文章基本信息

标题：Cooperation within Bureaucracies: Are Communities of Practice an Answer?
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作者：Emmanuel Josserand
期刊名称：M@n@gement
印刷版ISSN：1286-4892
出版年度：2004
卷号：7
期号：3
出版社：D M S P Research Center
摘要：Communities of practice have been presented as the panacea of organizational learn-ing. Building up on three case studies in different organizations characterized by differ-ent internal contexts, this article pushes the logic one step further by arguing that com-munities of practice can also be unique collaboration spaces within bureaucracies. Theirmain property is the ambiguity of their relationship with organizational control mecha-nisms and structures. Communities play with the rules, they can be adaptable and assuch can build resilience within the organization. But this ambiguity, being the founda-tion of their capacity to introduce cooperation within organizations, is also difficult tomaintain. Cultivating communities of practice thus becomes a delicate task for managerswho must be able to adopt complex and contradictory behaviours. Five roles that can befulfilled by management are analysed: stimulation, facilitation, support, control andrecognition. Far from the generic recommendations that can be found in the literature todate, the findings indicate that the degree of intervention from management is highlydependent on the internal organizational context. This article thus provides a contingentframework to the cultivation of communities of practice