pdf
What's KM stratgey in CoP?
Knowledge management as a doughnut: Shaping your knowledge Strategy through communities of practice.
By Etienne Wenger
In this article, it has been realized recently the importance of communities of practices as a social fabric of knowledge. How can we define knowledge management in communities of practice? Knowledge itself is what our human communities have accumulated over time to understand the world and act effectively in it. But what about the term “management”? Wenger in this article tried to define what do we mean by management and it is mostly related with the practitioners who run the knowledge in the communities of practice. The term “management” is to take care of, or looking after something. When it comes to have the term management with knowledge, it’s about managing knowledge by sharing it with others.
Knowledge management is a strategic activity. It starts with strategy and ends with strategy. There are strategies that should be followed to implement Knowledge management in CoPs as the following:
By Etienne Wenger
In this article, it has been realized recently the importance of communities of practices as a social fabric of knowledge. How can we define knowledge management in communities of practice? Knowledge itself is what our human communities have accumulated over time to understand the world and act effectively in it. But what about the term “management”? Wenger in this article tried to define what do we mean by management and it is mostly related with the practitioners who run the knowledge in the communities of practice. The term “management” is to take care of, or looking after something. When it comes to have the term management with knowledge, it’s about managing knowledge by sharing it with others.
Knowledge management is a strategic activity. It starts with strategy and ends with strategy. There are strategies that should be followed to implement Knowledge management in CoPs as the following:
- The first step in knowledge management is to translate the strategy of the organization into a set of domains of knowledge. A domain breaks down the problem into chunks that are manageable by those who should be managing knowledge, the practitioners.
- Cultivate the communities according to each domain.
- Engage practitioners in the development of their practice.
- Translate the learning inherent in activities into refined practices.
- Broaden the scope of learning beyond its source.
- Think about knowledge strategically.
To conclude this article, it’s very important to make sure that the community has the resources it needs to function and that its ideas and proposals find their way into the organization. The role of management is to make it possible for practitioners to act as managers of their knowledge.
Regards,
Laila
------------------------------
Wenger, E. (2004). Knowledge management as a doughnut: Shaping your knowledge strategy through communities of practice. Ivey Business Journal, (January/February 2004), 1-8
Knowledge Management in CoP
Welcome to my blog. In this blog I am going to provide different resources to support the main topic of this blog which is about Knowledge Management. Knowledge Management is one of the main keys that drives the re-emergence of communities of practice. This blog will address:
- the definition of knowledge management in CoPs
- the implementation of knowledge management in CoPs
- the formation of knowledge in CoPs.
- the difference between soft and hard knowledge.
The answers to these questions will be provided through the posts in this blog. I hope you will enjoy navigating through my blog and find the resources helpful in assiting you to have a better picture of the importance of Knowledge management in driving the re-emergence of CoPs. Your comments are much appreciated.
Laila
Laila
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