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Managing of Knowledge with the

Aid of Communication Technology

Learning Networks at the Countryside Agency

from
Nadejda Ognianova Loumbeva

Project report submitted in part fulfillment of the requirements for the


degree

of

Master

of

Science

(Human-Computer

Interaction

with

Ergonomics) in the Faculty of Life Sciences, University College London,


(2002).

Note by the University


This project report is submitted as an examination paper. No responsibility
can be held by London University for the accuracy or completeness of the
material therein.

I would like to thank Malcolm Ballantine, whose help has been


invaluable for the accomplishment of this thesis.
I would also like to thank Barney Smith at the Countryside Agency,
whose initiative made the present work, and the process of it, possible.
I would also like to wholeheartedly thank my sister, Mira Loumbeva,
who, with great patience and care, typed the whole thesis for me
because I had tendonitis. We sat together for days until all of it had
been typed up. Had it not been for her, this thesis would not have seen
the day. Not many people would willingly go through that kind of a
sacrifice, but Mira did. For this, and all else, I will always remember
her.
Last, but not least, I would like to thank all the facilitators of the three
Pilot Learning Networks at the Countryside Agency: Kate Jopling and
James Hatcher, Carolyn Cadman and Simon Michaels. Their insights
and opinions have been of great help to my understanding of the
Countryside Agency Learning Networks. In addition, I would like to
thank Ian Bilsborough at the Countryside Agency for his help and
enthusiasm for my project.

II

ABSTRACT
The present work is concerned with the effectiveness of managing knowledge
using Communication Technology to support this. The main purpose is to
evaluate three initiatives of managing knowledge, using Communication
Technology in this process, at the Countryside Agency, a public sector body in the
UK.
Evaluation is conducted in the following way: After introducing the purpose of
the present work in Part I, a literature review is outlined in Part II, in order to
derive recommendations for successful managing of knowledge using
Communication Technology. These recommendations specify the importance of
ensuring a healthy community-of-practice using the technology, as well as
recognizing that knowledge is different from and superior to information.
Knowledge exists only within interpersonal contexts.
The recommendations also emphasize the importance of tacit, explicit, individual
and organizational knowledge, in a process of dynamic development of this within
social practice. In this way, these recommendations are used as criteria against
which to evaluate the knowledge managing initiatives at the Countryside Agency
in Part III of this work.
These initiatives (called Learning Networks) are in terms of optimizing a
community, by making available a technological solution for use to community
members. This is so that members can optimize the interpersonal interactions
among them, thus increasing the value of the community knowledge discourse.
The evaluation of the three Learning Networks revealed the importance of a social
context necessary for knowledge creation, in order for technology supporting
knowledge processes within a community to be effective, and not only efficient,
in fulfilling its purpose as a knowledge managing tool.
In addition, it was revealed that socially accepted ways of working within the
public sector can inhibit the natural process needed for managing knowledge
within a community. This can make technology used for managing knowledge
within such community largely ineffective in its purpose, even though its
technological usability may be adequate.

III

TABLE OF CONTENTS
Part I .... 1 - 7
1. Introduction to the present work .. 2
1.1. Overview of the subject of the present work .. 2
1.2. Overview of the process behind the present work . 2
1.3. The host organization: The Countryside Agency . 3
1.4. Knowledge Management at the Countryside Agency .. 4
1.5. Learning Networks at the Countryside Agency:
What are they? 4
1.6. Learning Networks: the stakeholders ... 5
1.7. The problem: Are Learning Networks effective for the
managing of knowledge within a community of people? .. 6

Part II 8 55
1. Introduction .. 10
1.1. Summary of the this literature review .. 11
1.2. Purpose of the literature review 12

2. Situated learning in communities-of-practice ... . 13


2.1. Ordained practice and actual practice .. 15
2.2. Legitimate Peripheral Participation (LPP) .. 19
2.3. A socio-technical architecture for Communication Technology
and communities-of-practice . 20
2.4. Conclusions .. 23

3. The real world problem: Is Communication


Technology at present useful to human knowledge creation? . 25
3.1. Information is not knowledge . 25
3.2. Information can not effectively yield knowledge,
unless within the context of practice 27
3.2.1. How knowledge is enabled, but not optimized with
Information Technology .... 27
3.2.2. Optimizing knowledge by increasing the value
of social exchange with Communication Technology . 29
IV

3.3. Conclusions .. 30

4. Explicit knowledge and tacit knowledge 31


4.1. Polanyis view on the acquisition of knowledge ... 31
4.2. Understanding information to learn new knowledge .. 33
4.3. Communication Technology design
for emerging cultures ..... 36
4.4. Conclusions .. 37

5. Individual and organizational knowledge .. 38


5.1. Why is organizational knowledge important? ..
39
5.2. Nature of organizational knowledge:
explicit heuristics and tacit genres 40
5.3. Organizational knowledge and individual action 42
5.4. Conclusions .. 43

6. Knowing in practice . 45
6.1. Knowledge as possession and knowing as practice .. 45
6.2. Productive enquiry .. 47
6.3. Dynamic affordance 48
6.4. Conclusions .. 49

7. Recommendations for approaches to


Communication Technology use for managing knowledge .. 51
8. Conclusions to Part II .. 54

Part III 56 90
1. Introduction . 57
1.1. The problem behind managing knowledge
in the UK public sector .. 57

2. Methodology .. 59
2.1. Level of response from each network 59
2.2. Interviews with facilitators of each
Learning Network ... 60
2.3. Questionnaire emailed to members .... 60
2.4. Personal style/preference measures ... 61
2.5. Rationale behind using the EPQ in the present evaluation . 62
V

2.6. Rationale behind using the MBTI


in Learning Network evaluation .63
2.7. Data obtained from the personal style/preference instruments .. 64

3. Learning Network Evaluation . 65


3.1. Market Towns Learning Network . 65
3.1.1. Background to the Market Towns Learning Network . 65
3.1.2. Evaluation preview .. 66
3.1.3. Conclusions ... 72
3.2. Equipping Rural Communities Learning Network . 73
3.2.1. Background to the Equipping Rural Communities
Learning Network .. 73
3.2.2. Evaluation preview .. 73
3.2.3. Conclusions ... 78
3.3. Rural Affairs Forum for England Learning Network 80
3.3.1. Background to the Rural Affairs Forum for England
Learning Network .. 80
3.3.2. Evaluation preview .. 81
3.3.3. Conclusions ... 86

4. Learning Network Evaluation: Limitations ... 87


5. Learning Network Evaluation: Conclusions .. 89

References .. 91
Appendices . 99

VI

LIST OF TABLES

Market Towns Learning Network Evaluation:


Table 1 p. 111
Table 2 p. 112
Table 3 p. 113
Table 4 p. 113-114
Table 5 p. 115-116
Table 6 p. 117-118
Graph 1 .. p. 120
Graph 2 .. p. 121
Graph 3 .. p. 121

Equipping Rural Communities Learning Network Evaluation:


Table 7 p. 122-123

Rural Affairs Forum for England Learning Network Evaluation:


Table 8 p. 124-125

VII

Part I
Introduction

1. INTRODUCTION TO THE PRESENT WORK

1.1. Overview of the subject of the present work


The present work was set out with the aim to evaluate three technological
attempts at managing knowledge within an organization.
These attempts are in terms of providing an electronic extranet for use to a
community of people brought together by their interest in a domain of practice, a
topic or a shared activity. The extranets, also called dynamic extranets by the
organization, were designed and delivered with the assumption that the shared
electronic space they offer will serve to bind the people participating in the
communities together, in order for them to elaborate on their knowledge. This
would be by improving the quality of the interactions among them and thus
making the knowledge possessed by individuals readily available to all
community members. Therefore, the extranets were endowed with functionality of
communication potential, in terms of: member log-in, subgroups, discussion
forums, member expertise search facilities, chat rooms, documents loaded for
member use, automatic notification of members concerning contributions posted
on the network, member database, whos logged on feature and brainstorming.
This was aiming to provide opportunities for online communication among
individuals and between them and the entire community.
The present work is the result of the evaluation of these three technological
attempts at managing knowledge, in terms of their effectiveness at delivering the
values they were planned and designed to fulfill. Because these technological
initiatives were conceived as essentially knowledge managing initiatives, they
were evaluated against general criteria for managing knowledge within
organizations. This is in terms of the benefits technology can bring into this
process and its limitations at making it effective, should it be regarded as the only
means for creating a cohesive community where knowledge is regarded as a
public good and is thus readily available to all community members for the
fulfillment of desired aims and objectives.

1.2. Overview of the process behind the present work


The evaluation consisted of conducting informal unstructured and semi-structured
interviews with the managers of each extranet (facilitators), as well as distributing
2

a general questionnaire to members of the communities that the extranets were


deemed to support. These interviews and questionnaire were designed to
investigate the assumptions behind managing and using the extranets, as well as
the perceived benefits of members from not only using the extranets, but also
being part of the communities that these extranets support. In this way, the
effectiveness of the extranets at supporting general knowledge managing
strategies, thus being appropriately used according to the nature of optimization
potential they can offer, was verified.
In parallel to this, a literature review, drawing upon literature exploring the
opportunities that technology offers to make knowledge managing more effective,
was carried out to inform the evaluation process. On the basis of this literature
review, recommendations for managing knowledge within communities and
organizations, with the help of the potential offered by Communication
Technology, were derived. These recommendations were used as criteria against
which to evaluate the extranets (described below), following on the relevant
material obtained from the interviews and questionnaire responses.
The results of the literature review are outlined in Part II of this work. The results
of the evaluation of the three extranets are outlined in Part III. Both of these aim
to establish an understanding of learning and the nature of knowledge that will
inform the effective planning, design and carrying out of knowledge managing
within organizations strategically supported by Communication Technology.

1.3. The host organization: The Countryside Agency


The organization hosting these technological attempts at managing knowledge is
the Countryside Agency in the UK. The Countryside Agency (from now on
referred as the Agency) is a non-departmental public sector organization
concerned with the preservation of the English countryside and the development
of rural areas within this country. Its responsibility within the public sector is to
advise central and local government on ways forward through practical projects
and take action on issues affecting the social, economic and environmental well
being of rural areas and communities. Within their role and function, the Agency
aim to influence other organizations with similar purposes by conceiving and
developing projects, thus creating a unified strategy to rural development. The
Agency resulted from the merger of the Countryside Commission and the Rural
Development Commission in April 1999.
3

1.4. Knowledge Management at the Countryside Agency


About a year ago (June 2001), following on the Modernizing Government White
Paper (1999), the Agency began to invest resources in knowledge management.
The White Paper constructed a vision of electronic public services, moving the
UK to a knowledge-based economy. The aim was to move towards a modern,
joined up government, by sharing best practice, in order to learn from this for
the sake of future developments.
In relation to this, a Knowledge Management Team was assembled at the Agency,
which purpose is to design initiatives making knowledge within the Agency, as
well as among this and other big and small organizations concerned with rural
development and preservation within England (most frequently Agency partners
and contractors), readily accessible to those who need it. In this way, the
Knowledge Management Team works alongside all other teams within the
Agency, as well as organizations with purposes similar to this, towards a better
state of the English countryside.
In order to explore the potential of technology for making knowledge within a
community of, frequently very busy, people more effective towards achievement
of desired objectives, the Knowledge Management Team, following on the idea of
the Countryside Agency Chief Executive, set out to develop three pilot knowledge
management initiatives. They called these initiatives Learning Networks, which
the present work aims to evaluate in terms of their success at bringing people
together to collaborate and learn from each other, in order to make their individual
and collective work practices more effective.

1.5. Learning Networks at the Countryside Agency: What are they?


A Learning Network, as is viewed by the Agency, is either a community of
purpose, composed of people who share knowledge and information in working
together towards a smart objective, or a community of practice, composed of
people performing similar tasks and having similar roles, helping each other by
sharing knowledge of their practice. In both cases, the aim is to manage
knowledge within the group in order to benefit a specific objective or a more
general work practice.
This process is primarily enabled by web technology, also called a dynamic
extranet, although it is not unusual for the community to pre-date the Learning
4

Network. Learning Networks provide a web-based space, specifically designed to


project Agency messages and views on creating policies.
The people participating on the network are brought together to collaborate on a
project, theme or issue, in order to produce a successful, more or less defined,
outcome. In this process, these people are always managed in their collaborative
activity by a facilitator, who aims to bring their efforts at the successful
fulfillment of the desired objective.
In this way, Learning Networks aim to engage various stakeholders in a project
from the very earliest stages of this project development, in order to implement
their views within executive decisions. Learning Networks are not expected to
completely replace face-to-face meetings in these processes, but merely save
precious time often lost in travelling across distant geographical locations.

1.6. Learning Networks: the stakeholders


Within the process of planning, delivering and fulfilling a Learning Network,
there are a number of stakeholders involved, each having different conception of
what makes a successful network.
First of all, there is the view of the Knowledge Management Team within the
Agency, which is essentially concerned with the effective branding of the Agency
throughout Learning Network participation. In particular, it is important that each
network, by engaging participants in a purposeful community process, succeeds in
influencing strategies and practical projects for countryside development.
Then, there are the views and expectations of Learning Network participants.
These are essentially concerned with their ability to effectively participate on the
network, so that they can derive practical benefits from their participation that
they can use to improve their work. Effective participation, in their terms, is being
able to connect to others in the way they want to, using technology, or not, and
respecting public sector role assumptions, values and beliefs, or not. In order to
do this, members need to be drawn to the network community out of genuine
interest in its shared activities and not be forced or obliged to participate, thus to
fulfill their ordained role within this sector. In any case, they want to learn more
about the issue being discussed and benefit from networking opportunities. Thus
network members are concerned with having free access to other members, in
order to elaborate on each others knowledge and build relationships. They also
want to have sufficient time to do so from their general work commitments, i.e.,
5

for them, their work practice must allow for the execution of a knowledge practice
within it, so that it can be effective.
Finally, there are the views of Learning Network facilitators, concerned with
managing member participation and, when necessary, leveraging this towards the
achievement of desired objectives. In order to do this, facilitators need to have
sufficient knowledge of the area subject of member discussions and also be
committed themselves to enriching the knowledge and expertise contained within
the community, regarding this area of interest. They will also want to be given
sufficient freedom to facilitate the network as it seems best to them at any one
time, according to their commitment to its purpose and their interest in benefiting
all members, not limited by contextual pressures to make network facilitation the
exclusive arena for Agency branding.

1.7. The problem: Are Learning Networks effective for the managing of
knowledge within a community of people?
Despite the potential dynamic extranets offer to the managing of knowledge
within a community of people, the three pilot Learning Networks at the Agency
have presented some problems with their use. Precisely, there seems to be not
enough participation and involvement from members as would be expected form a
vibrant community where knowledge is dynamically exchanged among people
and thrives in continuous renewal.
In particular, one of the pilot Learning Networks, the Rural Affairs Forum for
England network, has been used very poorly. From an overall of 66 members, 13
have never logged on the network since its launch in November 2001 until July
2002 (20% of members). 33 members have logged on less than 10 times for the
duration of this time and the majority of log-ins for this period have in fact
originated from network facilitators (48%). Only 6% (4 members) have made
active contributions to the network by creating dialogues and 15% of members
have contributed to these dialogues (10 members). Countryside Agency members
initiated the main part of these active contributions, although there are only 6
Countryside Agency members on the Forum. The maximum total number of
logins per member was estimated at 42, which is less than once each week since
the Network was made available for use to Forum members.
The situation with another of the pilot networks, the Equipping Rural
Communities Learning Network, is similar, although not so extreme at first sight.
6

Interviews with the facilitator and material provided by some of the participants
indicated that contributions on the network are not genuinely driven by learning
interest and are proportional to facilitator input. In other words, members do not
seem to engage enough with the community purpose and contribute to it for the
sake of being part of an initiative introduced by an influential organization and not
for the sake of participating in a learning experience intimately valuable to their
interests and concerns.
Finally, the last of the pilot Learning Networks, the Market Towns Learning
Network, has been used very little at the beginning of its initiation, seemingly
because there were too many members on the whole, not knowing each other
sufficiently to engage in discussion. Although the network has since gained a lot
of speed and is much better used by its members at the moment, these being
generally interested in its purpose, there seems to be lack of focus of the issues
being discussed. In this way, using the network has little perceived benefits to
members and the Agency, despite the fact that it has generated reasonable public
sector interest.
This outline of Agency Learning Networks effectiveness problems is not
exhaustive and is meant to merely introduce the issue of interest, which is social
and organizational aspects of using Communication Technology.
In other words, the nature of the Countryside Agency pilot networks
effectiveness problems is, in the body of this work, shown to arise from
insufficient emphasis on the people using the networks, the latter as only one
means for developing dynamic relations among them, in order to collaborate and
renew their knowledge.
Precisely, even though the Learning Network websites appear to be mostly good
and adequate in their usability, they appear to be insufficient in enabling
communication among people, aiming to bring desired benefits to a specific
purpose or general practice. Appropriate facilitation of the community using the
network, in terms of enabling social conditions for development of vibrant
interpersonal relationships, appears to be of much greater importance to what
makes a Learning Network, in terms of the technology that it uses, effective.

Part II
Literature Review

LEARNING AND THE NATURE OF KNOWLEDGE

How to Optimise Human Knowledge by Using Communication Technologies


as Part of a General Knowledge Managing Strategy

If managing knowledge is the solution, then what is the problem?


Zack, 1999

If companies are going to compete on knowledge, and manage and design


structures and technology for it, they need to base their strategy on an
understanding of what the knowledge challenge is.
Wenger, McDermott and Snyder, 2002

We can know more than we can tell.


Polanyi, 1966

1. Introduction
Within the recent five years, there has been a growing interest in the nature of
knowledge, in terms of its generation, transfer and application within firms and
organisations. Knowledge has been regarded as the most important asset for
competitive advantage, unlike the nature or amount of financial or technological
resources that organisations possess, especially for organisations competing in
uncertain environments (Miller and Shamsie, 1996; Penrose, 1959; Winter, 1987).
In effect, knowledge is what harnesses the financial and technological potential of
an organisation towards the realisation of its mission.
Theorists have argued that knowledge is the firms most important resource
because it represents intangible assets, operational routines and creative processes
that are hard to imitate (e.g. Spender, 1996). Through understanding the nature of
knowledge, organisations have been looking to inform the process of managing
this knowledge within, and among, them, in order to assure themselves
competitive advantages. These advantages are viewed as the successful adoption
of organisations within sectors, industries and markets, as well as their ability to
induce changes into these areas (Brown and Duguid, 1991).
However, Birkinshaw (2001) notes that although managing knowledge promises
very much, often it delivers very little. (p. 11). He further notes that this is
because managing knowledge has focused on managing information propagated
via IT systems, rather than managing social relations that use this information as
knowledge.
Indeed, within the present work, it is shown that, in an effort to initiate and sustain
competitive advantages, organizations have concentrated on knowledge
management, rather than knowledge managing (these terms are arbitrary in
making the desired distinction).
Knowledge management regards knowledge as a commodity, i.e. an entity that
can be removed from people and transferred among them like an object. This is
equal to information, which is of little use in practice (i.e. Davenport and Prusak,
1998) and is observed in organisations investing resources in developing IT
repositories for codified knowledge (Birkinshaw), such as best practice
databases. These databases in fact remove knowledge from its original context of
creation that enables its effective meaning. In this way, knowledge management
in such organisations is no more than information management, of little use to
employees in the context of their inherently social day-to-day practices.
10

Knowledge managing, in contrast, recognises the continuous social construction


of human knowledge via the dynamic nature of community discourse (e. g.
Lanzara and Patriotta, 2001). In this way, there is recognition that knowledge is
part of society and not produced by technology. Organisations adopting such an
approach invest in facilitation of social communities-of-practice as vibrant
contexts for knowledge creation and aim to support, but not ordain, these
communities by Communication Technologies (CT).
The above distinction makes clear that, to effectively engender knowledge
managing, rather than knowledge management, organisations need above all to
enable and support the social contexts that yield knowledge. They need to
optimise human processes within these contexts by Communication, rather than
merely Information Technologies.

1.1. Summary of this literature review


In the present literature review, the reasons why adopting a strategy about
knowledge, rather than information, brings benefits to organizations are explored.
It is argued that this is because social contexts nurture personal commitment and
beliefs in their members that endow information delivered by, amongst others,
Information Technology, with significance generating knowledge (e. g. Nonaka
and Takeuchi, 1995, p. 59). Knowledge processes are above all socially enabled,
before they can be supported and effectively optimised by technology. These
processes happen during communication among people, therefore development of
social relations is far more important than development of digital information
(Tsoukas, 1998). Optimising social relations by Communication Technologies is
far more effective in managing knowledge than merely investing in information,
because all knowledge, as a personal phenomenon, happens within collective
contexts of interpersonal interaction

(Tsoukas and Vladimirou, 2001). These

contexts allow for knowing what to do within particular circumstances, which is


far better than having the information without knowing what to do with it. And
knowing what to do happens within communities-of-practice.
Optimising such collective contexts of interpersonal interaction is possible by
using Communication Technologies. Designing multi-user systems aiming to suit
group and organisational requirements for effective knowledge creation, rather
than aiming to solely suit individual users, is necessary. Within the literature, this
has been referred as a socio-technical system interaction between social practices
11

and technology tools (Kling, 1993), where organisational analysis embraces


computer science, and can be seen as a superior form of human-computer
interaction that should be enabled to continuously develop over time. In this way,
organisations knowledge potential would be increased because knowledge, as the
most valuable asset organisations have, would be optimised.

1.2. Purpose of the literature review


The purpose of this review is to specify recommendations for enabling and
supporting social contexts within organisations, in terms of an approach to
Communication Technologies (as part of Socio-Technical systems) design and
use for managing, and not merely management, of knowledge. These
recommendations are subsequently used to evaluate the effectiveness of three
knowledge-managing initiatives at the Countryside Agency, a non-government
organisation in the UK. In such a way, the validity of these recommendations is
verified against the success of these initiatives at managing human knowledge and
not information.
The derivation of recommendations is attempted after reviewing literature
discussing the situated learning within communities-of-practice, shown to
effectively use and generate human knowledge (2). The reasons why situated
learning within communities-of-practice is effective in sustaining knowledge
processes are explored in reviewing additional literature about technology
usefulness to human knowledge (3), the nature of learning and knowledge as both
an explicit and tacit process (4) and an individual and group/organisational
process (5), as well as the notion of practice (6).

12

2. Situated learning in communities-of-practice


In their work based on ethnographic observations, Lave and Wenger (1991) and
Wenger (1998) conclude that knowledge is a social phenomena dynamically
constructed as part of practice. This practice takes place within self-selected
communities (Rheingold, 1993), defined to embody the purpose of knowledge
creation. In this way, learning of knowledge and knowing how to use this
knowledge within these communities is an integral part of the community
practice, i.e. learning within these community contexts is situated within the
particular circumstances that the practice presents, demanding the application and
derivation of knowledge. These circumstances have also been described as
essentially different from those in the classroom, where absorption of abstracted
heuristics is encouraged without reconnecting these to their original sources in
actual practices (Brown, 1998).
Wenger and Snyder (2000) describe communities-of-practice as groups of people
informally bound together to share expertise and passion for a joint enterprise
(italics added).

This description is reminiscent of Polanyis view of spoken

communication as:

the successful application of the linguistic knowledge and skill acquired by (an)
apprenticeship, (when) one person (is) wishing to transmit, the other to receive, information.
(Polanyi, 1962, p.206, italics added).

Polanyi regards spoken communication as enabled by the intelligent effort of


individuals within groups unified by a common practice, such as an
apprenticeship (also referred by him as a common complex culture1). These
individuals are willing to share their expertise with the group and actively use in1

Polanyi (1962) argues that such communities are found within common complex cultures.
Similarly to infocultures (Newell et al., 2001, later described in this review), these cultures
are communities where a network of confidence and mutual trust makes possible the
generation of systems of facts and standards (i.e. systems of explicit heuristics and tacit
knowledge for applying heuristics in practice) (Polanyi, 1962, p. 375). Such systems of facts
and standards are created in the process of elaboration on the personal knowledge of
members of these cultures, by them sharing in the intelligent effort of other individuals,
such that one person wishes to transmit and the other to receive, information (p. 206).
Polanyi further describes these systems of facts and standards as superior (i.e. beyond
personal) knowledge, upheld by people mutually recognizing each other as a community and
thus perceiving their knowledge to be of social value. Such superior knowledge is closely
reminiscent of community knowledge found within communities-of-practice (as described by

13

coming information to elaborate on their knowledge. The presence of shared


intelligent efforts follows from the joint passion to learn about an enterprise as the
subject of common interest, and creates conditions for collective learning in
action. The application of existing knowledge in action is what allows not only the
sharing of tacit knowledge and explicit knowledge within the community-ofpractice, but also the development of new ways of knowing this knowledge and
applying skills in combinative ways, during the development of multiple
interpersonal relations. Communication Technologies should aim to optimize
social processes within these communities, rather than exclusively focus on what
is seen as developing the knowledge these processes generate. This is because
knowledge is socially constructed and cannot possibly exist outside of the
interpersonal context of its creation.
Knowledge creation within these communities is distributed throughout multiple
actors (Araujo, 1998) by the development of interpersonal relations, which
acquire a routine status over time, as they become social platforms for
knowledge creation (Nanda, 1996). Supporting these social platforms by
technological infrastructure in order to optimize their development is by
collaborative technologies such as listservs, electronic discussion and chat (Wasko
and Faraj, 2000), which can bring novel aspects to the debating processes within
the community and keep track of the progression of the interpersonal interactions.
Von Krogh (1998) further points out that the motivation behind the creation of
these social platforms is not self-interest, but care for the community, where
knowledge creation is engaged in for the public good of all members. As a result,
knowledge is viewed as a process that collectively benefits the community and is
thus the moral obligation of all members. Similarly, Wasko and Faraj (2000) and
Rheingold (1993) observe that for long-standing electronic communities, the main
motivation behind participation is generalized reciprocity, where help given to one
person is reciprocated by someone else in the future, in a common expectation
that community interaction is on-going and self-fulfilling. Technological support
designed to optimize these social processes must consider their spontaneous and
unconstrained nature, by using technological platforms flexible enough to coevolve with the life within the community.

Lave and Wenger, 1991) and organizational knowledge found within organizations (e.g. as
described by Tsoukas and Vladimirou, 2001).

14

Thus communities-of-practice, through the cultivation of social bonds, offer the


conditions enabling not only knowledge, as existing and newly acquired, but also
knowing this knowledge in actual practice. Schultze (1999) points out that
knowledge within such communities is the social practice of knowing, where
learning new knowledge, knowing this in practice and innovating by applying
existing knowledge and knowing in novel ways are inexorably connected in
practice. This is because, by their informal, continuously evolving and enacting
nature, these communities are vibrant fields for active experimentation and
innovation. In this way, within communities-of-practice, there is a purpose of
learning about being a practitioner and not merely learning about practice (Brown,
1998). Knowledge and knowing are thus continuously intertwined in a generative
dance (Cook and Brown, 1998), which ensures the success of these communities
as knowledge communities. Technological support for this generative dance
should be designing for optimization of the social context, in order to benefit the
purpose of action learning. When a community of people engage in action
learning they, without realizing this, manage their knowledge and knowing
throughout their practice.

2.1. Ordained practice and actual practice


Importantly, Brown and Duguid (1998) note that conventional communities are
not necessarily communities-of-practice (italics added), thus observing the
difference between formal communities imposed from above and informally
fluid communities-of practice. In this way, attempts at managing knowledge and
knowing by bringing people together using formal obligations, expressed by the
institutionalization of over-structuring knowledge databases and other IT tools,
will not be successful for the purpose of managing knowledge within this
community.
Wasko and Faraj (2001) note the prominent conservative approach to applying IT
through the automation of existing processes in industry, based on the assumption
that design of the original process is satisfactory (p. 6). Such an approach
focuses on processes creating operational efficiency rather than people
participating in them (in the terms of Business Process Reengineering) and
reinforces existing management practices investing in efficiency, rather than
effectiveness, this by bringing people together to fulfil ordained roles rather than
collaborate. Such an approach is also expressed by statements of computers being
15

everywhere except in the productivity statistics (Solow, 1987), ignoring that the
way to productivity is indirect and passes by ensuring healthy social relations
first, before (and no doubt importantly) ensuring efficient computer systems.
Therefore, because of the already discussed social and inherently voluntary nature
of human knowledge, cultivated by developing strong interpersonal relations
stimulated by shared interest, management practices should focus on knowledge
rather than mechanistic notions of efficiency (Brown, 1998). Managing
knowledge, in itself, is about informally facilitating emerging social relations and
stimulating development of moral obligation behind participation in communitiesof-practice. It is not about imposing a rigidity on the flexible reality of actual
practice.
Orr (1996) further illustrates the gap between ordained practice and actual
practice. In his detailed ethnographic studies of service technicians, he observed a
marked distinction between the practice imposed on the technicians by the
organization (in terms of impoverished instruction manuals for repairing copiers
at customer sites that top management considered sufficient in doing the job), and
actual practice that the technicians found most comfortable and fulfilling in the
process of their jobs. Actual practice of the service technicians took place within
informal communities-of-practice, rather like social organisms thriving with
knowledge and knowing processes. Orr describes these communities as:

Occupational communitieshave little hierarchy; the only real status is that of a memberare
often non-canonical and not recognized by the organization. They are more fluid and interpretative
than bounded, often crossing the restrictive boundaries of the organization to incorporate people
from the outside (and that can include both suppliers and customers). (Orr, 1990a).

In this way, within service technicians informally interpretative actual practice,


there were conditions for the social derivation and construction of knowledge, this
by the production and dissemination of stories telling and interpreting work
experiences. Within these stories, the technicians organized seemingly unrelated
events into coherent discourse artifacts, connecting cause and consequence to
inform the understanding of their jobs, in terms of the insufficiency of formal
instruction. By accumulating socially distributed insights in the process of their
social discourse, they actively engaged in constructing a collectively explicit
memory as a summary of their practice, as well as a collective tacit understanding
of what the spoken and material practice artifacts mean. This is reminiscent of
16

case studies described by Tsoukas and Vladimirou (2001) and Lanzarra and
Patriotta (2001), where communities-of-actual-practice invented ways for
applying ordained practice artifacts (in terms of technology imposed from
above) to suit their purposes, because these artifacts failed to account for the
contextual demands of actual practice2.
Therefore, actual practice, in terms of engaging in and caring for a community-ofpractice, provided a context where the ordained practice, in terms of impoverished
work manuals, was actively reconnected to the situated demands of specific work
cases. In other words, actual practice presented conditions for situated learning
from events occurring and actions initiated in this practice (Lave and Wenger,
1991), as opposed to the practical deficiencies of instruction manuals, formally
telling what to do in this practice. Actual practice, in terms of the community that
the technicians had defined for themselves, in fact compensated for the rigid
deficiency of the ordained practice (despite the existence of the community having
been opposed by top management on multiple occasions, until its strategic
importance was recognized).
In this way, Orr shows the importance of communities-of-practice as contexts
where knowledge applicable in practice is actively constructed; therefore these
contexts should be encouraged to develop. Brown (1998) further notes the
importance of communities-of-practice as contexts where leveraging of ordained
practices is made possible in order to assure organizational competitive
advantages in accordance with the purpose behind the organization. It is clear
therefore that creating conditions for emergence of common practices is crucial to
successful managing of knowledge within and among organizations. Furthermore,
optimizing processes of actual practice by Communication Technology (from now
on referred to as CT) must consider their autonomous self-fulfilling nature that
2
Lanzara and Patriotta (2001) illustrate the effect of this in a case study on organizational
knowledge in the courtroom. These authors show the highly interactive, provisional and
controversial nature of knowledge found within courtroom communities struggling to find
a meaning for novel technology introduced within the community process (i.e. videotape
recording of Mafia trials as a more efficient means for trial documentation). In effect, the
courtroom communities were faced with a novel artifact, the need for which was not
naturally derived by them in the process of its practice (as it should be in effective cultures;
Schein, 1985), but considered to be necessary by outside parties. The authors adopt a socioconstructivist perspective to knowledge formation, arguing that knowledge can only be
understood in its practice, therefore optimizing this practice via technology must
successfully integrate the technology within the community. Within the courtroom
described by them, actors keep designing local solutions and arrangements in order to
integrate the VCR into the activity system. (p. 963). In this way, there was a struggle
between actual and ordained practice that ended by integrating the technology in
knowledge processes in only a few cases.

17

resents over-structuring designs in attempts at other than facilitating their


development.
The above makes clear the opposition that may exist between ordained practice
and actual practice in organizations, when management ignores that adults tend to
learn in the multiple contexts of their work by attending to situated demands from
specific circumstances, rather than by following institutionalized abstractions of
work practice (e.g. Burgoyne and Hodgson, 1983).
Such contradictions are often reinforced by the very design of information
technology implemented within organizations. This technology is designed with a
view of over-structuring the learning-while-and-in-working of employees, in order
to control for accountability, rather than foster initiative; in order to define
responsibility, rather than genuine interest; in order to enhance competition, rather
than rivalry; and in order to maintain secrecy and privacy, rather than openness to
external perspective (Brown, 1998).
Ordained practice is thus an abstract modus operatum3 that removes practice
from a situated context of taking place, ignoring the importance of action learning
in managing knowledge. In contrast, actual practice is an opus operandi4, where
practice exists only within concrete circumstances in reconnecting the abstract
knowledge of group heuristics with the reason for their existence, i.e. to inform
individual action (Bourdieu, 1977). This Brown (1988) described as reconnecting
the map with the mapped. In other words, modus operatum sees action as a
finished task, whereas opus operandi within communities-of-practice sees action
as a process of doing a task that is constantly tuned and tuning to the context of
the physical and social environment.
In relation to opus operatum and opus operandi, Brown (1998) notes:

Work on expert systems suggests that technologies whose representation of the complexities of
practice are misleadingly partial may make that practice difficult or even impossible. Any
decomposition of the task must be done not with an eye to the task or the user in isolation, but to
the learners need to situate the decomposed task in the context of the overall social practice. (p.
233)

This observation thus emphasizes the need for considering technology-supported


tasks in the contexts of their social and physical environments, without removing
3
4

In Latin, modus operatum means mode of use.


In Latin, opus operandi means the part (entity), which is being used.

18

them from contextual demands in order to facilitate the design process (i.e. in the
tradition of classical Ergonomics; this also questions the validity of Hierarchical
Task Analysis as a technique for mapping system structure). An approach to
technological design aiming for optimization of knowledge creation must agree
with the contextual characteristics of human actions, particularly social actions as
they happen in practice, and aim for minimally supporting these actions in their
dynamic development.

2.2. Legitimate Peripheral Participation (LPP)


To further illustrate this point, let us look at Legitimate Peripheral Participation
(LPP) in Communities-of-Practice (Lave and Wenger, 1991).
In Communities-of-practice, learning is not primarily about the subject of practice
as such, but about being a member and functioning within the community.
Members of communities-of-practice acquire above all the embodied ability to
behave as community members (Brown, 1998) within the shared complex
cultures that characterize the development of interpersonal dynamics within the
community. These developments make knowledge possessed and knowing
engaged in by the community accessible to all members.
In their ethnographic studies, Lave and Wenger observed that when novice
members join a community, they are implicitly given legitimate access to the
periphery of communication unfolding among expert members. That is, novice
members are allowed to observe experts until they have learnt enough to feel
comfortable with active community participation. During their seemingly passive
residence in the periphery of communication, novice members pick up valuable
tacit knowledge of the community practice, by acquiring knowledge of
community rituals and routines that enable circulation of stories and other forms
of negotiation of meanings (Deal and Kennedy, 1982).

In this way, novice

members are gradually enculturated (Brown and Duguid, 1991) within the
community, allowed to move from the periphery to the center of communication.
Eventually, they actively join into the knowledge discourse.
In relation to this, Brown (1998) describes stealing knowledge as picking up
knowledge from the informal periphery of on-going practice, this being a most
effective way for novices to learn from actions that others undertake within
situated contexts. Stealing knowledge of peripheral members from central expert

19

members in fact assures the community a challenging, whilst an informally


productive, vibrancy.
Expert members of communities-of-practice find processes in the periphery
thoroughly stimulating to the derivation of new knowledge. In relation to this,
Brown and Duguid (1998) note, the importance of continuously incorporating
new elements into existing structures in order to ensure adaptability to
continuously changing markets. This is at strong play within communities-ofpractice, who define themselves not only by their knowledge, but also by knowing
how to use this in new ways. Their openness to new experience assures
themselves a vibrant interpretative potential and constant fitness to outside
challenges, as expressed by continuously evolving collectively accepted ways for
doing the work.
This LPP development generalizes across all particular knowledge communities;
however, LPP is also unique to each separate community, according to the domain
of theory and practice within which the community develops, deriving their
knowledge. The personal styles of members and the socially accepted
assumptions, values and beliefs (Schein, 1990) are also important to community
development. Therefore, the particular dynamics of LPP are hard to predict for
each separate community-of-practice and community development is created by
community members. Designing technology to optimize this creative process
must offer a minimal structure, as a flexible technological platform co-evolving
with the community.
Therefore, CT for managing of knowledge and knowing within communities must
allow for processes of LPP to develop, as these are necessary to community
healthy existence. CT must be designed to allow for the different preferences of
members to use technology at any one time. Its use must also ensure that the
knowledge discourse is well supported both by active and passive, but rather vocal
and silent members (no member is a passive member within a community). CT
offers the potential for doing this by, for example, copying peripheral members in
emails that are part of central knowledge discourse and giving these members
access to discussion forums.

2.3. A socio-technical architecture for CT and communities-of-practice


The above sections conclude that, prominently, CT within organizations is not
designed with a view of the informal networks that bind people together, driven
20

by intelligent efforts to elaborate on their expertise. Rather, it is usually


imposed on employees, following on an unrealistic notion inherent in its design
of the organization as a mechanistic, rather than an organic body (Morgan, 1986).
In this way, in terms of, for example, knowledge managing efforts at HewlettPackard Laboratories, people still recur to informal networks despite overabundance of IT tools designed with the aim of managing knowledge
(Birkinshaw, p. 12).
Tsoukas and Vladimirou (2001) point out the need for recognizing the informal
practices for managing of knowledge, thus turning these practices from
organizationally unreflective into organizationally reflective. Once these informal
practices are appropriately recognized as important sources of organizational
knowledge creation, there will be conditions for open integration of minimal
support5 technology within them, to optimize the knowledge processes taking
place.
A socio-technical architecture enabling the systematization of such an approach is
described by Brown (1998) and is displayed on the table below:

Hansen et al. (1999), distinguish between codification and personalization IT strategies to


managing knowledge. Whereas the codification database approach confuses knowledge with
information, the personalization approach recognizes that knowledge is shared, used and created in
the process of interpersonal communication. This approach seeks to support knowledge processes
by providing minimal structure for their development (Hahn and Subramani, 2002), thus
encouraging the autonomous and informal existence of knowledge communities as a recognized
prerequisite for healthy knowledge formation (Wenger et al., 2002). These technologies thus
possess a potential flexibility to mimic, and systematize, the discursive nature of human
knowledge, exemplified by problems of uncertainty, equivocality, ambiguity and complexity faced
by organizations (Zack, 1999).
Minimal structure technologies can be electronic discussion boards, electronic chat and meet
rooms and electronic brainstorming, provided that their use is part of a general knowledge
managing strategy. These tools engender the existence of virtual communities complementing
the existence of face-to-face communities by providing media where alternative perspectives on
the face-to-face knowledge discourse are created, thus enriching the dynamics of knowledge
generation towards full realization of knowledge resources (Nanda, 1996). The use of ICT has
been widely and successfully explored in informal, self-selective on-line communities where
social exchange is the main incentive for participation (e.g. Rheingold, 1993). Therefore, their
potential for increasing the value of the social discourse generating knowledge in organizations is
to be inferred.

21

Table 1. : Shift in thinking and practice experienced by Xerox, which offers an organizational
model for managing communities-of-practice as complex adaptive systems within organizations
and communities-of-communities as organizations themselves. (in Brown, J. S., (1998): Internet
technology in support of the concept of communities-of-practice., Mgmt & Info. Tech, 8, 227-236)

Old paradigms

New paradigms

Technology push/pull

Co-evolution of technology and organization

Products

Product platforms

Authorized work structures

Emergent/authorized work structures

Teams

Communities-of-practice

Strategy specified from the top

Generative strategy specified from the top

Managing for efficiency

Managing for knowledge

Brown hypothesizes that, within an organization that is reflective about its actual
and not merely ordained practices, there is a socio-technical architecture that
allows for community-of-practice formation supported by technology platforms.
These platforms, if correctly designed, can probe the tacit knowledge within the
community and provide for its latent needs for knowledge creation, by product
variants rapidly evolving from them, or by evolving of the platforms themselves
(Brown, p. 234). This architecture thus overtly recognizes the importance of
communities-of-practice, in terms of their potential for innovation and fosters a
healthy autonomy6 for their development. It also links among communities
within and among organizations to create an intra- and inter-organization
knowledge discourse, in order to establish an overall social platform of
communities-of-communities that facilitates managing of knowledge.
Such a socio-technical architecture defines organizations in addition to formal
definitions of organizational practice, and assures them an enactive quality of
knowledge organizations. Within such socio-technical architectures, there is
recognition of both modus operatus and opus operandi. In other words, the
formal organization recognizes the informal within it and there is appropriate

Wenger, McDermott and Snyder (2002) list three elements to the knowledge process: a
knowledge domain (i.e. physics), a community of people and a common practice to unify the
domain with the community. In order for the knowledge process to be effective, the community
of people needs to be autonomous in order to explore the knowledge domain according to their
interest and thus create their own practice.

22

facilitation of knowledge communities. The stories disseminating the knowledge


acquired within communities-of-practice are allowed to circulate via email,
bulletin boards and home pages, supporting narration and social construction of
knowledge. Therefore, both type of organization work together and leverage each
other where possible (Brown, p. 245).
In this way, at the organizational level, as well as community and individual level,
there is re-connection of abstract heuristic knowledge with tacit codes for its
application

and

interpretation

in

practice7.

This

reconnection,

when

institutionalized by facilitating and not ordaining technology for managing


knowledge, ensures an appropriate synergy between organization and technology
and creates conditions for optimization of ordained via the existence of actual
practices. This reconnection also happens during the development of sociotechnical systems that optimize human knowledge creation within and among
organizations.
In the language of Brown, such organizations are complex adaptive systems
between forces driving technology and forces driving markets. In other words,
they are socio-technical systems influenced and influencing technology and
markets by adapting to conditions created by these, as well as enabling their own
conditions for development, naturally synchronized with the nature of technology
and market development. Within such systems, Internet and the Web can provide
a medium for innovation in terms of flexible technological designs to suit the
dynamic evolution of communities-of-practice, thus enabling conditions for coevolution between the social dynamics of communities and technology.

2.4. Conclusions
To conclude this section, managing knowledge aiming for its optimization by
technology should approach knowledge as above all a socially constructed
discourse by people. This discourse will serve peoples needs only in actual and
not ordained practices, ensuring competitive advantages. Therefore, organizations
need to recognize the importance of actual practice within knowledge
7
Cook and Brown (1998) point out that organizational/community knowledge is both
explicit (i.e. heuristic) and tacit (which is also referred to as genre by Oravec (1996), in
terms of a socially constructed communication medium where people learn to use a common
set of interpretation codes for making sense of information). Polanyi (1962) argues that
knowledge is not possible without combining explicit and tacit components in its creation.
Tsoukas and Vladimirou (2001) further point out the importance of heuristic and tacit group
knowledge to individual action within a group, where both types of group knowledge inform
individual action.

23

communities. Designing technologies with facilitating and not ordaining


assumptions will stimulate the development of actual practice and create
conditions for successful synergy between social and technological systems in
order for competitive advantages to be cultivated, and for an optimized process of
human knowledge creation during socio-technical interactions.

24

3. The real world problem: Is Communication Technology


at present useful to human knowledge creation?
Within the present section, it is shown that the assumption behind Information
Technology disagrees with the nature of human knowledge and what can
potentially optimise its creation. It is argued that current attempts at managing
knowledge should shift their focus from design of information databases for this
purpose, because information is removed from the social contexts nurturing
knowledge. Instead, there should be a focus on developing social relations, as
these make knowledge readily available to people, and optimising these relations
by Communication Technology.

3.1. Information is not knowledge


Brown and Duguid (in their book The Social Life of Information, 2000) argue
that knowledge is a social phenomenon existing in human contexts and not
information systems. They note the importance of social interaction between
people at the heart of managing knowledge. Thus, they draw a firm distinction
between information and knowledge, the latter being information acquired
personal significance for individuals, i.e. active knowers (Brown and Duguid,
2000) constructing their knowledge within a context of human practice. In this
sense, every knower is attached and committed to what he knows.
The fact that knowledge is not information makes the electronic transfer of
knowledge from people that have originated this, situated within a common
practice, difficult across community and organisation boundaries, because of the
personal character of knowledge that cannot be digitised (Ciborra and Patriotta,
1998). Therefore, knowledge has been defined as sticky to the context of its
creation (Szulanski, 1996). Information, in contrast, travels easily along electronic
networks because it lacks contextual properties. The challenge for technology use,
therefore, would be to ensure that information reaches potential knowers and not
merely information users, so that information can fulfil an important role in
human processes of knowledge creation.
Regarding the personal significance of knowledge, Nonaka and Takeuchi (1995)
note:
First, knowledge, unlike information, is about beliefs and commitment. Knowledge is a function
of a particular stance, perspective, or intention. Second, knowledge, unlike information, is about

25

action. It is always knowledge to some end. And third, knowledge, unlike information, is about
meaning. It is context-specific and relational. (p.58).

These authors emphasise the importance of a relational context where, through


actions according to beliefs and commitment to defined purposes, information
acquires meanings that give rise to knowledge. In other words, human knowledge
is volitional by nature as a result of contextual reflection; it is enabled by the use
and acquisition of information meanings within the context of purposeful human
actions. Therefore, to Nonaka and Takeuchi, human knowledge is not a static
commodity that can be objectively quantified like information; it is instead a
dynamic contextual process where individuals and organisations alike actively
pursue the truth according to their beliefs and according to the types of
information provided to them (Bateson, 1973).
In this way, within the process of knowledge, information provides a commodity
capable of, and necessary, in yielding knowledge, but insufficient within itself to
do so. Knowledge is identified with the information-produced, or sustained, belief
that happens within human heads (Dretske, 1981) and is cultivated within
communities-of-practice (Brown and Duguid, 1991).
In this way, the usefulness of mere information to organisations is minimal.
However, knowledge processes that involve information are very useful. They can
transform a reactive organization into a pro-active, enacting body with a
competitive stead (Brown, 1998), by enabling individuals within an organisation
to take important decisions in relation to their work that fulfil the organisation
purpose (Orr, 1996). Managing human knowledge needs to enable the
development of interpersonal contexts, within which information delivered by IT
can be hosted, and which can be optimized by CT8.

Within the present work, Information Technology (IT) is seen as substantially different
from Communication Technology (CT). The former is concerned with delivering information
when a request has been made to do so (i.e. databases, yellow pages of experts, expertise
profiles, document repositories and other structured search approaches). In contrast, the latter
is concerned with serving social relations and interpersonal communication (i.e.
collaborative filtering tools, intranets and extranets, electronic discussion forums and other
unstructured approaches to human communication). Personal preferences for using
technology may differ between these two types of technology, according to individual
approaches to assimilating new information and learning knowledge.

26

3.2. Information can not effectively yield knowledge, unless within the context
of practice
Efforts to manage the knowledge inside organizations have typically centred on
the creation of knowledge databases, i.e. corporate intranets deemed to contain
the knowledge that organizational members will need, complemented by tools
such as search engines and intelligent filters to assist knowledge seekers locate
requisite knowledge (Wasko and Faraj, 2000).
The very assumption behind these databases of knowledge as need, rather than
knowledge as creation process, contradicts the reality of knowledge as a
continuously evolving social construct, not possible to quantify as a static
commodity within an IT database. Therefore, if well designed, such databases
may contain information of strategic value, but not knowledge (Birkinshaw,
2001). The usefulness of these databases for managing knowledge, in terms of the
information that they deliver, will only exist provided that there is a human
context, i.e. a practice, within which to embed the information, so that it can be
used to yield knowledge through the beliefs and dedication of practitioners9.
These beliefs and dedication are cultivated within the social dynamics found
among practitioners.
Using such databases, however, removes the technology used for managing
knowledge from the very process of knowledge generation (in this way the term
knowledge management, rather than knowledge managing, is more
appropriate). Thus using information databases can enable knowledge, but can not
necessarily optimize the dynamic processes of its generation.

3.2.1. How knowledge is enabled, but not optimized with IT


Thompson and Walsham (2001) illustrate merely enabling but not optimizing
knowledge in case studies. They evaluated a range of knowledge management
initiatives in terms of making forms of IT accessible for use in a company they
called A1 software.
One initiative was deemed to disseminate knowledge to employees via
information repositories, presentation slides and reports assembled within a large
corporate intranet. In all cases there were not appropriate community contexts to
9

In the context throughout this work, a practitioner is a person engaged in a practice,


which is any practical domain of applying knowledge (e.g. from medical practice, through
software engineering, to philosophy).

27

initiate knowledge-enabling interpretation of information via collective memory


action. The assumption behind this approach was that knowledge is a
commodity readily captured and electronically delivered to employees.
Knowledge was not recognized a process within which the use of an intranet
database is merely an information-supplying artifact and not a means-to-an-end.
Therefore efforts were not made to contextualise information according to the
relevance of its content to practitioners. In this way, the information delivered was
of too wide of a scope to be applicable to the specific circumstances of
community practices found within the organization.
In contrast, another initiative aimed to enable knowledge processes by providing
specific information support to community practices found within the
organization. The approach was in terms of codifying raw data into more readily
usable forms of information (Walsham, 2001, italics added) in providing services
to employees such as decision-making tools, templates intended for individual
customization and technology-push reports and news. This initiative was found
useful only partially because it did not always succeed in meeting demands from
particular contexts for sense making of the provided information. In this way, this
approach recognized that appropriate management of information delivered by IT
could have a role in knowledge creation, provided that the information is
delivered within the context of a community actively engaged in informationrelevant collective sense-making. Therefore, only when individual needs were
appropriately anticipated and the information provided was good material to
stimulate knowledge processes within the community, was the knowledge
database found useful. Information made sense only when it fulfilled some
knowledge goal.
In both above described technological initiatives, there is not a consideration for
knowledge as a social phenomenon. Rather, it is regarded as removed from the
very social efforts that generate it and technology supporting it is used
accordingly. A different application of technology for managing knowledge,
however, is to consider the nature of knowledge social discourse10 and to increase
the value of social exchanges. This is illustrated in turn.

10

A discourse, in this sense, is a social exchange process, where people engage in multiple
interactions by talking about issues of interest.

28

3.2.2. Optimizing knowledge by increasing the value of social exchange with CT


In their work, Thompson and Walsham (2001) considered an additional initiative
of managing knowledge with respect to the ones reviewed above. Within this
initiative, CT was embedded within the context of a community-of-practice,
supporting knowledge processes as they developed within this community. These
processes were enabled by a continual inter-subjective communication between
individuals, such as mentor relationships and multiple face-to-face interactions.
Once enabled, these processes were supported, in the way of optimization, by
appropriately managed CT, providing information within special interest groups,
discussion boards, community indexes showing who is most knowledgeable about
a topic and email interaction. This initiative was deemed very successful in terms
of making knowledge within the community readily available to all members.
Within this initiative, there is a mix among complementary forms of human
communication, such as face-to-face interactions and email, each contributing
different aspects to the knowledge process. In addition, the nature of the social
discourse within the community was considered paramount, with technology
deemed to support and not create it all together. CT was used in a general effort to
optimize what was already existing as socially constructed knowledge, thus not
constraining the existing communication process.
Such member autonomy to choose the best communication medium (be it face-toface or technological), as well as its content, in each case of interpersonal
interaction is necessary for healthy community development and participation
(Wenger et al., 2002). A study by Maznevski and Chudoba (2000), where the
authors found that most successful virtual teams tend to intersperse regular faceto-face meetings with less intensive electronic interaction incidents, further
supports these conclusions. The nature of human knowledge necessitates above
all an on-going informal discourse for its development, the potential of which can
be increased by CT bridging geographical spaces and time differences. This case
study illustrates how managing knowledge is effective when there is a primary
focus on knowledge as a socially evolving discourse, which process CT can
optimize.

29

3.3. Conclusions
The above section shows that technology is not useful to human knowledge
creation, unless technology supports a well-defined and overtly recognized social
process of participation in a community, this created with a knowledge purpose in
mind. In this way, technology that optimizes communication among people and
not merely delivers information is most effective for managing knowledge.
The next sections elaborate on the nature of knowledge as it unfolds in the process
of community participation. This is in order to show the ways in which CT can
and cannot support communication among people and how its use can optimize
managing knowledge as a unified strategy for organization development.

30

4. Explicit knowledge and tacit knowledge


The purpose of this section is to provide a thorough account of the nature of
knowledge that plays a part in its acquisition. Within this work, it is considered
important to understand, both tacitly and explicitly, what human knowledge is, in
order to plan, deliver and carry out optimal ways for managing it within
communities and organisations. These ways would be according to the benefits
that CT can bring to knowledge processes and its limitations in optimising these
processes. The aim is to assure an effective co-evolution between knowledge and
technology media, in terms of a socio-technical system.

4.1. Polanyis view on the acquisition of knowledge


Knowledge is not only used, but also acquired in practice. Michael Polanyi (1962)
makes one of the greatest contributions to our understanding of knowledge and its
acquisition.
Polanyi states that all knowledge is above all personal, i.e. it is the result of
processes happening within individual heads (quote from Cook and Brown,
1999). Personal knowledge is both tacit and explicit, and is neither subjective nor
objective, but lies between individual passions and acknowledged requirements
(Polanyi, p. 300). Using ones personal knowledge is exemplified by human
judgement, which is similarly neither a subjective nor an objective act.
In knowledge processes, there is a constant interaction between explicit and tacit
components of personal knowledge possessed by the individuals involved in these
processes. Such processes are not merely about knowledge exchange. When they
happen within a defined community context, there is also generation of new
knowledge that is the possession of the community, i.e. what Polanyi calls
superior knowledge.
Regarding the acquisition of knowledge, Polanyi draws the important distinction
between tacit knowledge and explicit knowledge11. He states that it is the tacit

11

Tacit knowledge, associated with tacit power and tacit knowing, when this knowledge
is used in practice, is beyond human conscious awareness (Polanyi). Tacit knowing is what
enables us to make sense of novel experiences as we encounter them by integrating them
within a framework created by previous experiences. In other words, tacit knowledge is the
outcome of an active shaping of experience performed in the pursuit of knowledge (p.6). It
is the result of the application of tacit power by which all knowledge is discovered and
when discovered is held to be true (p. 6).
In contrast, explicit knowledge is within human conscious awareness and can be spoken and
found within books and databases. It is the knowledge that can be expressed through
symbols, such as letters or formulas, as the result of intended explication. Explicit

31

knowledge

shared

by

individuals

that

makes

possible

the

perceived

meaningfulness, exchange and acquisition of explicit knowledge12. Exchange of


explicit knowledge, in turn, makes it possible for tacit powers within a domain of
practice to be developed by the individuals involved in this practice, thus
increasing their potential for learning within this field of practice. In this way,
situated learning within a context of practice is about a constant shifting between
explicit and tacit knowledge acquisition, in terms of a self-fulfilling cycle.
Polanyi illustrates the process of knowledge acquisition with an example from
medical training (p. 101):

Think of a medical student attending a course in the X-ray diagnosis of pulmonary diseases.
At first the student is completely puzzled. The experts seem to be romancing about fragments
of their imagination; Then as he goes on listening for a few weeks, looking carefully at every
new picture of different cases, a tentative understanding will dawn on him: he will gradually forget
about the ribs and begin to see the lungs. And eventually, if he perseveres intelligently, a rich
panorama of significant details will be revealed to him: He still sees only a fraction of what the
experts can see, but the pictures are definitely making sense now and so do most of the comments
made on them.

This example illustrates the mechanism of knowledge acquisition, where personal


knowledge, both tacit and explicit, is exchanged and elaborated in the context of
practice. This practice makes possible learning by generation of new knowledge
in the process of interpersonal communication 13.

knowledge, within itself, is always abstract as it uses a more or less commonly agreed code
for expression. It is never independent of tacit knowledge, because all forms of explicit
knowledge will make sense and be understandable only when there is tacit power to deem
them with personal significance (p. 203). In this way, there is no such thing as objective
explicit knowledge that will exist independently of individual tacit power to endow it with
personal meaning though interpretation.
12
All knowledge is personal in that it simultaneously has explicit and tacit components
being used for interpretation. Polanyi states: An exact mathematical theory means nothing
unless we recognize an inexact non-mathematical knowledge on which it bears and a person
whose judgement upholds its bearing. (Polanyi, p. 195). Therefore, it is not possible to
make sense of explicit knowledge unless we hold and apply tacit power through which we
can incorporate this knowledge within a framework of personal experience.
13
In fact, Polanyi sees learning to be more complicated than this. In the process of
interpersonal interaction, there can be primary development of subsidiary awareness of the
subject of this interaction, starting with an awareness of the whole and only then gradually
discovering particular details about it. Alternatively, there can be primary development of
focal awareness, where a person learning about a subject starts by developing an awareness
of the details and only after beginning to appreciate the whole that these details constitute
(e.g. students of anatomy usually develop focal awareness of the body organs, but initially
experience great difficulty to spatially relate them in their natural positions within the body).
Polanyi further argues that subsidiary awareness and focal awareness are two opposing

32

Cook and Brown (1999) also discuss the tacit-explicit knowledge dimension in
terms of knowledge acquisition:
Precisely, tacit knowledge is what, for example, a bicycle rider knows how to do
but cant say (e.g. say which way to turn in order to avoid a fall on the left or the
right). In contrast, explicit knowledge is what, for example, a person trained to
teach bicycle riding can say about which way to turn in order for a trainee to
avoid a fall on the left or the right14.
Cook and Brown further point out that each type of knowledge is distinct from the
other, doing work the other cannot, and that one form of knowledge can not be
made or changed into the other (p. 73). In other words, tacit cannot be
converted into explicit or vice versa, as some theorists argue (most prominently
Nonaka and Takeuchi, 1995). This is because, as far as explicit or tacit knowledge
components can be helpful in the acquisition of new knowledge, these remain in
individual possession while and after new knowledge is acquired. Learning about
which way to turn in order to avoid a fall does not mean that tacit knowledge
about riding a bike is lost. Thus new knowledge does not lie hidden or dormant
in old knowledge, but is generated during the activity of practice with the aid of
old knowledge.
In this way, explicit knowledge and tacit knowledge are both tools for acquiring
new personal knowledge. They are both needed to make sense of and learn
information. Understanding how this happens is important for realising the
potentials and limitations of CT when used to optimise human knowledge.

4.2. Understanding information to learn new knowledge


To understand how information is used to form new knowledge, we need to think
about the nature of tacit and explicit dimensions of knowledge, used in knowledge
formation.
As outlined above, if we do not possess tacit power to interpret an explicit
concept, we cannot effectively understand and learn the meaning of this concept.

processes in the acquisition of knowledge. Effective learning requires both in a constant


switching back and forth between them.
14
The tacit skill possessed by the individual in the first case can be helpful in him avoiding a
fall while riding. In addition, it can be helpful in discovering which way to turn in order to
avoid a fall while riding, thus drawing on his tacit knowledge in order to acquire a new
explicit concept of personal knowledge. In the second case, the explicit concept possessed by
the cyclist trainee case can be helpful in preventing him from falling off when riding, as well
as helpful in him getting the feel for staying upright on the bike. In this way, he would be
using his explicit knowledge to acquire a tacit skill.

33

We can learn such meanings by getting involved in the context (e.g. a communityof-practice) from which the explicit concept has been originated, because these
contexts hold the tacit powers and knowledge necessary to explicit concept
interpretation and understanding.
Therefore, the usefulness of CT for managing knowledge is limited. Precisely,
explicit texts found within reference databases, on-line discussion boards and
email wont make sense to individuals, unless these individuals hold relevant tacit
powers to enable their sense reading15 of these texts. Tacit powers are acquired
and used within communities-of-practice, endowing individuals with an
interpretative code for understanding these texts. For example, having a personal
relationship with the person posting a comment or sending an email produces a
context within which to embed the generated text (Walsham, 2001)16.
Thus any process of knowledge creation is not a straightforward activity, but
rather a negotiation of intended meanings within particular contexts. For this
process to be successful there needs to be sufficient overlap among the tacit
knowledge and skills of the individuals communicating, in terms of them sharing
a common cultural background, or a work practice. The value of technology in
this process is in enhancing the benefits from social communication to elaborating
on and generating socially produced knowledge. Technology cannot be used as
merely an information provider, but must be included within a community context

15
In his work, Polanyi further argues that it is not only the making sense of explicit
knowledge that is personal, according to the nature of the tacit powers used by the
individuals in this process (i.e. sense-reading). So is the endowing with sense of any
explicit construction of knowledge that an individual produces (i.e. sense-giving) in an
effort to communicate intended meanings dependent on his tacit understandings. In this way,
in any knowledge discourse, there are at least three different sense-making processes: one
where an individual sense-reads an event, second where he gives sense to this within a
constructed explication and a third where another individual sense-reads this explication and
interprets this according to his tacit knowledge (Walsham, 2001).
16
This is discussed by Antonelli (1997), who points out the limited potential of CT to the
distribution of knowledge, in terms of it being a conductor for explicit (also called by him
codifiable, this in reminiscence to descriptions of information in the literature), but not tacit
knowledge. Johannessen et al. (2001) further argue that unilateral investment in CT may lead
to a de-emphasising of tacit knowledge, hindering the development of sustainable
competitive advantages; these authors additionally point out that, for tacit knowledge to be
re-established for organisational sense-making, there is a need for continuous development of
a sensitivity towards innovation, by learning by doing, using, experimenting and
interacting (p. 13). This would be within apprenticeship groups and larger communities, in a
way such that organisational knowledge is both explored for tacit meanings and exploited for
practical applications. Neither Antonelli, nor Johannessen and his colleagues, however, seem
to understand the complex mechanisms of human knowledge formation, in terms of its
impossibility to be removed from human heads and contexts. Such an understanding is
nevertheless necessary in order to develop ways for managing knowledge in terms of general
knowledge managing strategies. These strategies would optimise knowledge with the help of
the communication potential that well designed CT offers.

34

of knowledge creation. This point is illustrated within the case studies by


Thompson and Walsham (2001) described earlier within the present review.
In relation to this, Walsham concludes:

the challenge is to design systems and approaches to their use which recognize the tacit basis
of all sense-reading and sense-giving activities, and try to make these activities more meaningful
and valuable to all parties. (Washam, p. 601, italics added)

In other words, for the managing of knowledge, there must be primary concern for
shared practice as common ground among people. The concept of common
ground was introduced by Clark in relation to constant referral to shared artefacts
in successful communication (Clark, 1992). In the present case, these shared
artefacts can be understood as explicit forms of communication enabled to exist
effectively by tacit codes for their meaningful interpretation, created by the
community using the artifacts. An approach to CT use, where knowledge is
effectively managed within the context using the technology, would consider
people, as knowers and not information users, to come first. In other words, the
value of interpersonal communication would be seen as crucial to knowledge
generation and, in this way only, to effective use of CT for managing knowledge.
Hayes and Walsham (2000) additionally illustrate this point by describing a case
study from a pharmaceutical company, where use of a shared database for
recording experiences, views and advice was introduced to salesmen to share
best practice on the job. The purpose of the database was to optimize the
knowledge of practitioners in distributed geographical locations of the company
and enable them to take better decisions in approaching specific projects.
However, the company did not recognize the need for establishing a common
ground among the salesmen, so that they can effectively learn information
provided by the database by bridging across each others knowledge. There was
not a recognized approach to enable communities-of-practice before or in parallel
to using the database, in order for the salesmen to develop tacit knowing as a way
for sense making of database information17. The use of the electronic database
was thus ineffective for managing knowledge because of the non-coordinated
sense-reading and sense-giving processes underlying the interpretations of
individuals. The entering of information to communicate a meaning, and the

17

The role of context in tacit knowledge sharing is pointed out by Augier et al., (2001).

35

reading of information to understand and apply this understanding in practice,


were not unified by a socially integrated purpose within a common practice. Thus
explicit knowledge entered into the database was not more than useless
information, as it could not acquire significance for individuals reading it and be
learned by them to effectively apply on their jobs18.

4.3. CT design for emerging cultures


Newell, Scarbrough and Swan (2001) illustrate the points raised above in a case
study, showing the importance of designing CT for managing knowledge with the
assumption of it fitting a wider organizational context. They describe a global
bank with numerous decentralized branches in a structured attempt to manage IT
knowledge among IT divisions and ultimately coordinate the IT infrastructures
throughout the bank. The solution to this was seen in designing a corporate
intranet and introducing this for shared use among all IT divisions. The intranet
was inefficient and ineffective, which the authors consider to be because of lack
of recognition for the highly context-dependent pattern of usage of the
technology and not enough effort put into coordination among the IT divisions
within the bank. In this way, they point out the need for creation of a sufficiently
common human context to guide and stimulate knowledge sharing and generation
among the IT divisions, with or without using the intranet.
Therefore, designing technology for knowledge managing must operate in
synergy with the context of the practice/practices that are to use the technology,
for it to be effective. If this practice is not existent, then it should be allowed to
emerge, so that the designed technology has a practical reason for its creation to
assure its effectiveness19.
18

In the language of Polanyi, conditions were not created for the salesmen to find the same
set of symbols manageable for the purpose of skillfully reorganizing their knowledge (p.
205).
19
Newell et al. further point out that adequate technological infrastructure and
infostructure (Bressand and Distler, 1995) of the intranet were altogether insufficient in
making the intranet effective. Whereas the meaning of the term infrastructure is clear,
infostructure for them means the rules that bind a common language, in terms of the explicit
jargon and terminology connected by syntactic and semantic relationships, together
(Vygotski, 1986). Infostructure is explicit group knowledge, also referred to as heuristics
(Tsoukas and Vladimirou, 2001). The authors hypothesize that the technology serving the IT
divisions could have been effective if there was a common infoculture (Bressand and
Distler, 1995) as a human context to embed usage, additional to the above-described levels of
technology existence. An infoculture is the social relations context within which the
infostructure is embedded, this by the negotiation of meanings to agree a code for
infostructure tacit interpretation. An infoculture thus allows interplay between tacit and
explicit components of personal knowledge within a community and the related generation of
superior, i.e. collective, knowledge (Polanyi, 1962).

36

4.4. Conclusions
Using CT for effectively managing knowledge aims to optimize the knowledge
activities organized within communities-of-practice. As described above, the
existence of community interactions other than via CT, e.g. face-to-face, is
important to the healthy existence of the community and for the effectiveness of
CT in supporting already existing interpersonal processes with view of knowledge
creation. This is because community processes provide a common ground, in
terms of an explicit language and a tacit code for its interpretation, to which CT
can be adapted, and flexibly adapting to, in order to optimize the knowledge
processes already defined within the community20. The dynamics between
knowledge possessed by separate individuals and knowledge possessed by all of
them together as being part of a community is discussed in the next section.

20
Once these processes are defined and social prerequisites exist for elaboration on
knowledge, effective use of CT for managing knowledge could happen in terms of a sociotechnical interaction (Kling, 1993). The CT infrastructure would be tailored to the
community infoculture and infostructure, in order for co-evolution among the three to
continuously take place; thus technology flexibility would allow the community to discover
new ways of using the knowledge it has. In this way, knowledge within these cultures would
not be merely enabled or effectively supported by technology, but optimized, in terms of
allowing for synergistic co-evolution between social groups and technology. Such a sociotechnical system can happen with adequate social and technological platforms allowing for
interplay between tacit and explicit knowledge among community members to take place and
yield coherent superior knowledge (Brown, 1998).

37

5. Individual and organizational knowledge


To illustrate the importance of organizational, i.e. collective, knowledge and its
relationship to individual knowledge, we will go back to the case study by Orr
(1996) of the Xerox Parc technical representatives.
Rather than relying solely on information provided by training courses or
instruction manuals to address machinery problems and repair failure, the
technical representatives found relying on each others personal knowledge far
more helpful. Knowledge exchange happened as they gathered together for
breakfast, lunch or coffee and discussed their experiences on the job, in this way
turning their personal knowledge into collective knowledge bound within their
community-of-practice. This informal exchange helped them reach beyond the
limitations of their individual expertise and mere information provided to them by
training courses and instruction manuals, and create a collective practice. In this
way, they could transfer the knowledge of their collective practice to their
individual practices in order to provide effective client service.
In this way, knowledge is not merely comprised of tacit and explicit components.
Knowledge is a valid social, as well as individual, construct, each having tacit and
explicit elements in its entirety.
To illustrate the nature of knowledge in its entirety, knowledge taxonomy
proposed by Cook and Brown (1999) is displayed on the table below. This
taxonomy bears a close resemblance, while also being an extension, to Polanyis
work.
Table 1. Four forms of knowledge according to a taxonomy provided by Cook, S. & Brown, J.,
1999. (In Bridging Epistemologies: the Generative Dance Between Organizational Knowledge
and Organizational Knowing, Organization Science, 10, 381-400.).

EX

EXPLICIT

TACIT

INDIVIDUAL

GROUP

CONCEPTS

STORIES

SKILLS

GENRES

38

Cook and Brown differentiate between knowledge possessed by individuals and


knowledge possessed by groups. Furthermore, these authors argue that individuals
and groups each do epistemic work that the other cannot, in terms of tacit and
explicit knowledge possessed and used by them to generate new knowledge
within individual and group practices21.
Therefore, according to these authors, organizational (i.e. group) knowledge, as
interplay between explicit and tacit knowledge components in its development
and generation, is an entity in its own right that must be accounted for when
attempts at managing knowledge within groups and organizations are made. The
nature of collective cognitions and collective practices in the process of
organizational knowledge formation is thus important in attempts to optimize
these by using CT systems for managing knowledge.

5.1. Why is organizational knowledge important?


The above emphasizes the importance of taking organizational knowledge into
account when attempts at managing knowledge within organizations are made, to
enable and sustain competitive advantages.
This is because, whereas individual knowledge formation has a direct impact on
actions undertaken within the organization, organizational knowledge informs
these actions indirectly, being the result of individual understandings that have
evolved collectively throughout connected individual experiences (Tsoukas and
Vladimirou, 2001). Within organizations, what is deemed important to individuals
is the result of ways of thinking and practices evolved on an organizational and
much less individual level.
Understanding the nature of collective thought and practice is thus important in
order to be able to leverage these, as well as the individual thoughts and practices
comprising them, towards achievement of the organizational mission. Such

21

In this way, individual medical practitioners possess explicit knowledge of what


exemplifies a type of pathology and know-how to apply this knowledge when making
diagnoses in specific cases in their practice. All medical practitioners explicit knowledge,
however, as a collective (i.e. group) possession, constitutes the heuristic definitions and
contents of the medical profession. This is a common language to use in communication, to
bind all medical practitioners together in the context of their collective practice, as the
ensemble of all individual practices. It has a collectively agreed tacit know-how, in terms
of tacit ways for interpretation of particular heuristic examples found in practice (e.g.
knowing what constitutes an acceptable and unacceptable basis for a diagnosis) and tacit
ways for approaching new medical cases (Cook and Brown, 1999).

39

understanding calls for an awareness of group processes and how the nature of
these processes changes according to types of individuals partaking.
Finally, understanding group and organizational knowledge calls for designing
systems to suit the dynamic evolution of organizations as collections of people
who use knowledge together, and not individually, to leverage resources.
Designing systems to merely suit individuals, interacting with individual
interfaces, is in the very least insufficient to suit organizational needs and
optimize organizational processes. Here, issues of CT usability go beyond
individual interfaces towards design of multi-user systems that take organizational
activity into account (Kling and Elliott, 1994).

5.2. Nature of organizational knowledge: explicit heuristics and tacit genres


Cook and Brown (1999) further argue that the process of organizational
knowledge is the same as the process of individual knowledge described earlier,
but on a scale where this is a collective, rather than just an individual phenomenon
of cognition and practice22. It follows from here that design and use of CT to
optimize the managing of organizational knowledge must account for
organizational knowledge in its entirety, as having explicit and tacit
components23.
Explicit group knowledge summarizes group culture within stories about how
work is done, as well as famous successes and failures (Orr, 1996). It is also
contained within metaphors and analogies that serve to convey special meanings.
Explicit group knowledge is heuristic, in that it is a summary of group practices
(Collins, 1990). Tsoukas and Vladimirou consider heuristics to reside both in the
minds of separate individuals and within collectively produced stories shared
across the community. These heuristics they describe as:

22

Explicit knowledge in groups does work that tacit knowledge in groups cannot. Both
explicit and tacit knowledge within groups generate the learning of new group knowledge
when at interplay, while still remaining within group possession after new knowledge has
been learnt (Cook and Brown, 1998).
23
It was already discussed that CT is limited to transfer of information and not knowledge
in its entirety, unless contextual processes, where tacit negotiations of meanings take place
among individuals, happen additional to technology use by these individuals. This is
because information does not make human sense unless embedded within a meaningful
context of human practice. Therefore, for CT aiming to optimize organizational knowledge
creation, there must be a consideration for the nature and needs of organizational practices,
as well as the relationships between these practices that make the organization a coherent
knowledge body.

40

a conceptual matrix woven by the organization. Such a conceptual matrix contains generic
categories (e.g. service quality, happy customer ) and their interrelations (e.g. high quality
service makes customers happy). (p. 989). 24

Tacit group knowledge is contained within the implicit approach of groups and
organizations towards collective interpreting of information. It is also exemplified
by their efforts at conveying meanings within heuristic cultural statements.
Tacit group knowledge are group genres (a little bit like literary genres):
discursive frames enabling the collective creation and understanding of stories,
metaphors and analogies, as well as mission statements.
In this way, genres are group-negotiated approaches to sense making that can not
be articulated (Cook and Brown, 1999) and are an important part of organizational
culture in terms of its underlying assumptions (Schein, 1990). These genres are
created in the process of common practice within and among communities and
organizations and provide a tacit code for successfully communicating knowledge
messages among practitioners from different organizational and organization
contexts25.
Genres in organizations can be frames for interpreting the continual meaning of
various physical and social artifacts, such as objects and tools in organizational
practice (this can also extend to technology tools). Genres can also be unspoken
ways of approaching and carrying out meetings, in terms of widely agreed cultural
expectations (e.g. Gonzales and Antonia, 2002), or frames for composing and
interpreting texts, in terms of meanings implicit to different media carrying the
texts (e.g. a note, a memo, a letter, an email)26.

24

If formally captured, heuristics are turned into propositions (i.e. if statements describing
practice rules) to form organizational memory guiding individual action. In this way,
heuristics are not more than an explicit abstraction of the rules governing the practice of an
organization. They are incomplete in capturing the entirety of organizational knowledge and
insufficient in enabling the practice that they effectively summarize (Tsoukas, 1996).
Practice can only be done by improvisation re-arranging existing heuristics into knowledge
of personal and group significance (Bell, 1999). Such improvisation involves tacit group
knowledge used in actions of human judgement.
25
Such tacitly agreed collective codes for sense making happen over the course of practice
among practices. This should be inherently informal (in terms of healthy autonomy
considered an important characteristic of successful communities-of-practice; Wenger and
Snyder, 2000) and develops continuously over time. To facilitate a common organizational
practice among communities found within an organization, efforts must be made to develop
genres to continuously assure accurate sense making and unambiguity within the
organization. In this way, managing organizational knowledge should stimulate the
development of social practices fostering communication among communities and ensuring
that knowledge within the organization is coherent.
26
For example, email communication of a text can be interpreted differently in different
organizations according to the tacitly agreed status of this type of communication media,

41

Therefore, genres and heuristics are essential to coherent knowledge dynamics


within an organization, where all knowledge is effectively harnessed to serve the
purpose of the organization. This happens by widespread heuristic rules that are
made practically possible within existing community genres.

5.3. Organizational knowledge and individual action


As outlined above, a number of explorations in the literature on organizational
knowledge and organizational epistemology (e.g. Krogh and Roos, 1995) have
treated knowledge possessed and generated by groups in its own right, as a
distinct category from knowledge possessed and generated by individuals.
Nevertheless, organizational knowledge is also described in constant interaction
with knowledge possessed by individuals. This is because it is discursively
formed in the process of socially constructed heuristics, by drawing on
experiences in individual practices (Yakhlef, 2002; Tsoukas, 1998; Tsoukas and
Vladimirou, 2001). Some theories consider organizational knowledge as the result
of an organizing process, where collectively derived assumptions, values and
beliefs guide organizational sense-making and integration of meanings, all in the
process of individual practices (McPhee and Zaug, 2001).
Within the present section, it is shown that organizational knowledge, both in
terms of heuristics and multiple genres for their interpretation, informs individual
actions in specific cases in practice. Therefore, managing knowledge necessarily
affects the effectiveness of an organization by indirectly influencing individual
actions of organizational members.
Tsoukas and Vladimirou (2001) illustrate the importance of group knowledge to
individual actions undertaken within the organization within a case study. They
describe operators within a call centre of a mobile telecommunications company
in Greece, having to use an electronic database of information plus paper
instructions to assist them when answering customer calls. The most valuable help
that operators had in the process of their work was not the information provided
by these sources, but the knowledge existing within the call centre community-ofpractice. This knowledge effectively bounded the information provided by these
sources within a strong framework of cultural assumptions, values, heuristic
which is deemed appropriate, trustworthy and valuable for certain but not other types of
text (e.g. Schwartz, 1999). Therefore the effectiveness of email, although this is an efficient
type of CT technology, will be undermined if the technology is not appropriately used in
accordance to organizational genres.

42

propositions and tacit skills to orient operator actions within the confusing
circumstances of their practice27.
From their observations, Tsoukas and Vladimirou conclude that human action in
organizations necessarily draws on organizational knowledge, namely on sets of
generalizations underlain by collective understandings (i.e. tacit genres) and
activated in particular contexts. (p. 984, brackets added).
In this way, they fuse Polanyis notion that all knowledge is personal with
Wittgensteins notion that all knowledge is fundamentally collective, thus
emphasizing that all personal knowledge is made possible by knowledge
possessed and developed within a larger group or organization. Group knowledge
is created by people discoursing about the particularities of their practice. This
group knowledge, in turn, serves communities-of-practice to make sense of
information provided by electronic and paper sources in the context of practical
cases. It also guides individual actions in an effort to successfully transform
information into propositional heuristics. As McCarthy (1994) points out:

What gives organizational knowledge its dynamism is the dialectic between the general and the
particular. Without the general no action is possible. And without the particular no action will be
effective. (McCarthy, 1994, p. 68).

5.4. Conclusions
In this way, organizational knowledge, as a common culture unifying ways of
thinking and practices serving a particular mission, makes all individual action
possible and effective. Managing knowledge aims above all to optimize the social
relations by which organizational knowledge is made possible, by developing
explicit and tacit aspects of this knowledge that impact individual ways of
thinking and acting within organizations. Optimization of organizational
knowledge naturally leads to organization effectiveness by enhancing the strategic
value of individual member actions within a community or an organization. As
Tsoukas (1998) points out:
27

It is also important to note that this knowledge happened in operator heads, where the
provided technology was adapted to the particular demands of cases constituting their
practice. Knowledge was exemplified in operator continuous judgements of the meaning of
different case circumstances, a skill that they had developed by discursively elaborating on
their individual experiences in the context of their common practice, similarly to the
technicians described by Orr (1996).

43

the management of the heuristic aspect of organizational knowledge implies more the sensitive
management of social relations and less the management of corporate digital information.
(Tsoukas, 1998, italics added).

In this way, Communication Technology used for managing knowledge should be


designed with a view of these informal and dynamic social relations, to effectively
support them by a flexible technological infrastructure designed to suit the
autonomy that they need in order to flourish. In other words, using CT for
managing knowledge must consider the nature of organizational knowledge in
terms of its heuristics and genres. It must successfully implement the technology
within a wider context of knowledge creation, at a place where the technology can
effectively co- exist with and support tacit and explicit processes generating
purposeful interpersonal interactions.
The next section discusses the nature of practice and how, through the dynamics
of social relations, it nurtures and generates human knowledge, on the one hand,
and new ways of acting this knowledge out in practice, on the other.

44

6. Knowing in practice
As already pointed out, human knowledge is, by its nature, a process, not a
commodity that is codifiable within an IT repository of information (Wenger et
al., 2002). The reason for this is that human knowledge is useful only when found
and applied in practice.
The term practice was originally coined by MacIntyre (1985) and has received
multiple other definitions: a form of life (Wittgenstein, 1958), a consensual
domain (Maturana and Varela, 1988, a medium for the engenderment of
meaning (Gadamer, 1989) and a sustained domain of action (Tsoukas and
Vladimirou, 2002). A practice is essentially a context where human knowledge
can be applied and new knowledge can be generated. This is following the
principle of dynamic affordance28 as an on-going interaction between knowers
and environmental and/or social properties (Cook and Brown, 1998). Without
such a practice, knowledge possessed by individuals and organizations is deemed
useless, i.e. without any value in the generation of new knowledge.
The dynamic nature of human knowledge is pointed out by Tsoukas and
Vladimirou (2001), who define knowledge as the acquired ability to draw
distinctions and exercise judgment within a domain of action as a concrete context
of practice. Lanzara and Patriotta (2002) also point the interactive, provisional
and controversial nature of knowledge within organizations, where this emerges
as the outcome of inquiry, local disputes, experiments and reassembling of
opposing views within the context of particular practice. Thus knowledge is a
discursive social phenomenon useful only when found and applied in practice,
where it can be used as its nature demands.

6.1. Knowledge as possession and knowing as practice


The above sections make clear the importance of entering existing knowledge in
interaction with environment and other knowledge, in order to derive new
knowledge. In this way, knowledge in action makes possible not only exchange of
knowledge among the people involved in the interaction, but also generation of
new knowledge over the course of this interaction, within the context of a
common practice. In addition, there is exchange and generation of ways of
knowing this knowledge over the course of this practice.

28

The notion of dynamic affordance is further explained later in this section.

45

Cook and Brown (1998) illustrate the dynamics of knowledge by distinguishing


between epistemology of possession and epistemology of practice.
Epistemology of possession is what is known, i.e. possessed in the head, in
terms of individual, organizational, tacit and explicit knowledge. This has an
essentially static character and does not capture the nature of knowledge in its
entirety. It is knowledge used in action.
Epistemology of practice is action carried out to apply, use and elaborate on
knowledge (as what is possessed in human heads) by practicing old and
acquiring new ways of knowing knowledge (as what is part of human practices).
Knowing is knowledge as part of action, i.e. things we are doing and can only
know as part of practice. It is hard to understand what knowing is, unless one has
ever been a practitioner.
Furthermore, knowing is not, for example, tacit knowledge, because knowing
requires present activity, whereas tacit knowledge does not. Knowing is about
relation and interaction between the knower and the world using knowledge as a
tool, whereas knowledge is about possession of this tool.
To give an example, to say that the government are writing a policy for rural
development calls for an understanding of the entirety of the epistemic work
being done by this group. This is both in terms of the knowledge that they possess
of rural development and how policies are created, and the particular group
actions they engage in to be able to pull their knowledge together (i.e. during
interactions with the context of their work and each other). In the process of these
actions they not only use and elaborate on existing knowledge, but also participate
in old and new ways of knowing this knowledge, in order to fulfill a practical
goal. In this way, knowing is distinct from knowledge, in that knowing is what
enables us to put our knowledge to work, in order to use it. By engaging in
collective knowing, we acquire new knowledge and new ways of knowing as part
of our practice.
Cook and Brown consider knowledge and knowing, although distinct from each
other, to be complementary and mutually enabling in a potentially generative
phenomenon, i.e. a generative dance. This is illustrated in the quote below:

for human groups, the source of new knowledge and knowing lies in the use of knowledge as
a tool of knowing within situated interaction with the social and physical world.

46

Using knowledge that we possess in known and new ways of knowing makes
possible the situated learning, within the context of practice, of new knowledge
and new ways of knowing our knowledge. The epistemology of knowing unifies
already possessed and to-be-generated knowledge, as well as knowing how to use
knowledge as part of actions in known and unknown practices. In other words,
knowing is this part of action that does epistemic work, in terms of putting
knowledge at work and practicing old and new ways of knowing knowledge, in
order to derive new knowledge and ways of knowing this knowledge.
In this way, for CT to optimize the managing of knowledge, it must support the
epistemic work that people within communities and organizations do in its
entirety. This is in order for knowledge to be effectively used and renewed.
Alternatively, if CT is not of right technological potential, it must (in all cases) be
part of a general knowledge managing strategy aiming to fully develop the
knowledge potential of communities/organizations and use CT in this process
according to the potential that it offers.
For knowledge managing, it is in fact knowing that is of interest, rather than
merely knowledge as the tool and product of knowing. Knowing allows for
generative dynamics among individual and organizational knowledge, both in
terms of tacit and explicit components, by continuously informing individual
actions within the organization. In this way knowing makes knowledge useful to
communities/organizations. The dynamics of knowing must therefore be
considered when designing systems for knowledge optimization and planning
knowledge-managing strategies as a whole. Cook and Brown break down
knowing in terms of productive inquiries with the world that happen during
dynamic affordances between knowers and world properties. The nature of these
is considered in turn and thorough understanding of knowing is attempted.

6.2. Productive enquiry


Engaging in productive enquiry is motivated by the existence of a problem, a
question, a troublesome situation or a provocative insight that is actively being
sought an answer, a solution or a resolution. Productive enquiry is systematic and
not a random search, because it is informed, or disciplined, by the nature of
knowledge that we already possess. In this way, productive enquiry is not merely
about asking questions, but also engaging in a process of investigation with other
people participating (directly or indirectly). Thus the idea behind productive
47

enquiry is similar to Polanyis notion of intelligent efforts that individuals


engender among themselves when they share an ambition to learn about a topic.
Existing knowledge is rather like a tool in the process of enquiry. Knowing in
enquiry respects the demands and constraints of the knowledge that we possess, in
order to be successful in achieving a practical goal.
To return to the above example of the government group creating a policy,
knowledge that government members possess of rural development wont help
them create a policy, unless they engage in a shared activity to use their
knowledge as tool. Over the course of this activity, they will be interacting with
each others personal styles and preferences, which will shape the process of their
multiple interactions, as will also the practice context within which they interact.
These interactions will be effective in producing the desired policy, provided that
existing knowledge of government members is intelligently used in the process of
their collaborative activity, according to assumptions, values and beliefs shared
within the public and civil sector. Therefore, for any knowledge to be used and
new knowledge to be generated, thus optimized, there must be knowing to make
this possible.
In this way, CT designed to support and optimize knowledge managing must
account for the importance of members of a group to engage in a process of
knowing, in order to use and generate knowledge as they work together. This
process of knowing could be technologically enabled within a CT infrastructure
that allows for continual interpersonal interactions among members. However,
provided that such an infrastructure exists for use, it must be part of a general
knowledge managing strategy that above all enables knowing in a social and
organizational plan, by creating conditions for interpersonal communication
(Walsham, 2001).

6.3. Dynamic affordance


Cook and Brown further define the conceptual way in which productive enquiry,
once enabled, unfolds in practice. This they call dynamic affordance.
Following on Gibsons (1979) work on perception, they point out that affordance
is not primarily about perception, but about relationships between perceived
characteristics of the world and issues of inherent concern to people emerging in
human practices (Gaver, 1991). These relationships are on going and dynamic, in
the sense that the worlds perceived characteristics evolve as properties of
48

facility or frustration over the course of our interactions with them. Facilities
and frustrations emerge according to what we already know that constrains the
nature of our interactions, as well as what we want to achieve and what we learn
in the situated context of these interactions (Ortega, 1961).
Cook and Brown point out that there is no such thing as affordances that can be
reliably predicted in order to, for example, define technological design
requirements. Rather, accounting for affordances needs to consider the particulars
of the interaction over which these affordances emerge, as the situated context of
human action.
To give a simple example, we dont know how our interaction with clay in order
to manipulate it will develop, until we engage in this interaction within a
particular context. Without the dynamic affordances of our interaction with the
tensile strength of this material, within the particular context, we cannot learn to
manipulate it in the way we want or enact what we already know about such
manipulations. The only way for us to use our knowledge to achieve what we
want is by engaging in a knowing interaction, which process allows us to
elaborate our knowledge.
In this way, for CT to support knowing processes in their entirety as collections of
peoples productive enquiries and dynamic affordances between them and the
environment, it needs to be sufficiently flexible in its design to suit the dynamic
and particularly dialectic interactions happening among people over the course of
their practice. Optimization of knowing, be it via technology and/or other aspects
of a general knowledge managing strategy, will naturally enhance the knowledge
used in the process of this knowing, throughout collective practice.

6.4. Conclusions
Using Communication Technologies to support the managing of knowledge has to
account not only for knowledge and how people organize this over the course of
interaction and practice, but also for ways of knowing this knowledge as part of
practice. During practice, inter-personal relationships unfold, in order to make
collective knowing possible. This collective knowing is of vital importance to the
generation of new knowledge in the context of practice. Therefore, if CT is used
as part of a general knowledge managing strategy, it must be implemented within
the context of practice, as much as its technological potential allows. If CT proves
inadequate to support the dynamics of practice, then compensatory efforts must be
49

made to continuously develop and sustain this practice in its entirety, so that new
knowledge can be derived from knowing knowledge in practice. The aim is to
plan, deliver and carry out an effective knowledge managing strategy, according
to the exact range of available CT potential for optimizing knowledge as part of
practice.

50

7. Recommendations for approaches to Communication Technology


use for managing knowledge
The above literature review serves to derive recommendations for approaching
the use (according to Walsham, 2001) of Communication Technology for
managing knowledge, in order to ensure that technology is not only efficient but
most importantly effective in this process. These recommendations can also be
used

as

criteria

for

evaluating

knowledge-managing

initiatives

using

Communication Technology in their process. The recommendations are:

 Allow for situated learning within communities-of-practice


 Aim to optimize social processes within these communities, rather than overtly
focus on developing existing and newly generated knowledge as a commodity that
exists outside of people
 Consider the informal, spontaneous and autonomous nature of social relations
within these communities and aim to optimize these by minimal support
technological platforms
 Ensure there is learning about being practitioners and not about practice, i.e.
facilitate shared activity
 Focus on informal facilitation of emergent social relations
 Aim for development of such a sense for the community where knowledge is
regarded a public good
 Avoid imposition of roles or tasks on members but allow them to naturally find
and purchase their interests within the community
 Do not impose restrictions on types of issues that would be of concern
 Allow for constant fresh blood into the community by giving novices legitimate
peripheral access to communication and creating conditions for them stealing
knowledge

51

 Understand the distinction between information and knowledge


 Understand that information is not of use to people, unless serving a purpose of
enabling human knowledge within shared contexts of practical activity
 Design technology with personalization, rather than knowledge codification
assumptions behind it
 Understand that information can enable human knowledge if delivered into a
context where it is relevant to contextual activities
 Understand that information in itself can not optimize human knowledge, but
processes of social construction of knowledge, where there is continuous
development of interpersonal relationships, can

 Recognize the distinction between explicit knowledge and tacit knowledge in


terms of equally important components of personal knowledge
 Recognize that explicit knowledge and tacit knowledge are both needed for
understanding information, therefore assure that information carried by
technology reaches knowledge contexts and not decontextualized environments in
terms of the content of the information
 Recognize that tacit knowledge, needed for understanding explicit knowledge, is
not manageable by Information Technology but within commonly grounded
groups
 Assure development of social groups where tacit knowledge is used and generated
to make sense of explicit knowledge by regular face-to-face incidents interspersed
with electronic communication
 Design systems for emergent cultures where tacit and explicit knowledge are
naturally created as common cultural grounds defining the structure and type of
technology to suit them
 Avoid designing systems without considering the importance of having defined
social contexts first, in terms of tacit interpretative powers and explicit knowledge
emerging in the process of informal discourse construction

52

 Recognize the distinction between group/organizational knowledge and


individual knowledge and their equal importance for knowledge creation
 Enable use of multi-user systems that take organizational activity and not merely
individual behaviors into account
 Assure that any technology has an agreed status as part of group development and
has not been imposed on use
 Approach organizations as communities-of-communities, by enabling social and
technological channels linking among communities to co-evolve in a knowledgecreating synergy
 Approach communities and groups as collections of individuals where social and
technological channels linking among individuals co-evolve in a knowledge
creating synergy
 Recognize that electronic systems are limited to provision of explicit text removed
from context for interpretation, therefore encourage parallel development of such
contexts as communities-of-practice, by facilitating intelligent efforts at
collaborative learning among people
 Encourage the development of community knowledge in order to assure sensitive
management of social relations that will inform individual actions, whether or not
involving use of the technology

 Consider knowledge as part of action and not merely as a possession


 Ensure that there is a social group or community engaged in a shared activity, in
order for them to use their knowledge in practice and generate new knowledge as
part of the development of this practice
 Allow for continuous self-fulfilling interaction and building of social relations to
stimulate knowledge creation
 Admit the impossibility of predicting what the course of the interpersonal
interactions among group and community members will be, or what the outcomes
of their productive enquiries with the social and physical environment will be:
knowledge is a self-fulfilling process, not a project that team members work on

53

8. Conclusions to Part II
Within this review, it was attempted to outline factors in the nature of human
knowledge use, formation and application in practice that are to be considered in
Communication Technology (CT) design and use for managing of knowledge.
These factors pertain to knowledge acquisition in terms of tacit and explicit types
of knowledge possessed by individuals and organizations and applying knowledge
in practice, as the most important resource people and organizations have.
It was shown that knowledge is an informally dynamic process of social
construction within communities-of-practice, that CT can optimize if its
infrastructure is sufficiently flexible in order to provide adequate minimal
support to host but not constrain the dynamic interpersonal relationships
unfolding within these communities. Consideration for the self-fulfilling and
resistant to ordaining from the outside nature of human knowledge will ensure
that knowledge is understood as a phenomenon involving managing of people and
not information. In this way, design and approaches to the use of CT for managing
knowledge in practice will accommodate knowers and not users. Furthermore, the
technological potential that an organization has will be appropriately harnessed to
make most of its knowledge resources, where use of effective knowledge, and not
efficient technology, is a primary concern.
It was concluded that knowledge is above all distinct from information, because
knowledge resides in the heads of human knowers and is not a commodity that
can be transferred by electronic means. In addition, knowledge does not only
exclusively reside within people, but is also part of the actions they undertake.
This is because human knowledge is a discursive social phenomenon that is
constructed as part of human practice and is found useful only when applied in
practice or contexts derived from practice. Therefore, CT designed to optimize
human knowledge processes should aim to support human practices in terms of
the continuous development of interpersonal relations found in practice, rather
than focus on knowledge as a definable entity. In addition, CT used for optimizing
human knowledge should in fact ensure that such knowledge processes are
existent in the first place, in terms of conditions, found within communities-ofpractice, that facilitate knowledge formation.
Within this review, the nature of practice, as a medium where human knowledge
thrives within cultivated interpersonal relationships, was examined. Practice is
54

distinct from knowledge as such, because practice involves ways of knowing


knowledge possessed by individuals and organizations. In this way, practice is
this part of human activity that does epistemic work, in terms of using existing
knowledge in known and new ways of knowing, to generate new knowledge and
ways of knowing, so that members of the community undertaking the practice
become more and more competent on what is the nature of their interest. Practice
is thus a dynamic inherently social process where knowledge is found to be of
practical use. It is concluded that, for optimization of knowledge, it is the
phenomenon of human practice that is of interest, which is essentially different
from activities existing within over-structured environments found within
typically mechanistic organizations.
Finally, it has been argued throughout this literature review that use of CT for
managing knowledge should adopt a socio-technical perspective rather than a
technology as a tool perspective. This is because, according to some researchers
(e.g. Kling, 1993), the potential that technology offers can be maximally used in
efforts at optimization, only when there is a synergy between technology and
society.
Ways for achieving socio-technical systems is by thoroughly considering the
nature of human processes that these systems are meant to optimize. With
knowledge, it was shown that these processes are socially constructed and
inherently ambiguous, unless found within the context of human practices.
Therefore, the achieving of appropriate meanings in order to discard ambiguity is
the result of processes of human search for knowledge within communities-ofpractice that can not be ordained by inflexible and impersonalized technology, but
rather facilitated by flexible technological platforms.
In such a way, for socio-technical systems, the nature of human processes within
groups and organizations must be considered. This is towards developing of a
notion of organizational usability, rather than mere desktop interface usability, in
order to optimize human processes in their dialectic entirety, without constraining
them in models inapplicable in actual organizational practice. Human-Computer
Interaction, or Socio-Technical Interaction, must strive to achieve a vision of a
more effective and self-fulfilling society.

55

Part III
Learning Networks at the
Countryside Agency
Market Towns Learning Network

Equipping Rural Communities


Learning Network

Rural Affairs Forum for England


Learning Network

1. Introduction
Within the present part, three Learning Networks at the Countryside Agency are
evaluated against the criteria for effective managing of knowledge using
Communication Technology derived from the literature review outlined in the
previous part II of this work.
In this way, the aim of this final part is to illustrate managing of knowledge within
an organization, according to derived criteria. These criteria will be practically
validated, by being used to pinpoint strengths and weaknesses in the knowledge
managing process observed in the real life examples at the Countryside Agency.
Using these criteria will also importantly help to understand the barriers to
effective knowledge managing existing in the public sector within the UK.

1.1. The problem behind managing knowledge in the UK public sector


By describing knowledge managing practices within a real life public sector
organization, the difficulties that work structures and practices in the public sector
impose on effective managing of knowledge within this sector are illustrated. This
is in terms of the need for knowledge to thrive in autonomous flexible cultures,
where interpersonal communication is driven by interest and not by status
accorded to person-fulfilled roles, these roles imposed culturally, technologically,
or both. Public sector communication, in terms of the culture prevalent in this
sector, may sometimes be over-dependent on role-delivered messages and not
people themselves.
It is considered that, because of this, the potential of technology to optimize
knowledge managing can be greatly misperceived in public sector executive
circles (as well as some private sector practices, but this is not the purpose of the
present work).
Typically, knowledge managing technology is designed, and approached,
according to what managers see as the right way for knowledge managing to
proceed. This is in terms of generally accepted structures and roles ordained on
the way things actually happen within organizations29, which is in terms of
informal networks of people. Technology is not always designed and approached
29

According to Brown (1998), there is a marked difference between ordained practice in an


organization (in terms of ways top management sees that work should proceed) and actual practice
in an organization (in terms of how employees actually proceed with their work, by forming
essentially informal communities-of-practice). The research by Brown is described in Part II of
this work.

57

with the assumption that it cannot be a substitute for this spontaneous face-to-face
communication, aiming to build human relationships and expand network of
contacts.
What needs to be recognized is that technology cannot create this process, but can
make it more efficient, once this has been made effective by facilitatory
management. This can happen by bridging geographical distances and offering
novel ways for communicating with people that are already known, in order to
spontaneously elaborate on knowledge.
In this way, because of the frequently possible emphasis on ordained and not
actual practice within the UK public sector, the various views of principal
stakeholders, other than central and chief executives, may not always be taken
into account in knowledge managing practice and designing technology for it.
This would result in low effectiveness of knowledge managing initiatives and the
systems that they use within organizations.
The evaluation of the three knowledge-managing initiatives (Learning Networks)
at the Countryside Agency indeed shows that the lack of consideration for actual
practice within the organization and the public sector at large can be the greatest
problem behind ineffective Communication Technology used for managing
knowledge.

58

2. Methodology
The Learning Network evaluation consisted of conducting informal unstructured
and semi-structured interviews with the managers of each Learning Network
(facilitators), as well as distributing a general questionnaire to members of the
communities that the networks were deemed to support. This questionnaire was
distributed to Learning Network (from now on referred as LN) members via
email.
The interviews and questionnaire were designed to investigate the assumptions
behind managing and using the networks, as well as the perceived benefits of
members from not only using the networks, but also being part of the
communities that these networks support. In this way, the effectiveness of the
networks at supporting general knowledge managing strategies, thus being
appropriately used according to the nature of optimization potential they can offer,
was verified.
Once data from interviews and questionnaire were obtained, these were subjected
to qualitative analyses according to the criteria derived from the literature review
(Part II of this work).

2.1. Level of response from each network


The questionnaire generated a varied response from the networks, with Market
Towns LN generating 33 responses from approximately 200 members, Equipping
Rural Communities LN generating 7 responses from approximately 200 members
and Rural Affairs Forum for England LN generating 4 responses from 64
members.
The varied response from the LNs is attributed to the fact that responses were
seeked at a time when most network members would be on holiday. In addition,
different degrees of commitment to network purpose within each community
could also have influenced the number of responses.
In other words, the comparative amount of response from each network would
speak of how active this network is, in terms of genuine interest of its members
into the benefit of the community they represent. According to this, the Market
Towns LN is the most active of all three LNs. However, it could also be that the
nature of membership of the Market Towns LN presupposes more free time of
these members to respond to the questionnaire.

59

2.2. Interviews with facilitators of each LN


For each network, one informal semi-structured interview was conducted with the
facilitator of this network, which was followed by additional questions by
phone/email where necessary. Opportunity for an informal unstructured interview
to probe the issues of interest, in order to target critical areas of concern during the
main semi-structured interviews, was available and used accordingly only for the
Rural Affairs Forum for England LN.
During each interview, facilitators were asked questions concerning their
association with/position within the Agency, as well as how they came to
facilitate their networks. Their views on their roles as facilitators were solicited
and how well circumstances allow them to pursue and fulfill these roles. In
addition, facilitators were asked about their knowledge of the issue subject of
network discussions. Their opinions on commitment and contributions to this
issue from the part of network members were outlined, in terms of how well the
network is being used, according to them, and why there are problems with its
use. Finally, the motivation behind facilitating was investigated and propositions
for change were put forward. The question format used for each semi-structured
interview is given in the Appendices. Facilitator responses were recorded in
writing over the process of the interviews.

2.3. Questionnaire emailed to members


The questionnaire emailed to members consisted of questions about member
involvement with the LN, in terms of their professional practice and concerns,
relationship to the Countryside Agency, ways of beginning membership and
interest in the network purpose of existence. In addition, questions were asked
about member use of the LN, in terms of features that they find most/least
effective and factors stopping them on their way to actively using the network, in
order to derive relevant benefits. Members were asked about the technological
aspects of their use of the network, in terms of nature of the functionality and
infrastructure supporting this. Finally, member opinions of the community behind
the network, as well as of network facilitation and future potential, were solicited.
The questionnaire format, as it was used to email to LN members, is given in the
Appendices.
As it was designed, the questionnaire was described as too long by some members
in their responses. This must be taken into account when considering the amount
60

of overall response the questionnaire generated from LN members, these generally


being very busy people with a range of work commitments.
The questionnaire was emailed to members from my personal email account at
UCL. Each member emailed his response directly to me at this email account,
therefore there were no intermediary parties involved in me receiving member
responses. In addition, all members were assured of the complete anonymity and
confidentiality of their responses. After deriving data from each response, the
proforma for this was destroyed. No names or other information that could serve
for member identification was used in data analyses.

2.4. Personal style/preference measures


Within the LN evaluation, two measures of personal style/preference were used.
The rationale behind this is given in the section following this, whereas here the
measures are briefly introduced to the reader.
One measure was the EPQ questionnaire (Eysenck et al., 1985). The EPQ consists
of 48 yes-no questions concerning typical ways of feeling and behaving. There are
four scales to this questionnaire. Extraversion, Neuroticism, Social Desirability,
Psychoticism. The Psychoticism scale was not used in the present study of the
LNs, because of its lack of relevance to the subject of LN evaluation. The 12-item
extraversion scale assesses sociability and the tendency to seek out stimulation.
The 12-item neuroticism scale assesses tendencies to experience anxiety, distress
and emotional sensitivity. The higher the score on each scale, the more
extraverted/emotionally sensitive the person is. Finally, the 12-item social
desirability scale assesses individual propensities to consider other people when
acting in social and interpersonal contexts. The higher the score on this scale, the
higher the personal tendency to perform actions that are socially desirable.
The other measure was the Myres-Briggs Type Inventory (MBTI). The MBTI is a
self-report questionnaire designed according to Jungs theory of human
personality types, applying this to human interaction. According to Jungs theory,
predictable differences in individuals are caused by the way people prefer to use
their minds. Precisely, when the mind is active, individuals are taking in
information, i.e. perceiving, and organizing this in order to come to conclusions,
i.e. judging (the J-P dimension). Jung further observed that there are two opposite
ways of perceiving, which he called sensing and intuition (the S-I dimension), and
two opposite ways of judging, which he called thinking and feeling (the T-F
61

dimension). These four processes are used in daily life in both the internal and
external world, according to individual preference for experience. People who
prefer to experience things externally to themselves are extroverts, and people
who prefer to experience things by focusing on processes within themselves are
introverts (the E-I dimension). According to these dimensions, the MBTI provides
a description of 16 personality types, each a combination of personal preferences
for either end of each dimension. For example, a person with the ESTJ type
(extraverted thinking/introverted sensing) has a preference for focusing his
attention on the outer world (the E end of the E-I dimension) and looking at the
logical consequences of a choice or action when making decisions (the T end of
the T-F dimension). He also has a preference for focusing on the practical
immediate details of a situation when taking in new information (the S end of the
S-N dimension) and orient towards the outer world in a planned, orderly way (the
J end of the J-P dimension).

2.5. Rationale behind using the EPQ in the present evaluation


Within the present work, the role of personal style in/preference for
communicating with people was investigated. This role is within the style of LN
facilitation, as well as nature of use and engagement within the community behind
the network by members.
This is according to views expressed in the literature of the insufficient
consideration for the personality of technology users by Internet designers,
deciding the future development of the Internet and the type of extranet
technology here considered.
For example, Hamburger (2002) suggests the main reason for this to be the heavy
emphasis placed by designers on technological advancement to the detriment of
user needs. In addition, Hamburger and Ben-Artzi (2000) demonstrated the link
between personal style and the nature and pattern of use of the Internet. Precisely,
they showed that Extraversion and Neuroticism, as these variables were defined
by Eysenck et al. (1985), are related to the pattern of use of Internet services. For
men, extraversion was positively linked to the use of leisure services and
neuroticism was negatively related to the use of information services. On the other
hand, for women, extraversion was negatively related and neuroticism positively
related to the use of social sites.

62

In this way, it is obvious that personal style variables exert an influence on


approaches to using technology and behaviors displayed online. Since the impact
of Eysenckian Extraversion and Neuroticism has been widely investigated in
relation to interpersonal dynamics and development (e.g. Organ, 1975; Kirton &
Mulligan, 1973), it can be expected that these variables will play a role in
interpersonal communication via an electronic tool, provided by Communication
Technology. In other words, it can be expected that extraversion and neuroticism
will influence the nature of participation within the community of practice or
purpose that the LNs at the Countryside Agency support.
Therefore, network members were asked to fill in, if they wish, the Eysenckian
EPQ questionnaire (Eysenck et al., 1985), which was emailed to them together
with the evaluation questionnaire.

2.6. Rationale behind using the MBTI in LN evaluation


In addition, a similar line of research into the impact of personality types on
organizational behavior, using the Myers-Briggs Type Inventory (MBTI), was
taken to inform the design of the here reported evaluation of LNs.
Precisely, the MBTI has been used in research on the relationship between
personal preference and leadership strengths and weaknesses, as well as personal
management and decision making (Cunnyngham, 2002). In this study, it was
shown that personal management was a strength for sensing, thinking and judging
types (ISTJs and ESTJs), whereas decision making was a strength for people
having a preference for extraverted thinking with introverted sensing (ESTJs; the
nature

of

the

described

types is outlined

above).

Also,

extraverted

thinking/introverted sensing types (ESTJs) had a strength for exerting power and
influence over others and introverted sensing/extraverted thinking types (ISTJs)
had the skill to continuously pursue results oriented projects.
The MBTI has also been used as part of research showing the relationship
between personality perception and innovation approach preferences in computer
professionals (Pope et al., 1997). Finally, the MBTI function of Intuition (I) has
been shown to positively relate to higher level of Emotional Intelligence for
managers (Higgs, 2001), which is in turn related to their success on the job.
On the basis of these findings, it can be expected that the nature of MBTI personal
preference type, derived for an individual, will bear a relationship to his willing to
influence others and leverage them towards achievement of desired objectives or
63

more general fulfillment of purpose. In addition, the nature of MBTI type could
also relate to individual willingness to take creative and unstructured approaches
to managing people when the situation necessitates this, in order to enable
conditions for a knowledge community freely discoursing topics of interest.
Therefore, the MBTI was used to evaluate LN facilitation, in view of the impact
of facilitator personal preference for communicating with people on the
effectiveness of the community behind each network. Facilitators were asked to
go through a personal preference assessment with an Occupational Psychologist,
administering the MBTI.

2.7. Data obtained from the personal style/preference instruments


EPQ Extraversion and Neuroticism scores were obtained for 25 out of 33
respondents to the Market Towns LN evaluation questionnaire, 5 out of 7
respondents to the Equipping Rural Communities LN evaluation questionnaire
and 3 out of 4 respondents to the Rural Affairs Forum for England LN evaluation
questionnaire.
MBTI personal preference types were obtained only for facilitators of the Rural
Affairs Forum for England LN. This was because of practical limitations to meet
with facilitators of the other LNs, in order for them to go through a session with
an Occupational Psychologist for MBTI administration purposes.

64

3. Learning Network Evaluation


3.1. Market Towns Learning Network
The purpose of this section is to outline results from the evaluation of the Market
Towns Learning Network (MTLN).
3.1.1. Background to the Market Towns Learning Network
This network is concerned with supporting the Market Towns Program, the
overall goal of which is to offer a range of retail and professional services, leisure
and cultural opportunities, training and jobs to market towns serving rural
communities within England. In this way, the purpose of the Market Towns
Program is to help communities examine the economic, social and environmental
health of market towns. The Program is being run primarily by the Countryside
Agency in partnership with regional development agencies.
According to the Agency proforma, the purpose of the Learning Network
supporting the Market Towns Program is to achieve a higher profile for the
program and the Agency who is providing and, for the most part, running the
network. It is important that the network conducts the effective exchange of
knowledge and good practice between the Agency and its partners, as well as
establish Agency brand values in high levels of Government. This exchange of
knowledge between the parties involved in the program is aimed to lead to the
development of Regional Development Agencies to support market towns, allow
for the circulation of important information, speed up project management,
influence external policy and provide a forum for exchanging ideas, action plans
and experience.
In terms of managing of knowledge within the community involved in the Market
Towns Program, the LN is concerned with providing technological support to the
community for the effective exchange of ideas, action plans and experience. In
other words, the LN is aimed to help members bridge geographical distances and
overcome time pressures. This is in order to be able to effectively access
important others within the community, when necessary to their practice, thus
make the process of knowledge generation within the community maximally
effective towards achieving desired social, economic and environmental
developments in market towns.

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3.1.2. Evaluation preview


The evaluation was conducted according to the effectiveness of the network as a
knowledge managing support to the Market Towns Community. This
effectiveness was investigated through the scope of the recommendations for
effective managing of knowledge using Communication Technology, a
framework derived as a result of the literature review in Part II of this work and
used as a set of criteria for LN evaluation purposes.
The data obtained from the facilitator interview and the email questionnaire,
which generated 33 responses from network members, were qualitatively
analyzed for MTLN fulfilling of these criteria. Results are reported separately for
each criterion whilst no allusion is being made at any one time as to their specific
source (i.e. whether results emerged from facilitator interview or member
responses to the email questionnaire). The results follow below.

CRITERION 1:
 Allow for situated learning within communities-of-practice
Effective fulfilling of this criterion is according to the LN efforts to bring its
people together to collaborate, by developing healthy social relations within the
community, not by exclusive technological development of the LN web site.
Data obtained from the facilitator interview and member responses to the MTLN
evaluation questionnaire revealed that network facilitation is generally equally
divided between providing technical help and encouragingly engaging in
discussions. Thus it is unobtrusive to community development and rightly fulfills
the notion of facilitation, where help is given when needed, but no direct
intervention into community development is ever initiated. There is informal
facilitation of emergent social relations, where the incentive behind community
participation is that knowledge within it belongs to everyone within the
community.
In other words, the facilitator is taking an approach where he is actively
encouraging people to use the network as an information source, without
structuring the interactions among members any further. The result of this is that
most members indeed find the network a very useful information tool, promptly
delivering documents and case studies, which have the important potential of
making their practice more effective. Having the right information appears to be

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stimulating knowledge exchange among them, by giving them a solid base on


which to build interpersonal relations.
An implication of the facilitation approach is that, in avoiding direct intervention
into member communication, by, for example, specifying topics for discussion or
making the communication style terribly formal, members have found themselves
searching for ways to effectively communicate with each other. In other words,
members have been autonomous in initiating community development. Group
processes within the community have stormed according to the way members
have been learning to tap on each others knowledge. Their enthusiasm for
making the network an effective means for communication stems from their deep
interest in the nature of the Market Towns Program. There is a solid common
ground to unify them in their searching for an effective language.
In this way, members are actively creating the communication process among
them and continuously structuring the best pattern, according to which
interpersonal relations develop. They can decide when and how to contribute to
the purpose of the community and reveal what they know to others, in order to be
understood. Because of the very large size of the community (200 members), this
process is lengthy and cumbersome. Nevertheless, it can be seen as effective,
especially in the long term.
The above makes clear that the evaluation of the MTLN established very good
prerequisites for the continuous development of a community-of-practice, unified
by an interest in benefiting English market towns. However, there are a few
obstacles to this:


There appears not to be enough face-to-face interaction among members,

so that they can base their attempts at knowledge generation when using the
network on, above all, personally knowing each other.
Most respondents indicated that the only way for them to get to know someone in
whose expertise they take an interest, thus enlarge their network of contacts, is by
sending them a cold email to introduce themselves and outline their concerns.
This is unlikely to be sufficient in interpersonal relation development, because of
the very busy work schedule of MTLN members and the impossibility to convey
tacit knowledge (critical to interpersonal relations development) via email.


The very busy workload of most members is another obstacle to the LN

becoming an effective tool for knowledge creation, because it is not sufficiently

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part of member individual practices, in order to evolve into an effective collective


practice unifying the Market Towns community.


Finally, there is an imposition on each member to actively contribute to

network discussion threads at least once every two months, in order not to be
removed from the membership list. This did not appear to greatly threaten the
spontaneous development of interpersonal dynamics, by introducing a notion of
obligation to the community and not allowing it to develop naturally out of
community participation. However, it can prove inhibiting to some members in
the long term, especially to those who have recently joined and are learning form
the periphery of community processes.
Indeed, most members indicated a preference for primarily reading discussion
threads and contributing when they think they should and when they want to. Just,
or primarily, reading discussions and documents is being found of great use and is
beneficial to action learning within the context of legitimate peripheral
participation, this by picking up stolen knowledge from those members who are
competent in an issue of interest.
The EPQ scores available for MTLN respondents in terms of other findings from
their responses are displayed on Tables 3, 4, 5 & 6 (displayed in Appendix 3). It is
seen from the table that these scores appear to have no relationship to the personal
styles of member participation. It is suggested that this is because the network is
not sufficiently integrated into the practices of individual members and because
other social and organizational factors of working in the public sector are more
structuring to participation than individual preferences.

CRITERION 2:
 Understand the distinction between information and knowledge
Effective fulfilling of this criterion is according to the LN emphasis on delivering
opportunities for knowledge creation and not mere information exchange.
The evaluation revealed that most members find the network an efficient and
effective means of keeping informed. Precisely, the network web site is seen as a
good tool for accessing important documents and examples from other areas
relevant to the Market Towns Program. Some members use the network primarily
as a source of information and reference to their practices, which can often be
central to their work. A few members indicate that sometimes documents are of

68

no interest to them and do not apply to rural areas they work in. This is displayed
on Graph 2 in Appendix 3.
Regarding the potential of the LN for knowledge creation within the community,
there seems to be no realization of the difference between delivering information
and enabling knowledge. Moreover, there is a confusion between the two, with
some members evaluating the network as very effective because it delivers the
right information, not realizing its potential as a knowledge communicating tool.
In other words, although the technological aspects of the network have been
designed with personalization assumptions behind them (e.g. in terms of
immediate notification of network events happened since last member log-in,
opportunities to form special interest groups etc.), there is insufficient
understanding of the importance of a coherent community context, within which
to embed relevant information, in order for it to be used for knowledge
generation. In this way, the potential of the network for optimizing community
knowledge processes is not used in its entirety, by ensuring a vibrant knowledge
discourse, which the network can effectively supplement.
This lack of understanding for the social foundations of knowledge resides both in
members and facilitator. Precisely, most of them seem to assume that commitment
to the purpose of the MTLN community is a property that members possess on
joining the community. Members are not seen as having to acquire this, in the
process of community participation, by getting to know their peers with their
concerns and beliefs. Acquiring knowledge of co-members is, however, the first
and most important step towards sharing knowledge of ones personal practice
with them, therefore using the network as a knowledge tool and not merely an
information resource. The general lack of recognition for this step means that the
network is not currently helping in transforming the geographically dispersed
MTLN community into a coherent knowledge discourse.
In this way, although the technological aspects of the network are well developed,
in terms of providing adequate support for web-based interaction, these wont be
effectively used unless the network is endowed with a vibrant social community
behind it.

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CRITERION 3:
 Recognize the distinction between explicit knowledge and tacit knowledge
in terms of equally important components of personal knowledge
Effective fulfilling of this criterion is according to the recognition behind
managing and using the LN, for a social context, in terms of communities-ofpractice, needed to give meaning to all material found on the network web site.
This is by developing tacit knowledge, making possible the understanding of
explicit knowledge and the acquisition of new knowledge.
For MTLN, the evaluation process revealed insufficient understanding of the
nature of knowledge, as outlined above, in terms of insufficient development of
the social aspects of the network. In this way, there is not a well-defined social
framework, within which material found on the LN can be implemented and made
sense of, thus used for knowledge creation and fulfilling a dynamic process of
community discourse. The interpersonal aspect of the network is underdeveloped
because of the large number of members, which make it difficult for posting
personalized comments, in order for them to initiate empathic responses and
generate tacit knowledge. This is despite the fact that the community behind the
network is strongly bound by a shared purpose to benefit the welfare of market
towns.
Therefore, there is prerequisite for effective on-line communication via the LN
that is not supported by well-developed interpersonal relationships. These are
necessary in order to put both explicit and tacit knowledge components at work
towards knowledge creation.

CRITERION 4:
 Recognize the distinction between group/organizational knowledge and
individual knowledge and their equal importance for knowledge creation
Effective fulfilling of this criterion ensures the agreed and not imposed status of
the LN within the Market Towns community. This is so that the LN is willingly
implemented in the communication process among members, in order for them to
use its potential for knowledge optimization. By using the technology in the
process of combining individual knowledge to produce collective understandings,
members would find the network helpful in their individual practices.
Results relevant to this criteria are displayed on Table 1 in Appendix 3. It is clear
that there are a number of members who have been asked to join the network
70

membership, because of the organization they work for (notably the Countryside
Agency) or because of the nature of their work. Since this membership is
accorded and not elected, it creates prerequisites for insufficient commitment to
the network purpose.
Indeed, it was revealed that the majority of Countryside Agency employee
members have been asked to join, in order to represent the Agency on the
membership list. Not surprisingly, these members were found to contribute by
posting discussions on the network much less than it would be expected of them
as representatives of the leveraging organization, having a strong interest in
initiating discussion and leading by good example.
In this way, the MTLN is not sufficiently integrated into the work practice of the
Agency, who created the network and made this available to the Market Towns
community. There are no conditions for creating a coherent collective practice
within the community by leading with good example. This collective practice
cannot inform individual practices of all LN members, thus practically influencing
the nature of the activity of the Market Towns community.
As none of these processes are existent, the MTLN is not very effective in
fulfilling its purpose of influencing individual practices of network members, all
to the benefit of market towns. To support this conclusion, members did not
indicate that material posted on the network is particularly useful to them in their
practice, as indicated on Tables 1 &2 in Appendix 3.

CRITERION 5:
 Consider knowledge as part of action and not merely as a possession
Effectively fulfilling this criterion is about recognizing that knowledge is a selffulfilling process and not a project to complete. Knowledge is continuously
generated within a community-of-practice and can be optimized in its ways by
LN.
Data from the evaluation process indicate that the MTLN has been conceived to
terminate after desired objectives have been achieved. In this way, the
technological solution supporting the Market Towns community will cease to be
seen as valuable once there is no practical reason for community existence.
The assumption behind this state of affairs is that the Market Towns community is
unified by a common project, rather than by a continuous practice. This
undermines the success of the community at generating new knowledge about
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preservation of market towns, because there is pressure to achieve objectives


ordained from above and not self-initiated. This lowers the effectiveness of the
network, because using it may not be seen as valuable to a long-term knowledge
discourse.

3.1.3. Conclusions
The evaluation of the MTLN reveals that the network has great potential to be
successful. This is because of member commitment to its purpose, which is
preservation and development of market towns. However, what is also needed is
member commitment to the community, with the help of which the purpose is to
be fulfilled.
At present, there are great efforts from the part of MTLN members to form a
cohesive community within which they can share and generate new knowledge, so
that they can find the LN more effective to their work. Appropriate facilitation
from the part of their work practices and the public sector, within which they
work, is needed. This is to allow them to meet more often, in order to develop the
interpersonal aspect of the network, as well as dedicate more time to using it when
they want to. In this way, the LN technological solution, supporting the Market
Towns community, would be very effective in optimizing knowledge processes
within this community.

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3.2. Equipping Rural Communities Learning Network


The purpose of this section is to outline results from the evaluation of the
Equipping Rural Communities Learning Network (ERCLN).
3.2.1. Background to the Equipping Rural Communities Learning Network
The ERCLN has been conceived to unite the program objectives of three
Countryside Agency branches: Local Governance and Housing, Vital Villages and
Rural Services. In this way, the LN aims to bridge among these branches in order
to create a collective forum for them to function more efficiently and effectively.
Precisely, ERCLN is to provide a common electronic space enabling Parish
Councils to network more effectively among each other and with various national
bodies, Community Councils, residents and stakeholders.
According to Agency proforma, this would be by communicating knowledge and
circulating important information, in order to support project conception and
implementation. This would be by facilitating open debate with invited members
on seven topic areas, by linking members through the Internet and organizing
workshops across the country to discuss problem solutions. These discussions are
defined by Countryside Agency pre-set topics (by the facilitator), the results of
which are to be summarized and published. The network aims to eventually
disseminate recommendations on the most effective ways of equipping rural
communities.
The ERCLN project is also meant to promote the Countryside Agency branding,
so that the Agency is seen at the forefront of providing practical solutions for
effective networking to the welfare of the English countryside. In this way, the
Agency is also seen as successfully developing the White Paper notion of a
modernized, electronically joined up public sector.
In terms of managing knowledge, the purpose of the ERCLN is to organize a
forum for individuals interested in the future of rural communities, for them to
share, learn and develop ideas and recommendations for action. This would be so
that they can enrich their individual work practices by sharing in the experience of
others.

3.2.2. Evaluation preview


The evaluation was conducted according to the effectiveness of the network as a
knowledge managing support to the Equipping Rural Communities initiative. This
73

effectiveness was investigated through the scope of the recommendations for


effective managing of knowledge using Communication Technology, a
framework derived as a result of the literature review in Part II of this work and
used as a set of criteria for LN evaluation purposes.
The data obtained from the facilitator interview and the email questionnaire,
which generated 7 responses from network members, were qualitatively analyzed
for ERCLN fulfilling of these criteria. Results are reported separately for each
criterion whilst no allusion is being made at any one time as to their specific
source (i.e. whether results emerged from facilitator interview or member
responses to the email questionnaire). The results follow below.

CRITERION 1:
 Allow for situated learning within communities-of-practice
Effective fulfilling of this criterion is according to the LN efforts to bring its
people together to collaborate, by developing healthy social relations within the
community, not by exclusive technological development of the LN web site.
For ERCLN, it was revealed that facilitation focuses on developing the ERC
community to a great extent, by directly soliciting contributions from members on
relevant topics via email and phone. In addition, the facilitator appeared to
dedicate at least as much time on maintaining the LN web site and dealing with
technological issues and hassles of member use.
However, the nature of facilitation did not appear to focus on developing social
relations within the community, but exclusively on fulfilling LN objectives. In
this way, although facilitation of the network has been very thorough and
persistent, it has perhaps succeeded in making the community overly structured
for healthy knowledge processes to develop.
The evaluation revealed that the community behind the ERCLN had been brought
together artificially, in order for the LN to formally support project fulfillment
purposes. The project initiative behind the network is in terms of assembling and
publishing recommendations for developing rural communities, following on a
learning process structured within seven topics, chosen and presided by the
facilitator. In this way, managing the community is more about project
management rather than knowledge managing.
Because members do not have the freedom to choose the issues to be discussed,
according to their interest, there is no attempt from them to interpersonally
74

interact with each other, in order to elaborate on knowledge. Indeed, those


members who responded to the evaluation questionnaire did not appear to have
much knowledge of other members and how much of them there are in total.
In this way, since the network process is too dependent on the facilitator, the
community is not coherent, autonomous, inherently informal and spontaneous.
Also, the amount of generated activity on the network is proportional to how
much effort the facilitator puts in directly prompting members to contribute on the
network. This indicates lack of member commitment to a unified knowledge
creation purpose. It would have been different if the community had been given
autonomy for development, after assuring that members have a genuine passion
for the topic of equipping rural communities and are willing to storm together in
order to establish a common ground for communication. For a successful
community-of-practice, the facilitator should be almost invisible, by
encouraging but not leading.
In this way, the ERC community is not self-sustained. On the other hand, a selfsustained community naturally manages the knowledge within it via minimal
facilitation.
Therefore, although the ERCLN is efficient, it is not effective for the managing of
knowledge within the community behind the network. This is because there is not
sufficient focus on facilitating shared activity and enabling social relations within
the community, but on delivery of recommendation objectives each two months.
In this way, the community behind the network is a community of purpose
(according to Agency definition), but not of common practice, which is not an
effective medium for the managing of knowledge among people, because of its
lack of focus on interpersonal dynamics.
During the evaluation process, it appeared that the reason for the facilitation
approach is not because of facilitator lack of interest in the purpose of the ERC
community; to the contrary, the facilitator appeared remarkably dedicated to
equipping rural communities and to making the LN successful. The reason behind
the facilitation approach, in contrast, was the insufficient training and awareness
of the facilitator in managing knowledge and its processes. Therefore, making the
LN effective has not considered the importance of social and individual factors in
its management, where facilitator awareness of healthy social processes is
necessary.

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CRITERION 2:
 Understand the distinction between information and knowledge
Effective fulfilling of this criterion is according to the LN emphasis on delivering
opportunities for knowledge creation and not mere information exchange.
As outlined above, there is insufficient emphasis on developing the social and
interpersonal aspect of the ERCLN. In this way, the knowledge potential of the
network is limited, because of the non-existent common ground for sharing
knowledge using relevant information.
Most members who responded to the evaluation questionnaire appraised the
network as a useful information source. Nevertheless, they also expressed the
need for more interaction on the network, to make it more dynamic and increase
its potential for knowledge generation. In this way, there is sufficient
understanding among members of the limited use of the network as a knowledge
tool and not merely an information resource at present. As one member put it, the
contributions posted on the network are generally pretty useless, without any
relevance to his particular practice. This is because social cohesion does not exist
within the community, in order to bind individual practices into one vibrant
collective practice.

CRITERION 3:
 Recognize the distinction between explicit knowledge and tacit
knowledge in terms of equally important components of personal
knowledge
Effective fulfilling of this criterion is according to the recognition behind
managing and using the LN, for a social context, in terms of communities-ofpractice, needed to give meaning to all material found on the network web site.
This is by developing tacit knowledge, making possible the understanding of
explicit knowledge and the acquisition of new knowledge.
Evaluation of the ERCLN revealed that the network is currently not fulfilling a
role in knowledge generation within the community. This creates a situation,
where material produced from member contributions assembled together by the
facilitator is not directly relevant to individual member practices, because they
have not engaged themselves in the process of producing this document, other
than by contributing when they have been asked to do so (the proportion of
respondents who have been asked to join the network is given on Table 7 in
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Appendix 4). This lack of interpersonal interaction in the context of issues raised
by the network makes it impossible for members to establish common ground for
communicating, with relevant tacit knowledge to enable collective understandings
of core problems.
In this way, as already explained above, the network has been created with an
emphasis on purpose and not practice, where the importance of collective social
contexts enabling the exchange of meaningful messages, comprised of both
explicit and tacit knowledge components, to generate new knowledge, is not
recognized.

CRITERION 4:
 Recognize the distinction between group/organizational knowledge and
individual knowledge and their equal importance for knowledge creation
Effective fulfilling of this criterion ensures the agreed and not imposed status of
the LN within the ERC community. This is so that the LN is willingly
implemented in the communication process among members, in order for them to
use its potential for knowledge optimization. By using the technology in the
process of combining individual knowledge to produce collective understandings,
members would find the network helpful in their individual practices.
The evaluation revealed that, similarly to the MTLN, there is not enough and
purposeful involvement of Countryside Agency members on the network, in order
for dynamic discourse between them and other members to form, thus creating a
collective knowledge practice useful to individual practices of members.
Respondents to the evaluation questionnaire indicated their wish for more
contributions from the part of Agency employees, so that there is practical
opportunity for influencing opinions within this organization. In this way, the LN
could be implemented within a communication process among members, driven
by genuine interest to contribute.
Other members, however, raised issues of disproportionately high number of
Agency employees on the network, which created an unbalance within the
network membership, thus raising issues of anonymity of contributions. From this
point of view, the disproportionately high number of Agency employees inhibits
the development of a healthy community atmosphere, where individual
experience is generously offered to the benefit of collective understandings of

77

topical issues. In this way, having less Agency members on the network would
create better opportunities for the development of a knowledge discourse.
The above points make it clear that, there is not enough recognition of the
importance of enabling coherent group knowledge within the community using
the network, so that they can have a common culture to unify them.

CRITERION 5:
 Consider knowledge as part of action and not merely as a possession
Effectively fulfilling this criterion is about recognizing that knowledge is a selffulfilling process and not a project to complete. Knowledge is continuously
generated within a community-of-practice and can be optimized in its ways by LN
use.
As already outlined in relation to the above criteria, there is not sufficient
realization of the importance of knowledge as part of action and not merely a
possession within the ERCLN community. The evaluation revealed that organized
attempts at initiating shared activity among network members during workshops,
or by using relevant facilities on the LN, have been unsuccessful. This is due to
insufficient commitment from members because of workload, on the one hand,
and insufficient emphasis on developing social practice within the community, on
the other.
In addition, the functionality of the network was also appraised as cumbersome
and problematic on several occasions, thus making contributing on the network a
tedious process that discourages members from using it as a knowledge tool to
initiate shared activity.

3.2.3. Conclusions
The above points make it clear that the assumption behind creating the community
to use the ERCLN is defeating to what makes managing of knowledge successful
within a community of practice and not purpose.
Precisely, making a community is in itself an artificial approach that creates an
emphasis on ordained and not actual practice within this community, which in
turn discourages members from collaborating, in order to generate knowledge
among themselves. In this way, the ERCLN has potential for project management,
to which it is excellently suited. Its potential for knowledge management,
however, is here considered to be limited.
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Furthermore, if organizations wish to invest in knowledge managing initiatives


supported by technology, such as the LNs here described, they should take great
care in gently facilitating healthy communities developing and not merely
providing good technological solutions to support them.

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3.3. Rural Affairs Forum for England Learning Network


The purpose of this section is to outline results from the evaluation of the Rural
Affairs Forum for England Learning Network (RAFELN).
3.3.1. Background to the Rural Affairs Forum for England Learning Network
The RAFELN has been conceived to support the activity of the Rural Affairs
Forum for England community, comprised of the Rural Taskforce (originally set
up to tackle the effects of the outbreak of foot and mouth disease for the rural
economy) and civil servants and chief executive officers. The Taskforce itself is
comprised of members of the Cabinet, Chairs of major Non-Departmental Public
Bodies and Non-Governmental Organizations. Originally, the Taskforce was
offered a Learning Network by the Countryside Agency. This was to support and
expand their activity, by increasing opportunities for discussion, debate and joint
working among members of the Taskforce and including civil servants and other
public sector officers in this activity, to increase the potential for knowledge
exchange and generation.
In this way, the aim behind the network is to make the Taskforce activity
accessible to senior civil servants and officers who have an interest, in terms of
the organizations that they represent, in the issues discussed by the Taskforce.
Widening the expertise of the Taskforce, through including further stakeholders in
its process and thus optimizing their shared activity, is a major concern of the
network. These stakeholders are given the opportunity to monitor discussions held
by Taskforce members, in order to provide expert answers to questions asked by
them and be involved in government executive decisions.
The RAFELN project is also meant to promote the Countryside Agency branding,
so that the Agency is seen at the forefront of providing practical solutions for
effective networking to the welfare of the English countryside. In this way, the
Agency is also seen as successfully developing the White Paper notion of a
modernized, electronically joined up public sector.
In terms of managing of knowledge, the purpose of the network is to support the
willingness of its members to optimize their shared activity, by having a private
electronic space to use between Forum meetings.

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3.3.2. Evaluation preview


The evaluation was conducted according to the effectiveness of the network as a
knowledge managing support to the Rural Affairs Forum for England community.
This effectiveness was investigated through the scope of the recommendations for
effective managing of knowledge using Communication Technology, a
framework derived as a result of the literature review in Part II of this work and
used as a set of criteria for LN evaluation purposes.
The data obtained from the facilitator interviews and the email questionnaire,
which generated 4 responses from network members, were qualitatively analyzed
for RAFELN fulfilling of these criteria. Results are reported separately for each
criterion whilst no allusion is being made at any one time as to their specific
source (i.e. whether results emerged from facilitator interviews or member
responses to the email questionnaire). The results follow below.

CRITERION 1:
 Allow for situated learning within communities-of-practice
Effective fulfilling of this criterion is according to the LN efforts to bring its
people together to collaborate, by developing healthy social relations within the
community, not by exclusive technological development of the LN web site.
It should be noted that the perspective here outlined is primarily influenced by
evaluation carried out with help from the Countryside Agency. Therefore, views
and opinions of Forum members have not been solicited other than by the email
questionnaire, which nevertheless generated very few responses.
The evaluation revealed that the community using the RAFELN is split between
the organization, providing the network facilitation (the Countryside Agency) and
the Forum.
It was made clear that social relations within the community revolve around
regular meetings of the Forum, where facilitators are not present. The social
communication during these meetings is very formal and structured, which may
make it hard for genuine communication to develop, in order to spontaneously use
the LN between meeting to elaborate on shared knowledge.
Using the network is even harder in terms of not allowing facilitators to be
integrated within the community, thus provide informal encouragement to
discussions. This, in addition to the very busy work schedule of Forum members,
makes the network largely unused. As one member put it, although the potential
81

of the network is very powerful, there is a need to have a strong community of


interest, as a physical community supporting a virtual community. Therefore, the
community behind the network is largely symbolical and not practical (i.e. a
community-of-practice), concerned with fulfilling an important role within the
public sector and not development of a community practice, in order to enrich a
number of member organization practices.
Since there is no informal, autonomous and spontaneous development of social
relations, the potential of the Forum, and the LN deemed to support its activity, is
very limited for the managing of knowledge. Knowledge is a social discourse and
not an ordained procedure for development of interpersonal dynamics. It must be
allowed to emerge and not constrained within rigid procedures. Therefore, the
knowledge discourse within the Forum is currently not using the potential of the
LN supporting it.

CRITERION 2:
 Understand the distinction between information and knowledge
Effective fulfilling of this criterion is according to the LN emphasis on delivering
opportunities for knowledge creation and not mere information exchange.
As outlined above, it is clear that there is not an emphasis on knowledge
generation within the Forum community. Rather, there is an emphasis on fulfilling
an important role within the public sector, which has symbolical and not practical
significance.
In this way, there is not awareness of the distinction between information and
knowledge, because knowledge is not a primary concern to this community. It
cannot be concluded for sure whether documents on the network are useful to
members in their practice. It is, however, known for sure that discussion threads
on the network are very rare. One member indicated that he passes important
documents on to departments, which deal with issues that the documents discuss,
whereas all members indicated that the network is useful to their work by giving
important information.
Therefore, the network appears to be relatively useful, as long it is at all used by
its members, as an information resource. It is not useful as a knowledge tool,
using the information provided by it. This would be if the culture within the
Forum was sufficiently vibrant and informal to stimulate knowledge generation.

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In addition, there seems to be insufficient thrust within the Forum in the


organization providing the network technological solution (the Agency), in order
for members to confidently start using the network for creative knowledge
exchange.

CRITERION 3:
 Recognize the distinction between explicit knowledge and tacit
knowledge in terms of equally important components of personal
knowledge
Effective fulfilling of this criterion is according to the recognition behind
managing and using the LN, for a social context, in terms of communities-ofpractice, needed to give meaning to all material found on the network web site.
This is by developing tacit knowledge, making possible the understanding of
explicit knowledge and the acquisition of new knowledge.
As already outlined above, the community using the LN is not socially enabled,
but rather enabled out of a necessity to fulfill an important role within the public
sector. Therefore, social processes within the community are constrained by
public sector formalities. The development of tacit knowledge in the process of
these formalities is not impossible, but greatly limited by the ordained nature of
the interaction. Furthermore, members do not seem to accord great potential for
communication to the LN, which could at least in part be due to the cumbersome
functionality of the network web site. The potential of the network as a knowledge
tool, supporting vibrant knowledge discourse between meetings, seems to be
under appreciated by members.

CRITERION 4:
 Recognize the distinction between group/organizational knowledge and
individual knowledge and their equal importance for knowledge creation
Effective fulfilling of this criterion ensures the agreed and not imposed status of
the LN within the RAFE community. This is so that the LN is willingly
implemented in the communication process among members, in order for them to
use its potential for knowledge optimization. By using the technology in the
process of combining individual knowledge to produce collective understandings,
members would find the network helpful in their individual practices.

83

The evaluation revealed that the LN has been delivered for use by the
Countryside Agency to the Forum, together with the suggestion for using it in a
way that imposes a novel practice on the Forum community. This novel practice is
in terms of including stakeholders other than central government representatives,
in the proceedings of the Forum in order to enlarge its potential for knowledge
creation.
However, the result of this is that the Forum does not appear to have integrated
the use of the network within their practice. The network has an imposed, and not
agreed status on them, which discourages use. Additional to this is the very busy
work schedule of government members, which makes it difficult for them to
implement the network successfully in the Forum activity, in order to make this
more effective between meetings and as a whole.
These barriers to effective use of the network are not the only ones on the way of
effectively managing knowledge using it.
Additional to these is that facilitators of the network (who are Countryside
Agency employees) do not have an established role within the Forum, so that they
can successfully encourage participation from members. As one member put it,
facilitation is more linked to an organizational agenda of the host organization,
rather than being independent for the network as a whole.
MBTI scores for both facilitators of RAFELN were also obtained. According to
these scores (ENTP and INFP), the personal styles of facilitators, in terms of their
preferences for using their minds and approaching others in communication, are
oriented towards others and willing to consider other peoples welfare. In
addition, one facilitator has the T element in the personality type, indicating
potential for leadership and exertion of power, whereas the other has the F
element, indicating person-centered decision-making. Therefore, the potential of
these facilitators for effective facilitation of the LN is certainly present. If it is not
well used as is currently obvious, is not because of their lack of a spontaneous
approach to facilitation, but for other public sector social and organizational
reasons.
Therefore, there are critical organizational and social limitations, resulting from
public sector characteristic assumptions, values and beliefs that are in the way of
effective facilitation. Importantly, there seems to be no trust from Forum members
within Countryside Agency facilitators. This can result in potential discomfort

84

between them, creating a community where knowledge is frozen, rather than


dynamically generated.
In this way, there is not a coherent collective practice to make possible the
effective communication among government members, civil servants and chief
executive officers, within the context of the community, supported by the here
evaluated LN. This is what makes the LN introduced for collaborative managing
of knowledge ineffective.

CRITERION 5:
 Consider knowledge as part of action and not merely as a possession
Effectively fulfilling this criterion is about recognizing that knowledge is a selffulfilling process and not a project to complete. Knowledge is continuously
generated within a community-of-practice and can be optimized in its ways by
LN.
The evaluation revealed that there is insufficient knowledge discourse happening
within the Forum community, in terms of vibrant communication between
government members and other Forum members.
This lack of recognition for the importance of a socially enabled discourse, to
generate new knowledge and make the Forum practice effective, means that
Forum members do not collectively engage in joint action, concerned with the
domain of practice within which the Forum is situated.
In other words, Forum members meet formally at meetings, not exploring the
potential for engaging together in informal enterprises. They may have knowledge
about their practices, but not know how to use this in their collective practice,
because may not have acquired common understanding of this practice in the
course of joint action.
The value of the LN as a knowledge-communicating tool is thus limited for the
Forum community, because there may be nothing to communicate among them.
This is since there are no common actions, from which to draw collective tacit
knowledge to be used as a code for effective message delivering on-line.

85

3.3.3. Conclusions
The RAFELN evaluation revealed that although the learning network has great
potential for optimizing the activity of the Forum in theory, this is currently of
very limited use in practice. The reason for this is that the LN is not sufficiently
implemented into the practice of the Forum members. In addition, there is a split
between community and facilitators, which makes using the network even more
discouraging for members.
The effective realization of the LN for the RAFE community can happen by,
above all, realizing the potential of the network as a knowledge tool, provided that
a knowledge discourse is already existent within the community. Also, it can
happen by involving facilitators in Forum meetings, in order to overcome the lack
of mutual thrust currently existing between these two parties.

86

4. Learning Network Evaluation: Limitations


When considering results from the here reported LN evaluation, the following
limitations of this evaluation, in terms of design and process, should be borne in
mind.
Above all, the interviews and questionnaire were not designed with special view
of evaluating the LNs according to the criteria derived from the literature review
outlined in Part II of this work. Instead, the interviews and questionnaire aimed to
provide an overall idea of LN use and effectiveness, in this they being very
exhaustive. In this way, using the interviews and questionnaire gathered a lot of
data that was subsequently not used for qualitative analyses purposes.
This is because the conduction of the literature review and the composition of the
results for it took place in parallel to conducting the practical evaluation of the
LNs, in terms of gathering data using interviews and questionnaire. This is why
the evaluation approach to the LNs was clear only after obtaining the data for it, at
the same time as completing the literature review.
The implications of this are that data were hard to analyze and there was lack of
an overall systematic approach to the evaluation process. Nevertheless, once the
criteria for effective managing of knowledge using CT were obtained as a result of
the literature review, the drawing of according conclusions relevant to each
network was not too difficult, because of the very wide applicability of the criteria
to knowledge-managing circumstances.
Another limitation to the here reported evaluation is that it did not use a structured
method for qualitative analysis of the data obtained from interviews and
questionnaire, such as content analysis. This is because of the short time at
disposition to carry out and write up the work involving the LN evaluation.
It is recognized that, would a more structured approach to data analysis have been
possible, it would have made the reported results of much greater significance and
value to improving Learning Networks. Still, the evaluation of the LNs has been
comprehensive and it is hoped that it represents good guidance on how to
approach and manage Communication Technology as part of general knowledge
managing strategies.
Finally, the fact that very few members responded to the evaluation questionnaire
for the ERCLN and the RAFELN greatly reduces the value of conclusions drawn
from member responses for these networks. That is why evaluation of these
87

networks considers data obtained from interviews more important when drawing
conclusions about network effectiveness relevant to evaluation criteria. Also, this
is why data obtained for EPQ extraversion and neuroticism variables for the
ERCLN and RAFELN is not considered for evaluation conclusions, because it is
unreasonable to generalize it to the whole communities, in view of the small
samples size. These data are, however, outlined in the Appendices, as part of
summary tables for these two networks.

88

5. Learning Network Evaluation: Conclusions


Within this final Part III of the present work, three Learning Networks at the
Countryside Agency (a public sector organization in the UK) were evaluated for
their effectiveness at managing knowledge using Communication Technology.
The evaluation was conducted following on interviews and an email questionnaire
and data obtained from the evaluation process were analyzed according to criteria
for managing knowledge using Communication Technology, derived in Part II of
the present work.
The evaluation revealed that attempts at knowledge managing in the public sector
tend to be relatively impeded by widely accepted public sector practices and ways,
in terms of which social interaction and collaboration is structured within this
sector.
Precisely, the assumption behind all networks was that by providing adequate
technological support, without sufficiently considering the importance of shared
social contexts, to make the technological solution not only usable, but also useful
to a practice shared within a community, is sufficient to make knowledge
managing effective.
However, as it was made clear in the present work, knowledge is a socially
constructed

phenomenon

that

thrives in

the

process of

interpersonal

communication. Technology used to support the managing of knowledge wont be


seen as effective from the people using it, unless they are also part of a vibrant
knowledge discourse, making the knowledge possessed by a community-ofpractice readily available to all community members.
The evaluation of the Learning Networks at the Countryside Agency was
exemplary of how widely accepted social ways of working and communicating
while working can inhibit the natural process of human knowledge. Overly
structuring the process of knowledge (as was seen in the ERCLN) can be
detrimental to knowledge being generated as a result of this. Precisely, in such
cases, there is no managing of knowledge within a community, but rather
managing of a project that has already been conceived, or managing of
information. Therefore, the Learning Networks designed to support such
communities, essentially deprived of autonomy and informal relationship building
(as it was conceived to be in the RAFELN), are perceived as ineffective and of
little or no use to individual work practice.
89

The widely accepted social ways of working in the public sector that constrain
attempts at managing knowledge within public sector organizations, are in terms
of the widely shared assumptions, values and beliefs within this sector. In other
words, the evaluation revealed that all members are struggling for time in order to
effectively participate in the Learning Network initiative. This is indicative of the
public sector culture, where individual initiative does not go a long way towards
genuinely collective practice.
Nevertheless, the here evaluated Learning Networks are only pilots. In this sense,
they are meant to be informative learning experiences for the Agency, so that
networks following them are better conceived, designed and facilitated.
In the present evaluation, the MTLN (Market Towns Learning Network) was
considered the most successful initiative, because it went the longest way towards
building a successful community-of-practice behind the learning network. In this
initiative, however, there was lack of recognition for the social foundations of
knowledge. In other words, there was a need for more frequent and regulated faceto-face meetings among members, apart from them communicating on-line, so
that these members can get to know each other, in order to be able to use the
network as a knowledge tool and not mere information resource.
The potential for Communication Technology to optimize the knowledge
discourse within a community-of-practice is enormous. For it to work, however, it
is important to recognize the superiority of knowledge over information and the
impossibility of this to be used and generated, unless found within and among
people and not within any technological tools.

90

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APPENDICES

1. Appendix one: Interview format used for the interviews with Learning
Network facilitators

1. What is your position within the Countryside Agency?


2. In this position, please tell us about your:
a) main activities (e.g. practices):
b) main concerns (e.g. assumptions, values and beliefs):
3. How did you become facilitator of this LN?
4. How would you define the purpose of the Learning Network (LN) you are
facilitating?
5. How many members does this network have?
6. How would you define your role as facilitator?
7. How much time each week do you dedicate to the facilitation of the Learning
Network (LN)?
(please tick)
a. less than 5 hours
b. 5-10 hours
c. more than 10 hours
8. Would you like to have more time to facilitate the LN? Please explain why:
9. Please list the TEN most characteristic activities that you perform as part of
LN facilitation:
1)
2)
3)
4)
5)
6)
7)
8)
9)
10)

99

10. Next to each of the above listed activities, please place a letter according to
the following key:
a. less than once per month
b. between 1-5 times per month
c. between 1- 5 times per week
d. between 5-10 times per week
e. more than 10 times per week
11. Please explain what the aims and objectives of the LN you are facilitating are:
12. Please explain how these objectives are being achieved:
13. How would you characterize the participation of members into the LN? (e.g.
active, moderate, intensive, structured, friendly, strictly professional or semipersonal, what is the level of involvement etc)
14. What proportion of this participation happens on-line, e.g. via the electronic
medium?
15. What are the processes and practices that members most often engage within?
(please list five or more, e.g. face-to-face meetings, discussion groups,
synchronous chat, asynchronous forums)
16. What proportion of these processes and practices happens electronically via
the extranet?
17. Please tell us about the functionality of the software that supports the LN you
facilitate:
18. Please explain how this functionality is being used by members:
19. What is your opinion of the software?
20. Within the electronic medium, how do members engage in processes and
practices and what do they engage in most often? (i.e. how do they connect,
synchronously or asynchronously, please supply a statistics summary, if these
is one)
21. What are the goals of these processes and how well are they met?
22. How do you know the LN members? Please explain the nature of interaction
among members: (e.g. dynamic or structured etc, by phone, face-to-face,
electronically, pub, what would be the preferred mode).
23. What proportion of members are active contributors and what lurkers?
(please provide statistics if possible)
24. Tell us what you think about the pattern of participation and communication
of members within the electronic medium that you have just described:
100

25. How would you describe the motivation behind members participation?
26. Please explain what you enjoy most about LN facilitation:
27. Please explain what you enjoy least about the LN facilitation:
28. Is there anything that you would like to change about the way facilitation is
performed? What is it and why?
29. Regarding the above, is it within your power to change it, and if not, please
explain what stops you?
30. How comfortable are you with the facilitation of this LN?
a.

extremely comfortable

b.

very comfortable

c.

comfortable

d.

not very comfortable

e.

not at all comfortable

31. Please explain the reasons for your response:


32. Tell us about the future of this LN:
32. Please explain anything else you would like to add:

2. Appendix two: Questionnaire format used to email to Learning Network


members. The format contains the EPQ questionnaire at the end.

Evaluation of Learning Networks


INTRODUCTION

Dear Member of (Market Towns/Equipping Rural Communities/Rural Affairs


Forum for England/) Learning Network,

My name is Nadia Loumbeva and I am a MSc student in Human-Computer


Interaction at University College London (UCL). I am conducting a qualitative
evaluation of your Learning Network. You may remember that this was recently
notified to you via email by (the Network Facilitator) and Barney Smith
(Knowledge Manager at the Countryside Agency). In addition, they solicited your
responses to the evaluation questions I am about to ask you within this email.

101

This is because your responses are central and invaluable to the evaluation of the
Learning Network, as this is your Learning Network. Only by you responding will
we know what we are doing well and what we need to improve in the Learning
Network process, therefore what needs to be retained and what needs to be
changed in this process. Your responses will also help me complete my MSc
thesis.
Please take some time to respond to the questionnaire included within the body of
this email. It consists of 8 short sections and has been designed to be easy and
straightforward to complete. It should not take more than 45 minutes of your time.
PLEASE ALSO SEND YOUR REPLY BY EMAIL AT n.loumbeva@ucl.ac.uk
BY THE 5th OF AUGUST 2002. Your responses are greatly appreciated.

The following questions concern the efficiency and effectiveness of the Learning
Network and your benefit from it. Please note that all responses will remain
absolutely ANONYMOUS, with all member email addresses destroyed and not
used for analysis purposes.

To assure you of the confidentiality of your responses, please email these back at
my university email account: n.loumbeva@ucl.ac.uk. I will be the only person
who has access to and analyses your responses and no one will be able to
personally identify you in documents that I will produce for my MSc thesis.

In addition, I will produce a summary report of the results that I will obtain from
the evaluation of your Learning Network. I WILL SEND THIS SUMMARY TO
EVERY MEMBER WHO PARTICIPATES IN THIS EVALUATION BY THE
15TH SEPTEMBER 2002, provided that they indicate an interest in receiving it by
replying to the final question in the attached questionnaire.
Thank you ever so much for your participation.

Yours faithfully:
Nadia Loumbeva

******************************************************************

102

LEARNING NETWORK EVALUATION QUESTIONNAIRE

For all questions, please send your responses via email to my email address
(mailto: n.loumbeva@ucl.ac.uk) BY THE 5th OF AUGUST 2002.
To do this, please send your responses by including them within this questionnaire
(i.e. Learning Network Evaluation Questionnaire). You can do this by replying
to this email to me and typing your responses below each question as these
questions appear within this questionnaire.

Please type the name of your Learning Network:


Please type your sex:
Please type your age:
For the following questions, please record your responses by typing into the
spaces left blank after each question.
Section 1: ABOUT YOURSELF AND YOUR INVOLVEMENT WITH THE
LEARNING NETWORK

1.

What is your professional practice?

2.

Please describe your current aims and concerns as part of your professional
practice:

3.

What is your relationship to the Countryside Agency? Please select one or


more of the following alternatives that is/are most right for you by typing in
YES in the blank space after the alternative.

a)

I am employed by the Agency

b) I am or have been working on a project/projects in partnership with the


Agency
c)

I am or have been contracted by the Agency

d) I have no relationship to the Agency apart from that we work in the same
sector
e)

Other (please indicate the exact nature of your relationship):

4.

How did you become a member of the Learning Network? Please select one
or more of the following alternatives that is/are most right for you by typing
in YES in the blank space after the alternative.

a)

I was asked to become a member because of the organisation that I work for
103

b) I was asked to become a member because of the nature of my work


c)

I asked to become a member because of the nature of my work

d) I was elected to be a member as a result of an application procedure that I


initiated
e)

Other (please explain how otherwise you became a member of the Learning
Network):

5.

What is the purpose of the Learning Network you are a member of?

6.

What is the value of this purpose to your work?

7.

How can you contribute to this purpose?

Section 2: HOW OFTEN YOU USE THE LEARNING NETWORK

8.

How often do you log onto the network? Please select one of the following
alternatives that is most right for you by typing in YES in the blank space
after the alternative.

a)

less that once per month;

b) 1-5 times per month;


c)

1-5 times per week;

d) 5-10 times per week;


e)

more than 10 times per week

9.

Would you like to log onto the network more often than indicated?
a) If YES, please indicate what stops you:
b) If NO, please explain why you think your time of using the network is
sufficient:

Section 3: YOUR INTEREST IN USING THE LEARNING NETWORK

10a. Which feature of the Learning Network is of most interest to you? Please
select one or more of the following alternatives that is/are most right for you
by typing in YES in the blank space after the alternative.
a)

Discussion threads posted on the network

b) News
c)

Events

d) Announcements from the Agency


e)

Documents loaded for member use


104

f)

Links

g) Chat
h) Electronic meeting
i)

Teleconferences

j)

Contacts

k) Brainstorming
l)

Search

m) Other (please indicate what other feature is most use to you):


10b. Please explain why this/these particular feature(s) is/are of most interest to
you (i.e. regarding your response to the above question):
11. Are discussion threads on the network of interest to you at all?
a)

If YES, please explain why:

b) If NO, please explain why:


12. Are documents loaded for use on the network of interest to you at all?
a)

If YES, please explain why:

b) If NO, please explain why:


13a. How often do you make an active contribution to the network (e.g.
participate in discussion threads by putting up points for discussion or
comments to other members points)? Please select one of the following
alternatives that is most right for you by typing in YES in the blank space
after the alternative.
a)

every time I log on

b) every time (or almost) when the discussion is directly relevant to my work
c)

from time to time because I think I should without this being of direct

relevance to my work and/or experience


d) from time to time because I have been asked
e)

I never actively contribute

f) Other (please indicate an alternative that is not listed here):


13b. Please give reasons for the answer that you have indicated to the previous
question:

Section 4: HOW USEFUL YOU FIND THE LEARNING NETWORK

14. How is the learning network generally useful to you and your work?

105

15. If your use of the network is primarily to ACTIVELY CONTRIBUTE to


discussion threads and documents, please explain whether active contribution
from your part is useful and helpful to you in your work:
16. If your use of the network is primarily to READ discussion threads and
loaded documents on the network, but not necessarily actively contribute to
the network, please explain whether this in itself is useful and helpful to you
and your work:
17. How can the network become more useful and valuable to you?

Section 5: TECHNOLOGICAL ASPECTS OF YOUR USE OF THE NETWORK

18a. How would you describe the functionality of the network (i.e. does it let you
do what you want it to do for you)? Please select one of the following
alternatives that is most right for you by typing in YES in the blank space
after the alternative.
a)

Insufficient

b) Adequate
c)

Good

d) Excellent
18b. Please give reasons for your answer to the previous question:
19a. How much does the technology infrastructure (e.g. the quality of the internet
connection) that you have access to impede your use of the network? Please
select one of the following alternatives that is most right for you by typing in
YES in the blank space after the alternative.
a)

not at all

b) a little
c)

not very much

d) to a great extent
e)

to an extreme extent

19b. Please explain your answer to the previous question:

Section 6: YOU AND OTHER NETWORK MEMBERS AS A COMMUNITY

20a. Are you comfortable with the membership rules of the network?
20b. Please give reasons for your response to the question above:
106

21. How many other members do you know on the network? Please select one of
the following alternatives that is most right for you by typing in YES in the
blank space after the alternative.
a)

1-10 members

b) 10-20 members
c)

20-30 members

d) 30-50 members
e)

50-100 members

f)

more than 100 members

22. What is the nature of your relationship with those members?


23a. Would you like to know more people on the network? Please type YES or
NO.
23b. Please give reasons for your response to the question above:
24.

How would you describe the interaction between members?

25a. Would you describe yourself as a committed member?


25b. Please give reasons for your response to the question above:
26a. Please comment on the size of the member community:
26b. Is the size of the member community TOO BIG for you to (Please select one
or more of the following alternatives that is most right for you by typing in
YES in the blank space after the alternative):
a)

draw value from your participation (please specify how):

b) communicate with as many members as you would like:


c)

initiate novelty and creativeness within the community:

d) other (please specify):


26c. Is the size of the community TOO SMALL for you to (Please select one or
more of the following alternatives that is most right for you by typing in
YES in the blank space after the alternative):
a)

draw value from your participation (please specify how):

b) communicate with as many members as you would like:


c)

initiate novelty and creativeness within the community:

d) other (please specify):

Section 7: YOUR OPINION OF NETWORK FACILITATION

25. Please describe your thoughts about the facilitation of the network:
107

26. How would you define the importance of the facilitator to the network?
27. Are you happy with the network facilitation?
a)

If YES, please explain why:

b) If NO, please explain why:


28a. Is there anything that you would like to change about network facilitation?
28b. Please explain your response to the previous question:
29. Please explain how the facilitator has been helpful to you:

Section 8: YOUR OPINION OF THE LEARNING NETWORK POTENTIAL:

30. What would you like to change about this network?


31a. How much of the information received via the network do you apply/draw
upon in your practice? Please select one or more of the following alternatives
that is most right for you by typing in YES in the blank space after the
alternative.
a)

I draw upon/apply everything that can be found on the network in my practice

b) I draw upon/apply most of what can be found on the network in my practice


c)

I draw upon/apply a moderate amount of what can be found on the network in


my practice

d) I draw upon/apply a little of what can be found on the network in my practice


e)

I do not draw upon or apply anything that can be found on the network in my
practice

31b. Regarding the above, please explain what it is that can be found on the
network that you draw upon/apply in your practice:
32. In your opinion, what additional information currently not provided by the
network should be available for use by members?
33. What is the most useful aspect of the network?
34. Do you enjoy participating?
a)

If YES, please explain why:

b) If NO, please explain why:


35. What is your motivation behind using the network?

FINAL POINT
36. Please add any further comments that you may think are useful to this
evaluation:
108

Thank you very much for your responses so far. Here follows a group of short
questions that describe your personal style and temperament. They should not take
more than 10 minutes. By completing these questions, you will make a great
contribution towards the evaluation of your Learning Network. Your responses to
these questions will also greatly help my research towards completion of my MSc
thesis.
Please answer each question by typing in YES or NO in the blank space that
follows it. When answering the questions, please choose the alternative that is
most right for you without thinking too much about your answers.

1. Are you a talkative person?


2. If you say you will do something, do you always keep your promise no matter
how inconvenient it may be?
3. Do you ever feel just miserable for no reason?
4. Are you rather lively?
5. Were you ever greedy by helping yourself to more than your share of
anything?
6. Does your mood often go up and down?
7. Are you an irritable person?
8. Do you enjoy meeting new people?
9. Have you ever blamed someone for doing something you knew was really your
fault?
10. Are your feelings easily hurt?
11. Can you usually let yourself go and enjoy yourself at a lively party?
12. Are all your habits good and desirable ones?
13. Do you often feel fed-up?
14. Do you usually take the initiative in making new friends?
15. Have you ever taken anything (even a pin or button) that belonged to
someone else?
16. Would you call yourself a nervous person?
17. Can you easily get some life into a rather dull party?
18. Have you ever broken or lost something belonging to someone else?
19. Are you a worrier?
20. Do you tend to keep in the background on social occasions?
21. Have you ever said anything bad or nasty about anyone?
109

22. Would you call yourself tense or highly strung?


23. Do you like mixing with people?
24. As a child were you ever cheeky to your parents?
25. Do you worry too long after an embarrassing experience?
26. Do you like plenty of bustle and excitement around you?
27. Have you ever cheated at a game?
28. Do you suffer from nerves?
29. Have you ever taken advantage of someone?
30. Are you mostly quiet when you are with other people?
31. Do you often feel lonely?
32. Do other people think of you as being very lively?
33. Do you always practice what you preach?
34. Are you often troubled about feelings of guilt?
35. Do you sometimes put off until tomorrow what you ought to do today?
36. Can you get a party going?

Please indicate whether you are interested in receiving by email a summary report
of the results that will be obtained from this evaluation (please indicate by typing
YES or NO):

There are no more questions. Thank you very much for participating!

110

3. Appendix three: Tables and Graphs summarizing member responses to the


email questionnaire for the Market Towns Learning Network

Table 1
Nature of membership of the Market Towns Learning Network (Countryside Agency staff,
partners, contractors and members having no relationship to the Agency other than working in the
same sector) according to the way in which membership was acquired for use and the amount of
information found useful that is received via the network. Thirty-two of all the thirty-three
members who responded to the evaluation questionnaire answered these questions.

CA
staff
I was asked to become a member
because of the organization that I
work for

CA
partners

CA
contractors

No
relationship

TOTAL

10

16

11

11

32

I draw upon/apply everything that


can be found on the network in my
practice

I draw upon/apply most of what


can be found on the network in my
practice

I draw upon/apply a moderate


amount of what can be found on the
network in my practice

11

I draw upon/apply a little of what


can be found on the network in my
practice

I do not draw upon or apply


anything that can be found on the
network in my practice

TOTAL

10

28

I was asked to become a member


because of the nature of my work
I asked to become a member
because of the nature of my work
I was elected to be a member after
an application procedure that I
initiated
I was automatically assigned
membership

TOTAL

111

Table 2
Usefulness appraisals according to the way in which membership was acquired. All usefulness
appraisals were qualitatively obtained as answers to the question: How is the Learning Network
generally useful to you and your work?. They were classified in four categories: 1. Very useful
(e.g. Extremely!, find the network an efficient & effective means of keeping informed &
motivated), 2. Reasonably useful/more active members needed (e.g. It is, but it would be much
more useful if more people contributed., Reasonably useful but has potentially more use if used
actively by all., but it could be better its simply not used enough by the bulk of the
members), 3. Somewhat useful/not central to my work (e.g. Generally helpful, Of limited
usefulness, because much of my work is in large towns rather than market towns, of some
importance but not crucial ), 4. Not useful (e.g. Not really, Not at present. Information is hard
to find, and responses to items posted are erratic and irregular.). Thirty-one of all thirty-three
members who responded answered this question.

Very
useful

I was asked to become a member


because of the organization that I
work for
I was asked to become a member
because of the nature of my work
I asked to become a member
because of the nature of my work
I was elected to be a member
after an application procedure
that I initiated
I was automatically assigned
membership
Members not providing a
response about their way of
getting involved with the network

TOTAL

Reasonably
useful/more
active
members

Somewhat Not useful


useful
/not central
to work

TOTAL

15

14

31

112

Table 3
Extraversion, Neuroticism and Social desirability scores available for 25 of the 33 respondents to
the Market Towns Learning Network evaluation questionnaire. Average scores are given for all 25
respondents, as well as for 11 males and 14 females. Standard deviations from the average are
given in brackets. Average age for each group is displayed. Females appear to be much more
extraverted than males and much more stable in their scores as a group. In contrast, males appear
to be less neurotic than females and more stable in their scores on this variable as a group. Finally,
males score higher on Social Desirability than females, both groups being equally stable in their
scores on this variable.

Number

Age

Extraversion

Neuroticism

Social
desirability

All
respondents

25

30,08

7,92 (2,83)

3,64 (2,43)

4,48 (2,58)

Males

11

34

6,9 (3,08)

3,7 (1,9)

5 (2,7)

Females

14

41,3

9,2 (1,9)

4,4 (2,9)

3,8 (2,4)

Table 4
(on the next page)
Frequency of logging onto the Market Towns Learning Network and reasons for
considering the time allowed sufficient/insufficient according to EPQ
Extraversion score (max 12). The majority of respondents (17 members as
opposed to 7) are extraverted rather that introverted. This, however, has no
apparent effect on their frequency of logging onto the network and using the
material provided because of other more powerful factors related to their working
practice: time pressures and work structuring in terms of generally accepted
routines and practices, as well as their need for face-to-face communication.

113

Extraversion Sex
(EPQ score)

Age
range

Frequency of logging onto the network Reasons for wishing to log/not log more
website

often

less than once per month (2 members)

Work pressures and time constraints (1 member); I


get all I need in the time I devote (2 members)

10 12
(3 members)

1M
2F

32 41

8 10
(9 members)

3M
6F

22 62

less than once per month (2 members)


1-5 times per month (2 members)
1-5 times per week (4 members)
more than 10 times per week (1 member)

Have to type e-mail every time/discussions difficult


to follow (2 members); Lack of time/forget about it
(4 members); A couple of times per week/every other
day is more than enough to contribute effectively to
the network (2 members); 1 member not given
reasons

68
(5 members)

3M
2F

24 49

less than once per month (2 members)


1-5 times per month (2 members)
1 member not responded

Human contact/face-to-face personal networks can


help me get the support I need (2 members);
Currently not great deal on of value (1 member); I
get all I need into time (1 member); Time constraints
(1 member)

46
(4 members)

3M
1F

27 36

less than once per month (1 member)


1-5 times per month (2 members)
1-5 times per week (1 member)

Time constraints (3 members); Information does not


suit individual needs/sterile environment in which to
gather ideas/ technology cumbersome (1 member)

24
(2 members)

2M

45 57

1-5 times per month (both members)

Time constraints (2 members)

02
(1 member)

1M

40

1-5 times per week

Lack of time/need for a fundamental change in


working practice (1 member)

1-5 times per month (1 member)

114

Table 5
(on the next page)
Frequency of adding to discussion threads, approximate number of other members known as part
of participating in the Market Towns community and appraisals of self-commitment to the Market
Towns community purpose, all according to EPQ Extraversion scores. Number of members
indicating pre-specified responses are indicated in brackets after each type of response. Age and
sex of respondents is also given. There is no apparent relationship between these variables and
Extraversion. This is because, according to members responses, time and direct relevance of
discussions posted on the network to present work commitments, as well as particular interest in
the topic, are most powerful factors in posting comments on the network. As one member put it:
This can be a sporadic process and I can go several weeks without commenting on anything and
then be caught up in a flurry of activity the week after. (E=10).
In this way, for personal style differences to influence the rate of active contribution of individuals
on the network, there need to be conditions for on-going communication and discursive community
development, so that personality can be found at work in a dynamic process of community building
and knowledge creation, by probably influencing the number of people indicated as known on the
network and the nature of relationship to them. Such conditions exist in the direct relevance of
discussion matter to the on-going work (provided that there is genuine interest in this work), as
well as social structure facilitations in terms of time sufficiently allowed to participate and means
for direct, face-to-face communication.
Although a fair amount of respondents indicated commitment to the Market Towns community
purpose, they also explained in answers to an additional question that the network is a good
information source, but has limited value as a communication tool, and that there is very little
interaction, mainly because people dont really know how to approach each other. Some members
indicated that they are enthusiastic for the principle of having a community supported by the
network, rather than committed to it as it is currently, expecting that it will get better. One member
also said in her responses: I will commit to going to meetings and have offered time to help
organise future meetings.

115

Extraversion Sex
(EPQ score)

Age

Frequency of active contribution


(adding to discussions)

range

Other members
known on the
network

Commitment
(Are you a committed
member?)

10 12
(3 members)

1M
2F

32 41

Rarely (2 members); Never (1)

1-10 members known (2


respondents); 10-20
members (1);

Yes 1 member
No 2 members

8 10
(9 members)

3M
6F

22 62

Every time I log on (1 member); Every time


when the discussion is directly relevant to my
work (2); From time to time because I think I
should without this being of direct relevance
to my work (1); From time to time because I
have been asked (1); Occasionally (2); Not
active ye but plan to become so (1); I never
actively contribute (1)

1-10 members (3
respondents); 10-20
members (4); 20-30 (1);
30-50 members (1); 50100 members (1)

Yes 2 members
Getting there! 2 members
No 4 members
1 member not responded

68
(5 members)

3M
2F

24 49

Every time when the discussion is directly


relevant (1 member); Rarely (1); Not active
but plant to become so (1); Never (2)

1-10 members (3
respondents); 10-20
members (2)

Yes 1 member
To team yes. To Learning Network
as much as time allows 1 member
No 2 members
1 member not responded

46
(4 members)

3M
1F

27 36

Every time the discussion is relevant (1


member); From time-to-time because I think I
should (1); Rarely (1); Never (1)

1-10 members (2
respondents); 10-20
members (1); more than
100 members (1)

24
(2 members)

2M

45 57

Every time when the discussion is directly


relevant (2 members);

1-10 members (both


respondents)

Yes, willing to be more so 1


member
Fair 1 member
I would, because of considerable
merits 1 member
No 1 member
Yes both members

02
(1 member)

1M

40

Every time when the discussion is directly


relevant (1 member)

10-20 members

116

Yes in so far as workload permits

Table 6
(on the next page)
Appraisals of the functionality of the Market Towns Learning Network website and the extent to
which the technology infrastructure available to members for access to the website impedes their
use of the network, according to EPQ scores for Neuroticism (max 12). The majority of
respondents are situated in the lower end of the Neuroticism dimension (22 as opposed to 3).
Appraisals of website functionality are according to respondent choices for pre-specified answers
(insufficient, adequate, good, excellent) to the question: How would you describe the
functionality of the network?.
Appraisals of technology infrastructure are according to respondent choices to pre-specified
answers (not at all, a little, not very much, to a great extent, to an extreme extent) to the question:
How much does the technology infrastructure impede your use of the network?. Website
functionality was described as easy to use and accessible by some members; others note that the
search function is little use, that the site is generally slow, difficult to navigate and read, that you
often get timed out and loose what you have entered, that we have had no training in its use, that
having passwords to access is extremely frustrating and gets in the way and that it needs to be
more sophisticated, e.g. show you which items youve not read in the sub-sections. Technology
infrastructure has on the overall been described as decent and facilitatory (high speed,
broadband connection etc.); however, some members describe the system as slow at some times
and one member notes that folks in rural areas do not have access to broadband technology so
navigation can be extremely slow. Some members also noted problems with composing
discussion comments and answers, where you are supposed to compose a word document and
then attach this. Neuroticism appears to be generally unrelated to the extent to which technology
is experienced as a problem to online communication. This is probably because, as already noted,
the network is not central to the majority of respondents work.

117

Neuroticism
(EPQ score)

Sex

Age range

10-12
(0 members)

8-10
(1 member)

1F

26

6-8
(2 members)

2F

24-36

4-6
(5 members)

2F
3M

32-51

2-4
(9 members)

3F
6M

28-57

0-2
(8 members)

3F
5M

22-42

Functionality appraisal
Technology infrastructure
(How would you describe the appraisal in terms of impeding use
functionality of the network?)
of the network
-

Adequate

Not very much

Insufficient (1 respondent)
Good (1)

A little (1 respondent)
Not very much (1)

Insufficient (1 respondent)
Adequate (2)
Good (1)
Excellent (1)

Not at all (4 respondents)


A little (1)

Insufficient (2 respondents)
Adequate (3)
Good (4)

Not at all (6 respondents)


A little (2)
To a great extent (1)

Insufficient (1 respondent)
Adequate (2)
Good (3)
2 not responded

Not at all (3 respondents)


A little (3)
Not very much (1)
1 not responded

118

Graph 1
Graph depicting the popularity of functionality features provided by the Market Towns Learning
Network web site with those members who responded to the evaluation questionnaire. Each
functionality feature is related to the number of members expressing an interest in using this
feature and finding it useful.

Use (No of members expressing an interest)

LN functionality features plotted against most


interest expresed by members of MTLN within their
responses
25
20
15
10
5

Functionality

120

C
Ne hat
w
R
it
es
ea em
s
Te rch
ite
le
co
m
s
nf
er
en
ce
s

isc

us
si

on

th
re
ad
oc
s
um
en
ts
N
ew
s
C
on
ta
ct
s
Ev
en
ts
Li
Br
nk
ai
ns
s
An
to
r
no
m
in
un
g
ce
m
en
El
ts
ec
Se
tro
ar
ni
ch
c
m
ee
tin
gs

Graph 2
Appraisals of network functionality, according to pre-specified responses chosen by members who
returned completed evaluation questionnaires.

Number of responses per


type of appraisal

Member responses to the question: "How would you


describe the functionality of the network (i.e. does it
let you do what you want it to do)?
14
12
10
8
6
4
2
0
Insufficient

Adequate

Good

Excellent

Functionality appraisals

Graph 3
Appraisals of the infrastructure enabling the use of the Learning Network for those members who
responded to the evaluation questionnaire, according to pre-specified responses that they chose.

Number of responses for


each category

Member responses to the question: "How much does


the technology infrastructure (e.g. the quality of the
internet connection) impede your use of the
network?"
16
14
12
10
8
6
4
2
0
Not at all

A little

Not very
much

To a great
extent

To an
extreme
extent

How much technology infrastructure constrains network


use

121

4. Appendix four: Table summarizing data obtained for the Equipping Rural
Communities Learning Network

Table 7
(on the next page)
Relationship to the Countryside Agency (CA) according to Equipping Rural Communities
Learning Network membership acquisition, rate of using the network website, rate of adding to
discussions and perceived benefit from participating in the network. Data were obtained for 7
respondents to the evaluation questionnaire (age range between 27-50). 5 respondents were males
and 2 females. EPQ scores are available for 5 of these respondents. For Extraversion (max 12): 02 (2 members), 4-8 (2 members), 8-10 (1 member). Therefore the respondent population is
relatively introverted rather than extraverted and this conclusion cannot be generalized across the
whole Learning Network community because of the very small number of respondents. For
Neuroticism (max 12): 0-2 (1 member), 2-4 (2 members), 4-8 (1 member), 8-10 (1 member),
respondents are relatively low on this personal style variable and again the small number of
respondents makes impossible the generalizing of this observation to the whole community and
the drawing of conclusions regarding the influence of personal style on member participation and
community development. Discussion threads posted on the network were indicated as the most
useful feature, followed by documents loaded for member use. Time was revealed as the main
constraint to logging on the network website more often and actively contributing, as well as
forgetting that it is there!, which indicates the low integration of the network within the working
culture of members and the non-existent conditions for community of interest to develop and then
be supported by the network. 1 member referred to the network as mainly an information
gathering exercise, where it is hard to put views across if they have not been approved by line
management (again this indicates that members are not allowed a healthy autonomy to foster,
engage and create the community process to generate knowledge). Most members indicated that
there are not enough contributions to the network and 1 member said that contributions are just
opinions with no impact on policy development (discussions are mainly just gossip and daft
opinions), thus describing the community process as defeating its original purpose. Regarding the
benefit of network participation to members, most of them indicated that they are not interested in
the purpose of the network as a whole, but rather in some and not other of the specific topics set
by the facilitator over time; this removes member opportunity for action learning.

122

CA staff
2 members

CA
partners
2 members

CA
contractors
1 member

No
relationship
to CA
2 members

TOTAL
7
members

Membership
acquisition
I was asked because of
the organization that I
work for

I was asked because of


the nature of my work

1(I felt I was

helping out a
fledging
project)

Use
Less than once per month
1-5 times per month

2 (for the topic


I was involved
in)

1-5 times per week

Active contribution
Every time the discussion
is directly relevant to my
work
From time to time
because I think I should
From time to time
because I have been
asked

Benefit
I apply most of what can
be found on the network
in my practice

I apply a moderate
amount of what can be
found on the network in
my practice
I apply a little of what
can be found on the
network in my practice

1
1

123

5. Appendix five: Table summarizing data obtained from email questionnaire


responses for the Rural Affairs Forum for England Learning Network

Table 8
(on the next page)
Relationship to the Countryside Agency (CA) according to the Rural Affairs Forum for England
Learning Network membership acquisition, rate of network website use, rate of active contribution
and perceived benefit from network community participation.
Data were obtained for 4 members: Extraversion (max 12) = 4, 8, 12, 1 member not available;
Neuroticism (max 12) = 1, 2, 5, 1 member not available; age range = 36-73. Personal style data
cannot be generalized to the whole network community because of the very small number of
respondents to the network evaluation questionnaire.
Time was indicated as the main factor impeding network use and active contribution, as well as the
network not currently working in the way originally intended. Documents loaded for member use
appeared to be most popular with the respondents and 1 member indicated that he uses the network
to pass these documents onto the departments that deal with those topics, thus revealing the
usefulness of the network as an information, rather than knowledge, source. Apart from
documents, information on government policy and minutes and statements from interested groups
were also indicated of practical use.
In addition, another respondent expressed an expectation of the network to become more useful for
knowledge, rather than information, purposes, when the Rural Affairs sub-groups start their work
(this could be because of the greater cohesion among community members that would be brought
about by them sharing very similar concerns in terms of their belonging to the same geographical
region). Interaction among members was described as limited and minimal where people are just
acquaintances and not relations and where the size of the community is too big in order to bridge
across different opinions during network meetings.
Finally, one member expressed the view that the network has the potential to be very powerful,
provided that there is a strong community of interest to be the virtual embodiment of a strong
physical community, where conditions for physical community development, in terms of
effective development of interpersonal relations, need to exist in order for the virtual community to
be perceived as optimizing the physical process of knowledge creation.

124

CA staff
(none)

CA partners
(3 members)

CA
contractors
(none)

No
relationship
to CA
(1 members)

TOTAL
(4
members)

Membership
acquisition
I was asked because of
the organization that I
work for
I was asked because of
the nature of my work

Use
1-5 times per month
2
1-5 times per week

Active contribution
Every time the discussion
is directly relevant to my
work
From time to time
because I think I should
I never actively
contribute

Benefit
I apply most of what can
be found on the network
in my practice
I apply a moderate
amount of what can be
found on the network in
my practice
I do not apply anything
found on the network in
my practice

125

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