An organisation
can be said to be a group of people working together to achieve a collective goal. An organisation could be a commercial or industrial body.
A community of practice
According to Etienne Wenger (2007), "Communities of practice are groups of people who share a concern or a passion for something they do and learn how to do it better as they interact regularly". This could also be a group of people that have a common interest and also share knowledge and experience within the group to achieve a common goal.
Communities of practice have three characteristics namely the domain, the community and the practice.
Communities of practice have three characteristics namely the domain, the community and the practice.
Differences between an organisation and a community of practice
- Communities of practice usually have a shared domain of interest unlike organisations that have vast domains of interest.
- An organisation usually has a defined name while a community may or may not have a name.
- An organisation is usually formal in its structure while a community of practise might be formal or informal.
- organisations usually have a hierachy structure( i.e leadership), communities of practice do not.
- An organistion ususally has well defined goals, objectives and strtegies that might help in achieving these goals, this is not always the case for communities of practice.
References:
- Smith, M.K. (2003). "Communities of practice". The Encyclopedia of Informal Education
Hello Funsho,
ReplyDeleteI like your comparison of organisation and CoP! Short and punchy to the point! One other thing I would like to add is: Organisation is internally done whereas CoP can be done externally.
Will be looking forward to see more of your posting's! :)
If this ends up as a duplicate, please discard it.
ReplyDeleteThis is a brief and quite precise description of the difference between organisations and CoPs. I would not argue with any of it, but I'd like to see you argument supported by more authoritative references. You should also put these ideas in the context of real organisations. What kind of CoPs might work, not work, and why, in your type of organisation.
Hello Funsho, my mind has not changed on my initial post, but one thing that I want to add to it is that CoP CAN be done internally as well on informal basis.
ReplyDeleteThis is concise comparison...
ReplyDeleteI agree with all the other comments....
However you say ”organisations usually have a hierachy structure( i.e leadership), communities of practice do not”
How would CoP work in the meaning of control or order...? how would they be organised face-to-face?
;-)