Knowledge, Cognition, and Organizational Learning
To understand why CoPs have attained such visibility in organizational learning, we must start with the core epistemological questions of what constitutes knowledge and how (and perhaps whether) it is transferred.
The individualist view
Until recently, behaviorist and cognitivist models have been the primary underlying forces influencing learning and organizational epistemologies (Von Krogh and Roos, 1995). According to these theories, knowledge is an object that can reside outside individuals and can be delivered to a learner as one would deliver food as nourishment (Gherardi, Nicolini, and Odella, 1998). The primary emphasis has been on individual minds and explicit knowledge (Baumard, 1999; Cook and Brown, 1999), knowledge that is easily represented through a formal symbol system (Nonaka and Takeuchi, 1995; Polanyi, 1966).
Employee development, therefore, has taken the form of event-driven training mechanisms for the individual (corporate universities, training, seminars, computer-based self-studies, etc.) which embody this epistemology. In addition, knowledge management and organizational learning champions have emphasized best practice capture, codification, and distribution (Fahey and Prusak, 1998; Hansen, Nohria, and Tierney, 1999; O’Dell and Grayson, 1998), even when the results are questionable, such as best practice databases that are merely ‘information junkyards’ (McDermott, 1998). Although these tools are worthwhile, they represent only a small fraction of the knowledge that exists and learning that can and does take place in an organization. To see this potential requires a paradigmatic shift in thinking.
A social view of knowledge and cognition
While the individualist view is still dominant, a more collective view of knowledge is strengthening. Building on Marx’s and Hegel’s historical materialism, the Russian psychologists Vygotsky and Leontiev formulated a socio-historical theory of activity and higher mental functions (see Leontiev, 1978; Vygotsky, 1978). This revolutionary approach to knowledge and cognition spawned current constructivist thinking, which posits the social and constructive nature of knowledge.
Knowledge, from this perspective, is not an object that is ‘passed physically from one to another, like bricks; [it] cannot be shared as persons would share a pie by dividing it into physical pieces’ (Dewey, 1916: 4). Rather, it is socially constructed through collaborative efforts with common objectives or by dialectically opposing different perspectives in dialogic interaction (Bakhtin, 1981; Pea, 1993). Knowledge is built into or, perhaps better stated, is equivalent to the patterns inherent in culture: in the reifications of artifacts, the behavioral patterns, and actions set in history. Thus, explicit knowledge only represents the ‘tip of the iceberg’ (Nonaka and Takeuchi, 1995), since most knowledge is tacit. Cook and Brown (1999) have even postulated that beyond tacit knowledge there is a knowledge inherent in practice itself which they call ‘knowing.’ In this sense, knowledge is a diffused and emergent property rather than a discrete entity unto itself.
If knowledge is distributed, then cognition and intelligence are distributed as well. Studies of airline pilots and ship navigation have shown that completion of actions and problem solving (or cognition) is based on distributed access to information and knowledge and a coordinated shared understanding amongst participants (Hutchins, 1995, 1996; Hutchins and Klausen, 1998). No person alone can complete an action—it must always be the ‘person plus’ (Perkins, 1993), a collective phenomenon. Cognitive resources are by no means restricted to people; they can also be embedded in tools, as a calculator has the ability to compute a square root. The resources to complete any action are distributed amongst people, environments, and situations (Pea, 1993); in fact all cultural resources, and the coordination and configuration of those resources is the collective task of those completing the action.
Implications for organizational learning
The organizational learning implications of this alternative epistemology are profound. First, learning is situated (Brown, Collins, and Duguid, 1989; Gherardi, Nicolini, and Odella, 1998; Lave and Wenger, 1991) and contextual, historically tied to the situation in which knowledge is being created and used. It is situated in context of the activity or practice, part and parcel of the work itself. Learning does not only happen in the classroom; in fact, most learning results from interaction with co-workers during shared collaborative tasks. Learning and meaning are constructed from participation in social practice (Star, 1998). Lave and Wenger (1991) describe this learning phenomenon as legitimate peripheral participation (LPP). According to this model, learning is not a matter of obtaining individual, objective knowledge or formal expertise. Rather, it is the attainment of the subjective perspective of a group of individuals engaged in a shared enterprise (a CoP) that is contained within artifacts, behaviors, and language. Individuals become enculturated (Brown, Collins, and Duguid, 1989) to the group, acting like physicians, cabinetmakers, or insurance claims adjusters in the eyes of the other practitioners in the community. Thus, learning is more about developing an identity and becoming a practitioner through social interaction with others than about learning objectively about the practice (Brown and Duguid, 1991).
If learning is situated in practice, then practice precedes knowledge (Hedegaard, 1995). Higher mental functions as social processes within the practice manifest themselves externally first and then are internalized through a transformational process. As Vygotsky states:
It is necessary that everything internal in higher forms was external, that is, for others it was what it now is for oneself. Any higher mental function necessarily goes through an external stage in its development because it is initially a social function.
(Vygotsky, 1981: 162)
For Vygotsky, learning appears in two planes, the social plane and the psychological plane, first interpsychological then intrapsychological. Internalization occurs as a result of a genetic relationship in which those possessing less mature cultural forms of behavior interrelate with those more culturally mature (Wertsch, 1985). Vygotsky calls the distance between the actual development level of individuals using their own means and the potential development level of individuals under the guidance of those more capable the zone of proximal development. The apprenticeship model from which Lave and Wenger derive the concept of CoPs demonstrates these Vygotskian principles in action. The longevity and evolution of the community is dependent on the perpetuation of the practice. This occurs through members negotiating meaning, a dialectical interplay of participation and reification, and through the concurrent negotiation of identity that membership entails (Wenger, 1998a). This process establishes the learning trajectories of both the novices and full member practitioners and indeed of the community as a whole.
Since knowledge is socially constructed, focus on knowledge creation, rather than knowledge transfer, becomes paramount for organizational learning. Knowledge creation has been described as a cyclical knowledge conversion process between tacit and explicit knowledge comprised of four conversion steps: socialization, externalization, combination, and internalization (Nonaka, 1991; Nonaka and Takeuchi, 1995). Socialization is key to knowledge creation. During socialization, individuals share experiences and develop common mental models. Often this happens through dialogue and observation. The concepts generated during this socialization process are then externalized through the use of metaphor and analogy, which helps to ‘understand the unknown through the known and bridges the gap between the image and a logical model’ (Nonaka and Takeuchi, 1995: 67). The model derived from externalization is then systematized through combination. Finally, the concept is re-embodied into tacit knowledge through ‘learning-by-doing.’ Note the similarity between Nonaka and Wenger’s specification of how meaning negotiation occurs in CoPs. Wenger, however, unlike Nonaka, recognizes that the socialization process (participation) is a process affecting the person and the group through the forging of identity which then feeds not only the innovation, but also the practice itself.