Dear colleagues,
We would like to bring to your attention the following Call for Papers
for a sub-theme at the 2009 EGOS Colloquium, which will be held July 2-4
in Barcelona, Spain (extended abstract/short paper submission deadline
is January 11, 2009; full papers are due by June 1).
We hope you find our sub-theme an appealing venue for presenting and
discussing your work as it pertains to practices and communities.
Of course, the usual apologies for cross-postings apply.
All the best,
Fabio Fonti (Boston College), Alessandro Narduzzo (U. of Bolzano) &
Martha Feldman (UC Irvine)
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25th EGOS Colloquium, Barcelona 2009
Sub-theme 24: Theorizing practice in communities of practice
Convenors:
Fabio Fonti, Boston College, USA (
fabio.fonti@bc.edu)
Alessandro Narduzzo, Free University of Bozen-Bolzano, Italy
(
narduz@unibz.it)
Martha Feldman, University of California, Irvine, USA (
feldmanm@uci.edu)
http://www.egosnet.org/jart/prj3/egosnet/main.jart?rel=en&reserve-mode=active&content-id=1227178922337&subtheme_id=1227251866494
Call for Papers
Since the ground-breaking work of Lave, Wenger and Orr (Lave, 1988; Lave
and Wenger, 1991; Orr, 1996) organizational scholars have explored the
vital role that communities of practice (CoPs) play for organizations.
CoPs have been hailed as the locus of organizational learning
instrumental for innovative activities (Brown and Duguid, 1991),
repositories of disciplinary knowledge (Orr, 1996), and modes of
governance within and among organizations (Grandori, 2001).
CoPs facilitate learning and innovation by promoting the emergence and
circulation of knowledge. They arise naturally in many types of
organizations as people who share similar passions or challenges
interact and share the knowledge developed through the practices they
enact. In comparison to the more constraining nature of formal
organizational structures, the voluntary nature of CoPs encourages the
free-flow of ideas, especially when their members are passionate and
motivated to contribute to the conversation (Brown and Duguid, 1991).
Given their central role as antecedents of innovation and learning, CoPs
have attracted the attention of both managers and scholars. However,
while studies of CoPs have quickly diffused from anthropology to a
variety of other disciplines, such increased popularity has not been
matched by a similar increase in the understanding of the mechanisms
that make CoPs successful in knowledge creation and dissemination and,
ultimately, allow learning and innovation to emerge. There are a variety
of reasons for this mismatch. Many studies have focused on the notion of
community and have emphasized cohesion and shared understandings over
the distributed nature of the knowledge embedded in and enacted through
practice. Other studies fall short of providing empirical evidence of
what leads to CoPs' success (or failure), trying instead to capitalize
quickly on a few initial understandings of the processes underpinning
CoPs effectiveness as a knowledge management tool (Contu and Wilmott,
2000). Having become disconnected from important features of the
original CoPs conceptualization, a growing number of studies leave us
without a systematic understanding of how CoPs operate and of the
dynamics leading to learning and innovation.
To improve our understanding of how these communities emerge and
function, we suggest focusing on practice and its generative qualities.
In CoPs, the motivation for interaction is often the attempt to generate
solutions to problems or to make use of practical knowledge and the
outcomes are frequently new or modified ways of accomplishing tasks on
part of community members. Therefore, recent research on routines that
shows them to be forms of practice (Feldman, 2000; Feldman and Pentland,
2003) and sources of innovation (Miner, 1991) as well as flexibility and
change, provides an important way of understanding the relationship
between CoPs and their outcomes.
This session aims at deepening our understanding of CoPs and of the
processes that are at work in them. Submission to this track will
contribute to the development of systematic, theoretically based,
empirically-grounded understandings of what CoPs are, how they work and
what makes them capable of generating innovative ideas. In this vein, we
invite contributions to the following areas:
* What are the dynamics of practice in CoPs that facilitate learning and
innovation in organizations?
* What role does innovation play in the emergence of (as well as the
outcome of) CoPs?
* What is the relationship between competences, practices and routines,
and the emergence of innovative solutions and learning within CoPs?
* Are CoPs effective knowledge management tools? How are
knowledge/knowing mobilized through practice in CoPs? Within and between
organizations?
* What factors lead to the emergence of CoPs? What efforts to encourage
CoPs are, instead stifling them?
* What role does the passion and motivation of CoP members play in
sustaining CoPs? What factors facilitate the emergence of such passion
and motivation?
* What role do networks play in facilitating the emergence and nurturing
of competences and routines in CoPs, which then result in learning and
innovation?
While we will give priority to papers addressing these issues, other
empirically-based studies of CoPs will also be considered. Due to the
importance of empirical observation in developing this domain, we intend
to prioritize empirically grounded studies, using either quantitative or
qualitative methods (or both). Particularly strong theoretical works
will also be favorably considered.
References
Brown, J.S. and P. Duguid (1991): "Organizational learning and
communities of practice: Toward a unified view of working, learning and
innovation." Organization Science, 2, 40–57.
Contu, A. and H. Wilmott (2000): "Comment on Wenger and Yanow. Knowing
in practice: A delicate flower in the organizational learning field."
Organization, 7, 269–276.
Feldman, M. (2000): "Organizational routines as a source of continuous
change." Organization Science, 11, 611–629.
Feldman, M. and B. Pentland (2003): "Reconceptualizing organizational
routines as a source of flexibility and change." Administrative Science
Quarterly, 48, 94–118.
Grandori, A. (2001): "Neither hierarchy nor identity:
Knowledge-governance mechanisms and the theory of the firm." Journal of
Management and Governance, 5, 381–399.
Lave, J. (1988): Cognition in Practice. Cambridge (UK): Cambridge
University Press.
Lave, J. and É. Wenger (1991): Situated Learning: Legitimate Peripheral
Participation. Cambridge (UK): Cambridge University Press.
Miner, A. (1991): "Structural evolution through idiosyncratic jobs: The
potential for unplanned learning." Organization Science, 1, 195–210.
Orr, J. (1996): Talking about Machines: An Ethnography of a Modern Job.
Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
Convenors
Fabio Fonti received his PhD from the University of Illinois,
Urbana-Champaign and is now an Assistant Professor in the Carroll School
of Management at Boston College. His research focuses on how network
embeddedness impacts organizational outcomes and on network evolution
(i.e., understanding how networks emerge and their endogenous nature).
He has collected primary network data in numerous industries, such as
software development, transportation, machinery manufacturing,
project-based organizations, and consumer goods. Most recently, he has
studied the network mechanisms behind the improvement of existing
routine sets in teams and the elements contributing to the success and
demise of communities of practice.
Alessandro Narduzzo is Associate Professor of Strategic Management at
the Free University of Bozen-Bolzano, Italy. In the past, he was
appointed at the University of Bologna, and he has visited Boston
College, the University of Michigan, and the University of California at
San Diego. His current research focuses on organizational knowledge and
its strategic implications. Some of his previous work has been published
in 'Industrial and Corporate Change' and in the 'International Journal
of Industrial Organization'. He received his PhD in Economics and
Management from the University of Bologna, Italy.
Martha Feldman (Stanford University PhD, 1983) is the Johnson Chair for
Civic Governance and Public Management at the University of California,
Irvine. She is a Senior Editor for 'Organization Science' and serves on
the editorial boards of several journals including 'Organization
Studies', 'Organizational Research Methods' and 'Advances in
Organizational Studies'. She has written four books and dozens of
articles on the topics of organization theory, public management and
qualitative research methods. Her current research on organizational
routines explores the role of performance and agency in creating,
maintaining and altering these fundamental organizational phenomena.
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Fabio Fonti
Assistant Professor - Boston College
The W.E. Carroll School of Management - Organization Studies Dept.
432 Fulton Hall - 140 Commonwealth Ave. - Chestnut Hill, MA 02467
Phone: 617-552-6822 - Email:
fabio.fonti@bc.edu
Webpage:
http://www.organizationresearch.com/fonti/index.asp
'What's hard is to be as simple as Bach ... Making the simple
complicated is commonplace; making the complicated simple, awesomely
simple, that's creativity.'
Charlie Mingus