Using Activity Theory and Community of Practice to Understand Knowledge Management Processes of International Enterprises with High Diversity Birgit Krogstie The Norwegian Polytechnic College (DPH), Norway
[email protected] John Krogstie SINTEF Telecom and Informatics, and IDI, NTNU
[email protected]
Knowledge management within an organisation is fundamentally about supporting the organisation’s learning processes. These processes take place within, and between, communities that may be denoted activity systems, with reference to activity theory (Engeström 1987), or communities of practice, following Wenger (1998). Knowledge management entails equipping the 'production units' of an organisation with adequate means for development. Discussion databases is often includede in an organisation's knowledge management (KM) system. Discussion databases are an arena for information exchange and knowledge building representing a kind of productive borderland to the activity systems involved. Following activity theory, an activity system is a relatively stable unit exhibiting a learning history. A major challenge for activity theory is the lack of stability associated with rapidly shifting configurations of people in and between many modern organisations. Many projects in a modern project organisation arguably do not qualify as activity systems. Engeström and colleagues have proposed the concept of ‘knotworking’ to cope with issues such as these. They define ‘knotworking’ in the following way: “The notion of knot refers to a rapidly pulsating, distributed and partially improvised orchestration of collaborative performance between otherwise loosely connected actors and activity systems.” (Engeström et al. 1999a p.346).
In this paper, we make use of case material from a discussion database in a large global organisation. Concepts pertaining to activity systems, knotworking, and communities of practice are applied to the case in an analysis of the role of the discussion database in the organisation. The example database, which is in active use, belongs to a large global consultancy firm. The business of the firm entails information systems development projects as well as more general organisational development projects for clients. The needs for competence and information are necessarily vast across the firm. Access to knowledge whenever and wherever needed is a stated goal in the organisation, as is knowledge sharing. The organisation has a global presence having employees with a wide diversity of backgrounds and cultures, while still being expected to act as a common pool of resources and knowledge. For learning to take place through a database discussion, it is not necessary that the discussion alone or in combination with a set of related discussions take on status as a motive of a dedicated activity system or community of practice. The notion of a knot, applicable to many database discussions, illustrates how problems are solved across communities. Having the database serve as a shared tool or resource may suffice to support learning processes in the communities defining the day-to-day practice of the discussion participants. The exchange of alternative viewpoints and solutions through the discussions may reveal or create contradictions leading to learning locally. We conclude that learning processes are supported by the database in various ways, both through the development of new communities within the context of database contributions, and through the instrumental role of the database as a channel of exchange between communities
Abstract. A discussion database can play a significant role in the knowledge management of an organisation, supporting the organisational learning primarily taking place within the organisation's 'productive units'. These communities can be denoted activity systems, following the tradition of activity theory as discussed by Engeström, or communities of practice, following Wenger. Discussion databases are an arena for information exchange and knowledge building representing a kind of productive borderland to the activity systems involved. I this paper, we make use of case material from a discussion database in a large global organisation. Concepts pertaining to activity systems and communities of practice are applied to the case in a brief analysis of the role of the discussion database in the organisation. We conclude that learning processes are supported by the database in various ways, both through the development of new communities within the context of database contributions, and through the instrumental role of the database as a channel of exchange between communities.
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1 Introduction Knowledge management within an organisation is fundamentally about supporting the organisation’s learning processes. These processes take place within, and between, communities that may be denoted activity systems, with reference to activity theory (Engeström 1987), or communities of practice, following Wenger (1998). Knowledge management entails equipping these 'productive units' with adequate means for development. An important part of supporting the learning processes is by facilitating information exchange between the productive units. A discussion database can serve such a function, and this is the topic of what follows.
2 The major arenas for learning: activity systems or communities of practice According to activity theory, human knowledge, learning and activity in general are fundamentally related to collective systems engaging in goal-directed action based on underlying motives shared among the activity participants (Leont’ev 1981). The instruments used to achieve activity goals influence, and are influenced by, the activities in which they are employed. Engeström has proposed a model of the activity system that includes the activity subject, instrument(s) and object/motive as well as rules pertaining to the activity performance, the performing community, and the division of labour in this community (1987). The object of the activity is related to an outcome, corresponding to the product of the activity. Activity systems are interrelated, providing each other with input and serving as instruments for each other. Engeström points to the contradictions inevitably occurring within and between activity systems and how such tensions initiate and fuel processes of transformation. The activity motive and the scripts, sets of actions that may be applied in realising the motive, can be more or less articulated and subject to participants’ conscious attention. Different levels of interaction have been suggested in this respect (Engeström 1992; Bardram 1998). During a ‘normal’ flow of interaction, scripts are followed without being questioned, in accordance with participants’ roles. This state is denoted the level of co-ordination. When the motive is articulated and participants experience that they work on a shared problem,
activity takes place on a level of co-operation. Finally, there is the level of coconstruction, at which both scripts and motive are subject to participants’ attention and reconstruction. Through their interaction, the actors reconceptualise their organisation and interaction in relation to the shared motive In the present context, we choose to regard an activity system somewhat loosely and pragmatically as a relatively stable community producing something over time in accordance with a largely shared and articulated motive. According to Leont’ev, the object/motive is the defining characteristic of an activity system, but common motives may be difficult to identify in practice. Blackler (1993) suggests that common routines be activity-defining, which would imply looking for procedural or functional ‘clusters’ when modelling an organisation in terms of its activity systems. It should be stressed that the structuring of a given ‘world’ into activity systems is not unambiguous. A concept related to that of activity systems is that of communities of practice, elaborately described by Wenger (1998). At the heart of practice are the complementary processes of participation and reification. Participation refers to “the social experience of living in the world in terms of membership in social communities and active involvement in social enterprises” (p.55). Reification is “the process of giving form to our experience by producing objects that congeal the experience into ‘thingness’”. Through this process, we create focal points around which meaning is negotiated. Wenger proposes three dimensions of “the relation by which practice is the source of coherence of a community” (p.73): • Mutual engagement means that participants understand each other and experience mutual accountability, that they interact in meaningful ways and negotiate their enterprise. Importantly, mutual engagement entails utilising other's competence as well as one’s own. • Joint enterprise results from the negotiation of the enterprise through mutual engagement. The joint enterprise is “defined by the participants in the very process of pursuing it” (P.77), as a negotiated response to their situation. • A shared repertoire of artifacts, concepts, historic events etc. may be applied by participants in the constant meaning-making processes of the practice. According to Wenger, belonging to any community may be accounted for in terms of engagement, imagination, and alignment, which all contribute to the identity-formation of the members. There is a strong relationship between participation and identity formation: “Participation goes beyond direct engagement in specific activities with specific people. It places the negotiation of membership in the context of our forms of membership in various
communities. It is a constituent of our identities.“ (p.57). In an interplay with participation, identification contributes to identity formation as a process “through which modes of belonging become constitutive of our identities by creating bonds or distinctions in which we become invested” (p.191). A final point made by Wenger is the thought of communities of practice as shared histories of learning. Participation and reification serve as forms of memory and “sources of continuity and discontinuity, and thus as channels by which one can influence the evolution of practice” (p.86). Knowledge is fundamentally related to practices: “Knowing is defined only in the context of specific practices, where it arises out of the combination of a regime of competence and an experience of meaning” (p.141). In the context of this paper, we have chosen to focus on the similarities between the concepts of activity systems and communities of practice. Being descriptive of organisations' relatively stable 'learning units' or 'productive units', constantly developing through inner dynamics and mutual influence, the concepts have much in common. The notions of joint enterprise and shared repertoire in a community of practice correspond fairly well to the activity system's object/motive and instruments. The productive units are bases for collective identity and undertaking, constituting the major ground for defining the purpose and meaning of organisational activity. In what follows, we will draw on theory from both of the perspectives so far presented, considering knowledge management to be about understanding and influencing processes of knowledge creation, use and transaction within and between learning units, whether they be called communities of practice or activity systems.
3 Discussion databases as a means for knowledge management A discussion database is often a part of an organisation's knowledge management (KM) system. It allows the organisation's members to participate in discussions by contributing with questions, answers or remarks, and reading the contents of discussions. We speak here of discussion topics relevant to the participants' roles as organisation members, and we assume that there is some structuring that makes it possible to search for information with specified characteristics. We deliberately use the term information here, adhering to the view that what is contributed to, contained in, and extracted from a knowledge management (KM) system is information. Knowledge is information given meaning through
use within the context of an activity system. In practice, it is sometimes difficult to make this distinction. Information being subject to an organisation's knowledge management can be described along various dimensions. Different degrees of structuring or formalisation are one possible aspect. Database discussions are typically informal, but a certain relevance and a reasonable form of presentation is expected. At the other end of the scale, an organisation usually manages formalised information traditionally associated with library functions. A related axis of information classification is that of specific vs. general. Database discussions typically contains case specific information, e.g. related to concrete projects, but they may also have contributions containing generalised information e.g. about the organisation's methodology in a particular area. Contents of discussion databases may serve as a basis for extracting information about the organisation on a more general level, for instance, common approaches in projects related to a certain type of task. One way of considering information exchange is the synchronous/asynchronous dimension. Communication through the database is asynchronous and a discussion may last for months with new contributions coming in at irregular intervals. Still, a contribution requesting information from other users of the database may spring from a need for a fast there-and-then answer to an urgent problem, and with luck, the response may be immediate. A discussion database thus draws on the advantages of informal, low-threshold there-and-then communication as well as on the possibility for representing and recapitulating history. Yet another aspect of knowledge management to be mentioned her, is that any instance of information exchange and transformation may be characterised by the type of relationship between the activity system(s) contributing the information and the activity system(s) making use if it. Also, there may be other activity systems intervening in this process. Figure 1 and Figure 2 illustrate possible constellations of information exchange between activity systems through a discussion database. The triangles symbolise activity systems.
Figure 1: Activity system C making use of information exchanged between A and B
Figure 2: Activity system A making use of systemised information from various activity systems
The discussion database (DD) triangle in the figures indicates the possibility of regarding the discussion database and its logical maintenance as an activity system in its own right. Another alternative, which does not preclude the previous one, is viewing the database as an instrument to the activity systems involved in database discussions. Leaving activity theory terminology, arena or channel ar other possible terms for the role of the database. One possible determinant of a database's status as an activity system in its own right, is the degree of logical database management performed by designated actors. If there are individuals with the role of monitoring and guiding discussions, and/or extracting information for further processing and use in the organisation, database administration may be experienced as an activity system. Whether discussion participants share the motive of this system, is questionable: are database contributions made because contributors wish to make the database useful to the organisation? While this sometimes may be the case, motives for contributions are more likely to be linked to other activity systems (e.g. projects) of which the contributors are members.
Another possible form of activity system with the discussion database as its homeground may evolve from discussions or sets of related discussions, if they entail a community of interested participants engaging over time in a learning process. We will later return to the question of what should 'count' as activity systems in such cases. To illustrate, we now turn to an example of a discussion from a discussion database. As a background for the brief analysis to follow, we have examined a number of discussions of varying contents, length and structure. The example discussion is drawn from this material.
4 Example of a database discussion The example database belongs to a large global consultancy firm. The business of the firm entails information systems development projects as well as more general organisational development projects for clients, and also management of business processes outsourced by clients. The needs for competence and information are necessarily vast across the firm. Access to knowledge whenever and wherever needed is a stated goal in the organisation, as is knowledge sharing. Knowledge management is presently implemented at a fairly advanced level in the firm, with the support of an internal computer network allowing for inter-organisational communication and access to common resources. One of the globally accessible resources is the discussion databases, which are part of a Lotus Notes-based system for knowledge exchange. The bulk of the firm's employees world wide have access to the databases. There are different databases for the different organisational competency areas, and users typically – but not necessarily solely – access databases within their own competency area. The number of contributions to the database made by each employee is registered, and, as part of the knowledge sharing strategy of the firm, gives credit in the regular formal evaluations (‘ratings’) possibly leading to promotion. The users can search and read the database contents, as well as make their own contributions, termed postings. For each database there is a person responsible for following up on discussion contents. The database is largely self-regulated. The topics under which discussions sort, are however determined in accordance with a fixed taxonomy. The database contents can be presented sorted according to topics, according to names of contributors, or in terms of dates of postings. Postings
older than a certain period of time are transferred to an archive (database) and must be sought especially there. Sorting the database contents according to topic, the database user is presented with a list of topics, each of which may be ‘expanded’ into a list of the discussions it contains. Each discussion may further be displayed in its full length. Each discussion is called a thread and may be short or lengthy. Postings normally take the form [question – answer – (possibly) more answers]. The typical initial postings are of the type “I am currently working on a certain project (with certain relevant characteristics) and I have problem such-and-such, is there anyone out there who can give me advice?” The initial posting typically receives from zero to a few answers. Answers range from quick references to various resources (other projects, internal or external courses, books, etc.) to solutions briefly sketched out. The problem formulation of the initial posting may result in requests for clarification. Some very concrete questions may be met with an answer in effect presenting a solution, whereas most responses consist in information that can serve as a direction of further search. A discussion thread may also contain references to other relevant threads. Multi-layer threads develop when responses are made to responses. Our sample discussion is taken from a database belonging to the firm's competency area focusing on organisational development and human performance in the client organisations. Our discussion thread has the title ’organizational esteem’, sorting under the general topic ’Capacity to Change’. The thread contains 12 postings. The main issue discussed is whether there is such a thing as ’organisational-esteem’, as a concept parallel to individual selfesteem. We present a summarised version of the discussion in the appendix. One way to indicate the structure and complexity of the discussion is through a model showing postings as interrelated nodes. The sample discussion is illustrated on an overview level in Figure 4. Figure 3 shows the legend of the model. sender (date) TITLE
posting
resource (e.g. an activity system)
P1
P2
P2 replies to P1
P1
P2
P2 refers to P1 ('I got this information from P1 / base this on P1')
R1
P1
P1 refers to R1 ('I got this information from R1 / base this on R1')
Figure 3: Legend of the discussion model
A.E.A., St.Charles (24/3-99)
GOD TOLD ME TO REPLY TO YOUR POSTING
U.S., Zurich (5/3-99)
G.W.M., London (23/3-99)
prev. work in psych. concultancy; tools
SELF & ORGANIZATIONAL SELF-ESTEEM
ORGANIZATIONAL SELF-ESTEEM
S.S.,Oslo (9/7-99)
LOCUS OF CONTROL AND ”SENSE OF COHERENCE”
prev. career as a psychoORGANIZATIONAL therapist; ESTEEM tools G.M., Toronto (X/Y-99)
U.S., Zurich (24/3-99)
JUMPING FROM INDIVIDUAL LEVEL TO ORG LEVEL
Professional field of psychology
A.E.A., St.Charles (12/1-99)
A.A., New Dehli (X/Y-99)
RE: ORGANIZATIONAL ESTEEM
ESTEEM AND CULTURE D.K.L., Washington (14/1-99)
HIGH ESTEEM, LOW MORALE?
A.T., Singapore (13/1-99)
ORGANIZATIONAL CULTURE, THEORY AND MEASUREMENT
Chris Handy: "The Gods of Management"
G.M., Toronto (14/1-99)
RE: BETTER DEFINING ORGANIZATIONALESTEEM
G.M., Toronto (14/1-99)
RE: RE: ORGANIZATIONAL ESTEEM
À.E.A., St. Charles (15/1-99)
RE:
Figure 4: A model of the discussion 'organizational esteem' Any posting is related to one or more communities, e.g. an ongoing project, a particular part of the organisation, a course once attended, or an earlier employment relationship. We have modelled explicitly direct references to information resources, which may range from books to ongoing projects. Such resources may be viewed as references to the communities producing them. The discussion thread of the example has been chosen because it has a certain complexity in terms of number of postings. We assume that the longer the discussion, the greater the likelihood of finding elements of learning processes within the thread. Its contents are less directly problem- and project-
related than the average discussion, as there are no direct reference to projects. The case example is particularly illustrative of how other contexts than those directly defined by client projects may play an important part in a discussion. The model in Figure 4 tells us little about how the communities involved interact through the database. Knowledge of the exact activity systems pertaining to the case example would require access to, and analysis of, empirical data that we do not have. Instead, what we would like to do in the following is to investigate on a more abstract level the relationships pertaining to the database discussions, with reference to theory about communities of practice and activity systems. For a more elaborate discussion of knowledge management in the case organisation, see (Krogstie, B. 2000).
5 Understanding the discussion database: knotworking and boundaries We have stated that discussion databases are arenas for interaction between activity systems. Following activity theory, an activity system as a relatively stable unit exhibiting a learning history. A major challenge for activity theory is the lack of stability associated with rapidly shifting configurations of people in and between many modern organisations. Many projects in a modern project organisation arguably do not qualify as activity systems. Still, in our case discussion, we assume that participants are affiliated with activity systems that typically are client projects. The database itself, however, can be seen as an arena for shifting configurations of people. Engeström and colleagues have proposed the concept of ‘knotworking’ to cope with issues such as these. They define ‘knotworking’ in the following way: “The notion of knot refers to a rapidly pulsating, distributed and partially improvised orchestration of collaborative performance between otherwise loosely connected actors and activity systems.” (Engeström et al. 1999a p.346). Knots can be visually modelled, showing which activity systems or individual agents are involved in a process of problem solving (Engeström et al. 1999). Arrows between activity system triangles depict instances of transaction between the systems (or individuals representing them), with a zigzag arrow indicating a conflict or contradiction. Development over time is shown through numbering of the transaction arrows. Several 'episodes' thus modelled together form a ‘knotworking trajectory’. In (Engeström et al. 1999) the authors attempt to model a case from health service in this manner. We note that the dynamic relationships between activity systems may be supportive, as when someone is called upon for advice, or conflicting, as in the case when a patient resists being helped by medical personnel. Anticipated future states are also modelled.
We have argued that database discussions represent information exchange and transformation involving a set of activity systems. Is the database an arena for knotworking? We look for “rapidly pulsating, distributed and partially improvised orchestration of collaborative performance between otherwise loosely connected actors and activity systems”. Whether the orchestration of performance is viewed as distributed or not depends on how the database is conceived. Participants are located across the globe, but they all ‘meet’ within the ‘location’ of the globally accessible document. This should not be considered a major issue here. We suggest that a discussion or set of related discussions may be called a knot if it has • a certain duration, • a reasonable frequency of contributions, • participation from activity systems that normally do not interact closely, and • focus on problem solving. Following the above, the typical discussion thread of the database examined in our case, comprising a request for help and responses to this request, may be said to exhibit the above characteristics. The database is thus an arena for knotworking. The specific example discussion shown in the previous section is not very focused on problem solving. It demonstrates information exchange and the building of knowledge within a loosely connected community, but 'collaborative performance' is only weakly descriptive. On the other hand, participants may be viewed as loosely connected. We note that there are no references to common projects among the discussion participants. These people are situated at different locations (such as New Delhi, Oslo, Zurich, and Chicago) and presumably have their primary engagement in the firm in different projects. What the participants at least have in common, is an affiliation with the firm with its corporate culture and global infrastructure. For instance, all employees attend similar introduction courses. Participants share terminology, as illustrated in the case discussion when participants refer to a ‘client’ without further explanation. Our example suggests that the question of knotworking may be seen as one of degree. As the example discussion is a poor example of knotworking, we have not attempted modelling it as such. Still, the usefulness of such modelling in the general case is an important issue in our discussion. We may start by asking, in the case of a database discussion or a set of related discussions meeting our criteria for knotworking, where the knot starts and ends. There may be follow-up exchanges between participants withdrawing
to their own sphere, using telephone, email or otherwise meeting. This we know from postings containing email addresses or telephone numbers and requests to get in contact though these channels. Being unavailable to other discussion participants, these exchanges show that a knot may transcend the limits of the database discussions. Activity preceding a discussion, resulting in a request posted to the database, could be seen as part of the related discussion. The same can be said about activity influenced by the reading of database postings. It seems that database excerpts are insufficient empirical material for the complete modelling of the instances of knotworking involved. Generally, in the case of discussion databases, when it is useful to model an instance of knotworking in the way demonstrated by Engestrom.? At least, we would require a certain complexity of the processes involved, which brings about a need to gain a structured overview. A simple question-and-answer discussion thread with few references to activity systems may not qualify. Also, we need some knowledge of the activity systems involved as well as the temporal aspect or history of the knotworking process. The latter is well documented in the whole textual content of the discussion. However, as mentioned above, it can be argued that the knotworking process extends well beyond the actual participation in the discussion, which means more data needs to be collected. Through identifying and modelling instances of knotworking in a discussion database, light is shed on the learning processes involved and on the roles played by various activity systems in problem solving. These are processes and communities that evolve from actual needs and interests, and thus useful to identify and nourish for an organisation aiming to support learning and innovation. Given favourable circumstances and a lasting motive, a knot or otherwise loosely connected community may evolve into an activity system or community of practice in its own right, with a learning history and a certain stability of participation. This can happen when a set of actors are motivated for building knowledge and for building and maintaining a network relevant to their field of interest. On the part of the organisation, spending extra resources on this kind of self-driven activity may not be necessary (in some cases, we could imagine a negative effect on motivation from making activity 'official' with a dedicated budget). In other cases, resources are needed for activity to continue developing. At the least, the organisation can seek to avoid future moves likely to inhibit desirable learning processes. What activity theory generally fails to capture explicitly is the role of the individual participant of an activity system. The simplified picture is one of participation and non-participation, and of participation in one activity system as opposed to another at a given point in time. In reality, the question of participation is complex. For instance, the individual participant is a member of
communities which are not communities of practice and which do not imply active participation, but which serve to locate practice within a broader context. Wenger (1998) suggests the term constellations for such communities. An example may be a large organisational unit to which an employee formally belongs, but which does not play a major part in her daily practice at work. Belonging to certain activity systems or communities not only influences the individual's actions, but also the frames of reference employed in interpreting information and developing knowledge. For instance, any reader of a posting in the discussion database will relate its content information to a set of communities, both to those of which he himself is a member and to communities that he knows only from the outside. The discussion thus represents a 'conceptual landscape of communities'. Each discussion participant can be seen as having partial knowledge of this landscape, which is also a different landscape to each participant. The landscape dynamically changes as boundaries are moved or crossed throughout the discussion. According to Wenger, membership in a community of practice may be more or less peripheral (XX). Both membership and non-membership are relevant to identity formation. The boundaries of communities may be connected by boundary objects: “artifacts, documents, terms, concepts, and other forms of reification around which communities of practice can organize their interconnections”, and brokering: “connections provided by people who can introduce elements of one practice into another” (p.105). Multimembership thus entails particular possibilities for contributing to the learning processes of communities. These concepts may serve to complement activity theory in our analysis of discussion databases. Analogously with the view that the discussion database may serve as an arena for the development of new activity systems, we may consider it an arena for communities of practice having the database as their homeground. Clusters of postings and threads in the database seem to form units of engagement and participation, even exhibiting glimpses of learning history among those engaged. In relation to Wenger’s three dimensions of community, we may note the following: Mutual engagement: We note that utilisation of others’ competence is fundamental to the database discussions, and fully in line with the firm's goal of knowledge sharing, Joint enterprise: The discussion threads are chosen and formed by participants who freely decide whether and where to contribute. Negotiation of enterprise within each thread happens as new contributions are added. Another possibility is to expand the field of negotiation by posing a new question, thus starting a new thread, and hoping for others’ participation in accordance with the proposed issue. Apart from negotiated meaning within discussions or topics,
the maintenance of the database may also take on the role as the joint enterprise of contributors, based on a general acknowledgement of the usefulness of the database as a resource to the organisation. Shared repertoire: Contributions contain explicit and implicit references to other postings in the database. The database serves as a resource to itself, guiding new contributions both in terms of contents and form. We may associate peripherality with the degree of participation in a community of practice. Applying this to the database discussions, the frequent contributions among some participants within a topic can be said to define a centre, with a related periphery of single postings. A person with the assigned role as database responsible resides at the core of the practice. Contributors are less peripheral than non-contributors. Arguably, the latter group should be seen as non-participants. Still it makes sense to consider infrequent readers of discussions more peripheral than frequent readers. ‘Pure’ readers may actively make use of information from the database within their respective communities. Follow-up exchanges outside the database define a kind of extension to the practice. We note from this that boundaries and connections reside at the core of what the discussion database is about. The database contents can be viewed as a refication of the discussions. As such, they influence participation. We believe that most responses to discussions are primarily intended as there-and-then responses to one or more contributors. Contributions nevertheless form part of whole discussions that can be read in their totality at later points in time by anyone having access to the database. The fact that the exact wordings of past contributions are there, makes it more difficult to re-shape history and negotiate meanings, but also creates a base for doing so. The existing contents of a discussion (or a set of discussions) make it less necessary to re-formulate and re-construct the joint enterprise. At the same time, the reified discussion allows for an examination of history useful for reflection and negotiation of meaning. We may view the database as a shared object serving as a resource for surrounding communities of practice. We may however also choose the opposite: viewing the surrounding communities as resources to the database discussion. If we turn to activity theory for a moment, we note the relevance of the notion of instrumentality of one activity system to another. Communities formed by categorisations such as ‘employee of our firm’ or ‘degree holder’ may exhibit little direct engagement by people considering themselves members. Still, work of alignment and imagination is part of the experienced membership, contributing to members’ accounts of existential questions such as “Who am I” and “Where am I going”. Participating in a database discussion may contribute to the process of identification with the
organisation at large, or with a constellation within the organisation. For the individual developing his identity, participating in database discussions may be a way of building arenas for the negotiation of meanings within areas that fall outside the repertoires of the communities of his day-to-day project work. The example discussion may be illustrative of this, although we have little information about the immediate relevance of concepts such as organisational esteem and individual self-esteem to the participants of the discussion. Precisely the opportunity to follow personal interest may stimulate engagement in respect of the database. With enough engagement from participants, learning processes within the realm of the discussions are nourished, and the result may be ‘new’ communities of practice, gaining momentum over time. Finally, we suggest that the database as a community of practice may be a great place for imagination. If we view this practice as a boundary practice to participants’ day-to-day practice, database participation is an opportunity to reflect upon the latter. Participation in database discussions may provide enough distance from the immediate demands of the action-present (Schön – 83, Dale -93) to reflect upon it ‘from outside’, with reference to the framework offered by the community of the database discussion.
6 Conclusion We may consider knowledge management a process of supporting learning processes within and between ‘learning units’ in an organisation, whether they be called activity systems or communities of practice. The discussion database is an important element in the knowledge management of the case organisation, connecting arenas of learning and forming an arena on its own. For learning to take place through a database discussion, it is not necessary that the discussion alone or in combination with a set of related discussions take on status as a motive of a dedicated activity system or community of practice. The notion of a knot, applicable to many database discussions, illustrates how problems are solved across communities. Having the database serve as a shared tool or resource may suffice to support learning processes in the communities defining the day-to-day practice of the discussion participants. The exchange of alternative viewpoints and solutions through the discussions may reveal or create contradictions leading to learning locally. A great potential for organisational learning lies in the possibility of communities of practice developing as a consequence of participants’ engagement in database discussions. Participants’ multimembership and brokering involving these new communities will enrich individuals’ experience of developing their identities through negotiation of enterprises within their fields of
interest. Also, as bridges are built and crossed in this way, the learning processes of existing communities in the organisation are enriched.
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