Cultural aspects in (online) communities of practice: how to deal with them?

Collaboration in Communities of Practice (CoPs) has become a wide-spread phenomenon in the course of the last ten years, not only in the business world. A tremendous amount of efforts can be observed in establishing and managing CoPs, in fact, CoPs have become real management instruments that have proved their usefulness for various knowledge-sharing purposes (e.g. CoPs within a single organisation, CoPs across organisations within a region, CoPs with no geographical boundaries).

As the acceptance and usage of CoPs continuously increases, the question arises how the process of CoP management can be modified according to the different settings in which they are supposed to operate. Some of the most frequent problems encountered within international CoPs relate to the cultural barriers their members have to deal with. Even though interaction patterns are to some extent streamlined by the technology that is put in place (in case of an “online CoP” or “e-CoP”), there is a lack of understanding how different cultural backgrounds affect (online) collaboration. Understanding how international CoPs work, and which specific cultural influences can be observed in specific European and Non-European countries, seems to be a crucial step for successful CoP design and implementation in international contexts.

Based on this topic a workshop entitled: Cultural aspects in (online) communities of practice: how to deal with them? has been organised during the eChallenges conference in Barcelona.

As one part the concept of Zones and their advantages on KnowledgeBoard has been presented and used as an good example of bridging cultural differences.

 Here is a short overview about the workshop structure:

Introduction: Cultural Aspects in Online Communities of Practice: How to deal with them?

Liza Wohlfart, Fraunhofer IAO (Institute for Industrial Engineering), Germany

Introductory presentation to the workshop, highlighting how different cultural backgrounds affect (online) collaboration.

Language and Cultural Barriers in International Cooperation

Corinna Flöck, CRSA-ECP, France

This presentation describes a research study elaborating existing language and cultural barriers in international cooperations and describes possible ways to overcome these barriers. It takes the Zones of the European knowledge management platform “KnowledgeBoard” as an example and projects the findings on a business level.

Setting up Communities of Practice for Innovative Russian SMEs

Johann Riedel, University of Nottingham, United Kingdom

The presentation highlights the initial phases of a project called RUSMECO, which is dedicated to the development of a Community of Practice (CoP) between clusters of innovative small and medium-sized enterprises (iSME) in Moscow, St. Petersburg and Ekaterinburg. The CoP’s main intention will be to enable iSMEs and other interested organisations to share knowledge and experiences on subjects related to “Business Development”. The assumption is that the individual performance of an iSME increases, when members of that iSME learn from past experiences by others in a CoP.

Workshop discussion: Sharing experience from working in international (online) CoPs?

• Collection and discussion of experiences from participants: Identification of main topics
• Sharing of best practices and requirements of international (online) CoPs?
• Collection and discussion of requirements from participants both in terms of working methods and tool design
• Synthesis, Conclusion and Outlook: Where to go from here?

Further information can be found in the attached workshop minutes and the presentations.

We will be glad to receive your feedback!

Kind regards

Corinna Flöck