Different knowledge-sharing technologies or channels should always be seen

as complementary and as mutually exclusive. All types of communications

represent some form of conversation, and each communication medium has
its strengths and weaknesses. It is important to choose the appropriate mix of
channels in order to optimize knowledge sharing. Most communities organize
their knowledge-sharing interactions as informal exchanges between peers,
and communication genres are chosen primarily on the basis of the
developing relationship between community members (Zucchermaglio and
Talamo, 2003). The choice of communication medium appears to be a
function of specific professional tasks and the stage of maturity of community
development. The authors conducted a longitudinal study of an
interorganizational community of practice over a three-year period. For
example, it took about six months for communications to become
predominantly informal and e-mailbased among community members.
Concurrent with this was an increasing formality in how community members
communicated with those external to the community, which indicates that a
sense of community boundary has been established.

One important type of knowledge sharing that occurs in a community

involves the evolution of a best practice (an improved way of doing things) or
lessons learned (learning from both successful and unsuccessful events).
Figure 5-7 shows how a good idea can evolve and be transferred within CoPs
in order to be ultimately incorporated into the organizational memory or
knowledge repository. The knowledge-sharing processes involved include
searching, evaluating, validating, implementing (transferring and enabling),
reviewing, and routinizing (Jarrar and Zairi, 2000).

Table 5-3 shows the results of an APQC study that looked at how best practice
knowledge was shared and transferred within organizations (APQC, 1999).
Their findings show that 51% of knowledge sharing occurred as part of a
formal process within the organization, 39% was ad hoc, more tacit, and likely
within a CoP and, perhaps most striking, 10% of the best practices were
never shared. This type of obstacle in knowledge sharing or knowledge flow is
very difficult to pick up. Social network analysis (SNA) is one technique that
can help identify such knowledge hoarding or knowledge “black holes,”
where content is received but nothing is ever sent out.

We can also look more closely at the types of exchanges that occur in
knowledge sharing. The majority of the knowledge exchanges consist of
requests, revisions, modifications, or some form of repackaging, publications,
references (e.g., telling people about, who knows about), recommendations,
reuse, and reorganization (e.g., adding on of categories, metadata). Reuse is
also an excellent measure of the success of the knowledge sharing, and it can
be thought of as being analogous to a citation index. Scholars and
researchers produce a number of scientific publications, but a metric that is
perhaps even more meaningful than the number of papers published is the
citation index, which keeps track of how many others have made use of this
work. When others do refer to their work, this is evidenced by specific
citations and references to the original work or a reuse of the original
content. It is possible to track such reuse in a knowledge management
system as well; in some organizations, this knowledge is used to evaluate
how good a knowledge sharer a given employee is.

Knowledge-sharing communities are not just about providing access to data

and documents: they are about interconnecting the social network of people
who produced the knowledge. A good knowledge management system should
include information not just on the people who produced the knowledge but
also on those who will make use of it. There is as much value in talking to
people experienced in using knowledge as there is in talking to the original
authors (subject matter experts). One way to facilitate knowledge sharing is
by making the knowledge visible. Knowledge sharing can be made more
visible by making the interactions online visible in some way so that “I know
that you know xyz” and “I know that you know that I know abc.” Visible
interactions help create a mutual awareness, mutual accountability, and
mutual engagement to knit group members more closely together.