Community of Practice: A Study on Sociology

This study provides an insight into the concept of Community of Practice (CoP) and its relevance in the workplace. It discusses the strengths and weaknesses of CoP and provides examples of its implementation. The study also highlights the importance of sustaining CoP for knowledge exchange among different communities.

Running Head: COMMUNITY OF PRACTICE 1
COMMUNITY OF PRACTICE
(A Study on Sociology)
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Word Count: 1500
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Introduction
The group of individuals who share the same profession or craft can be considered as
a community of practice (Cop). The concept of community has recently got popular but the
presence of the term is from many years. The community of practices taken into
consideration by a group of individuals to improve their performance in the workplace.
The CoP is formulated by the people who are involved in some kind of learning process in
the context [of any profession, any problem, any expression among others. The community of
practice can work on several topics such as, identifying gaps , mapping knowledge,
documenting project among others.

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Discussion
Interpretation of CoP
Community of practice refers to a group of people, who have the passion and concern
for what they are doing. At the same time, they also try to learn the way that particular
activities can be performed in a better way. This kind of passion or concern reflects the
fundamentally social nature of learning by human being. As per the viewpoint of Valentine,
Wignes, Benson, Clota & Schuwirth, (2019), the key purpose of CoP is providing
opportunities to the practitioners for sharing the best practices and tips for further
improvement. The concept of community of practices is quite relevant in the workplace
because within a working atmosphere, employees interact with each other and share their
problems. They try to resolve the internal issues, question to their colleagues and provide
them support to overcome the difficulties.
According to Fleming & Pretti, (2019), the value, community of practices can bring to
the members, foster the practices more effectively. The concept of CoP is not only limited
within a particular group of people or a project or task force, which is going to obtain a
common goal, rather it is a longer than life and people make it a part of their regular life
practices. The members involved in a CoP are also remain engaged within another
organisational structure. In case of community of practices, the members get engaged in a
collective procedure of learning with the help of the shared practices produced by CoP
(Whitworth, Torras i Calvo, Moss, Amlesom Kifle & Blåsternes, 2015).
Examples of CoP
In the case of the Community of Practice (CoP) within organisations, several
exemplary situations can be portrayed in a significant manner. For instance, in order to
improve the level of productivity, the organisational leaders focus on having regular-basis
interaction with the production executives. On that note, the key observing area is that the
production manager and the group of workers act as the CoP here. Another major example of
CoP can be indicative of the team of the IT department in an organisation. For instance, in
order to improve the availability and accessibility of information to all the operational
departments, the group of IT executives and the HOD (Head of the Department) of the IT
department acts as CoP. In order to present another example of CoP, it can be stated that in
case of presenting a better audit report and financial performance, the group of accounts

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executives and the account manager acts as the CoP (de Carvalho-Filho, Tio & Steinert,
2019).
On that note, the major noticeable aspect is that the CoP focuses on maintaining daily-
basis interaction without interruption or any error. One more significant example of CoP at
the workplace is indicative of the marketing department. For instance, in order to enhance the
sales and profitability, the group of marketing executives and marketing manager acts as the
CoP. Hence, the overall matter is that CoP is revolving around the groups of individuals who
share a common concern in order to bring sustainability in the system. In case of ensuring
success in CoP, it is indeed essential to ensure effective and uninterrupted communication
regularly. For instance, in turn of ensuring the success of individual departments, such as,
sales and marketing, production, IT and accounts, there is a significant requirement of
maintaining either face-to-face interaction or through several digital platforms, such as, SMS
or emails (de Carvalho-Filho, Tio & Steinert, 2019).
Strengths of CoP
Community of practice is very useful as it provides multiple benefits to the members
of community. People from the community can be much educated as different people from
the community shares their knowledge associated their work. It renders the benefit of
supporting the interaction as well as collaboration among the members by the organizations.
Many tines it as been seen that people do mistake and this is because not understanding the
mistake but Community of practice helps to avoid the problem. This is because people share
their hurdles and obstacles in this communities and the knowledgeable and experience people
give the point of view about the hurdles. In this way people can overcome their problem in
more convenient way. This is very important for the people have less opportunity to interact
with people. It has been observed that such people feel more satisfied after joining such
groups. Community of practice yields the context of share for the people for communicating
as well as sharing information, personal experience along with stories in such away so that
that can built insight and understanding.
One of the most significant strength of COP is enabling the dialogue among the
people who come together for exploring new opportunities, solving challenging problems as
well as creating opportunities which are new and mutually beneficial. According to a recent
report, most of the people of the community prefers the benefit of capturing and sharing
existing knowledge. This is because they believe that it helps the people to improve their

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practice by the provision of a forum for identifying the solutions for common problems as
well as a process to evaluate the best practice. Community of practice introduce the process
of collaboration for the group as well as organizations for encouraging the free flow of idea
and exchanging the information (Pyrko, Dörfler & Eden, 2016)
Weaknesses of CoP
The concept of community of practice or COP has several shortcomings. Depending
on the statement, the community of practice needs several opportunities for maintaining
participation. On the other hand, the COP takes a huge capacity of time for developing
naturally in an organization. In case of development of the working demand, several
individuals lack the necessity of a particular time in an organization. For example, the use of
COP in a school can create several obstacles because the time is not as available based on the
community. Depending on the statement, the community of practice must need the proper
time for the success of an organization, thereby attracting the consumer from the target
market. In recent time most of the organization intends to develop their business by following
the advance method. Moreover, the community of practice is a traditional concept, and it is
not able to increase the organization potentiality.
In terms of time and hierarchy of an organization, several shortcomings are prevailed
by using the communities of practice process. The concept is used in the situation of the
horizontally connected structure of an organization, but in recent time, most of the
organizations are aligned in a vertical way. On the basis of the statement, the process of
maintaining the hierarchy in an organization by using the COP intends to decrease the profit
margin of an organization in the target market (Hou, 2015).
In recent time community of practice is analyzed most critically by relating with the
possible drawbacks for transferring in the virtual world. In this aspect, the virtual
communities create several difficulties by creating a secure connection among several
communities. The connection is not developed because they are going to lose the opportunity
to interact with each other. The use of COP intends to create isolation in an organization
process.
Sustainability of CoP
Sustaining the community of practice is very important because swapping
of knowledge related to the different community will help to build the identity of an
individual person or community in the society. The leaders of the community are taking new

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and different steps to sustain the concept of community of practices in the society. The steps
taken by the leaders are, they are introducing new topics so that more community people can
engage in the process of acquiring knowledge. The leaders are welcoming new members to
the community so that experiments can be done with the new introduced topics and
technology (Schau, Muñiz & Arnould, 2009). In this way, community of practices can be
sustained and sustainable community always tends to focus on social equity, economic and
environmental sustainability and overall enhancement of the social structure. Following the
theory of CoP in workplace allow the members to maintain healthy circumstances and
collaborative working structure within the organisation.

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Conclusion
The study has concluded that Community of practice has an important effect in the
improvement of the community. The study has provided definition of CoP which will help
the readers to understand the concept of Cop. Different example of CoP has been provided in
the study to understand its relevancy with the workplace. Community of practices has
different strength and weakness which provide different scope to the researcher. The
sustainability of the Cop is very important for the exchange of the knowledge regarding
different community. The leaders of the community have taken several steps which has been
discussed and understood in the study.

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References
de Carvalho-Filho, M., Tio, R., & Steinert, Y. (2019). Twelve tips for implementing a
community of practice for faculty development. Medical Teacher, 1-7. doi:
10.1080/0142159x.2018.1552782
Fleming, J., & Pretti, T. (2019). The impact of work-integrated learning students on
workplace dynamics. Journal Of Hospitality, Leisure, Sport & Tourism Education, 25,
100209. doi: 10.1016/j.jhlste.2019.100209
Hou, H. (2015). What makes an online community of practice work? A situated study of
Chinese student teachers’ perceptions of online professional learning. Teaching And
Teacher Education, 46, 6-16. doi: 10.1016/j.tate.2014.10.005
Pyrko, I., Dörfler, V., & Eden, C. (2016). Thinking together: What makes Communities of
Practice work?. Human Relations, 70(4), 389-409. doi: 10.1177/0018726716661040
Schau, H., Muñiz, A., & Arnould, E. (2009). How Brand Community Practices Create Value.
Journal Of Marketing, 73(5), 30-51. doi: 10.1509/jmkg.73.5.30
Valentine, N., Wignes, J., Benson, J., Clota, S., & Schuwirth, L. (2019). Entrustable
professional activities for workplace assessment of general practice trainees. Medical
Journal Of Australia, 210(8), 354-359. doi: 10.5694/mja2.50130
Whitworth, A., Torras i Calvo, M., Moss, B., Amlesom Kifle, N., & Blåsternes, T. (2015).
Mapping Collective Information Practices in the Workplace. Communications In
Computer And Information Science, 49-58. doi: 10.1007/978-3-319-28197-1_6