CPsquare

CPsquare is happy to announce the schedule for our Spring 2009 Research and Dissertation Fest.

Roy Greenhalgh: justifying the use of communities of practice and network analysis as approaches to study volunteer organizations

We know very little about the mutual support that exists between volunteers. Most scholars use the term support to mean management (Brudney and Williamson 2000; Hager and Brudney 2004). And management is usually restricted to three activities: recruitment, selection and retention. The last 30 years has seen the adoption of modern managerialism, which is odd considering that volunteers usually decide to gift their time and skills in an atmosphere supporting freewill rather than one of command and control. This doctoral study is using the twin lenses of Communities of Practice (Lave and Wenger 1991; Lave 1992; Brown and Duguid 1996; Wenger 1998) and social network analysis (Wellman 1981; Hall and Wellman 1985; Wellman and Berkowitz 1988; Wellman and Wortley 1990; Scott 2000) to explore the micro support structures that are created, maintained and managed by the volunteers themselves.”

Roy will talk about his work and dissertation plans on Tuesday, May 26.

Marian Thier: Listening habits assessment instrument

Marian Thier is the founder of Expanding Thought. She has recently become interested in understanding people’s listening styles. A small research project has developed an instrument that assesses people’s listening behaviors as a function of habit more than conscious choice. If you are joining us for this session, you are invited to complete a ten-question survey that assesses which of four different listening habits you most commonly use during communication. It does not address how well or poorly you apply the habit. She’ll present the project and individual results on Wednesday, May 27.

Debra Beck: The Nonprofit Board as Community of Practice: An Exploratory Case Study

Debra Beck recently completed her EdD, at the University of Wyoming. This dissertation focused on describing how learning occurs in the routine activities of preparing for, and participating in, nonprofit board meetings. Evidence of a community of practice was found and linked to the qualities necessary to foster generative thinking and governing. A case study approach was selected to allow for immersion in the meeting environment and deep exploration of the experiences, roles and motivations of individual members. She’ll present her work on Thursday, May 28.

Mirjam Neelen: “Lurking: a Challenge or Another Way of Learning? A focus on Corporate CoPs.”

Mirjam Neelen, is working for a telecommunications company in Seattle and studying learning sciences at Open University, the Netherlands.

Online, or virtual, communities have become an important method of KM to leverage an organization’s intellectual capital by enhancing knowledge exchange and that way, support continuous organizational learning (Anthony, Rosman, Eze, & Gan, 2009). Although there is no solid understanding of why, in many cases an online community only has an active core group of posters and a much bigger group of people who read messages of others but not or rarely post (Kahnwald, unpublished paper). This phenomenon is called lurking. There are many different approaches to lurking. Some see lurkers as free-riders (Kollock & Smith, 1996) that limit the organizational intellectual capital, while others see them as peripheral legitimate participants (Lave & Wenger, 1991). In addition, Kahnwald (unpublished paper) describes lurking as another form of learning.

She’ll present her work on Tuesday, June 2.

Akila Sarirete: Knowledge management within CoPs

Akila Sarirete is reporting on work on the knowledge creation process applying the SECI model of Nonaka (Socialization, Externalization, Combination and Internalization) in CoPs, using force field analysis. Akila will present her work on Thursday, June 4.

Alice MacGillivray: Use of the C4P Model in a CoP study: Good practice building better theory

In 2004, when Alice MacGillivray and John Smith presented at an AACE E-Learn conference in DC, we heard [then Major] Pete Kilner share his thoughts about a model implicitly used to help the CompanyCommand community thrive. Pete referred to it as the C4P Model: context, connection, conversation and content around purpose. It was one of those models that could be easily sketched on a napkin, was intuitively appealing, and was grounded in Pete’s extensive experience. The model had not been published in peer-reviewed literature.

Later, when I had the privilege of researching counter-terrorism communities of practice in Canada, I built the C4P model into the analysis of data as part of the larger study. The results support the value of the model.

She’ll present her work on Tuesday, June 9.