CUOTAS APERIÓDICAS

Wenger (1998) raises the question of belonging along with Handley (2006) with regards

to a Community of Practice as to what is the source of ‘cohesiveness and

mutuality’(Lindkvist,2006) which holds the Community together, the ‘social glue’(Juriado

& Gustafsson, 2007). There is a need to answer the fundamental question ‘why does one join CoPs?’ and ‘what brings these individuals together as a ‘Community’? Juriad &

Gustafsson (2007) identified some of the key cultivators or as the researcher calls the

‘triggers’ for an ‘emergent’ Community of Practice formation, the factors which would stimulate ‘emergent’ Communities of Practice. One of the triggers being existence of an

atmosphere of relative trust through knowledge-sharing and collective memories.

The role played by informal events and socializing platforms is often highlighted as key factors for creating the forces of social bonding (Juriado & Gustafsson (2007). The

researcher introduces the term, ‘Draw Factor’, which is defined as the forces that bonds

the social groupings, which interest individuals to participate in a ‘Community of

Practice’ and consists of all that draws individuals towards participating in a Community

of Practice. The ‘draw factor’ or ‘social glue’(Juriado & Gustafsson, 2007) would be the

riddle for future generation of scholars in trying to identify the very basis of a

Community-formation, what will bring disparate individuals working within and across

organizations together to share a ‘practice’.

One of the great flaws evident in a lot of literature on Communities of Practice, is interpreting broad-based Communities of Practice who mutually engage with each other and perform similar tasks as Communities of Practice, as compared to the ‘tightly-knit’ Communities of Practice who are constantly redefining their world of practice and belonging sustained over a period of time through mutual interactions and in the process learning and innovating. The latter ones are appropriately qualified to be Communities of Practice in the truest sense of the term as drawn from the above definitions. A good instance is to identify a regular meeting of IAS officers interested in rural development who exchange stories, notes and expertise as a ‘sustained’ Community of Practice. How far these interactions influence their work and understanding of rural development? What sort of repertoire does it generate? Can they be termed as Communities of Practice?

Socializing against the backdrop of a highly engaged and interested community is effective, but certainly the Community does not emerge through socializing alone.

Interestingly the researcher went into the exercise to locate the ‘draw factor’, which brings

the IAS officers together to form CoPs, with the idea that Communities were built around

rather very ‘pragmatic’ ‘realistic’ considerations of competencies (defined as domain

knowledge) and immediate goals and objectives (Carbery & Murphy, 2007). Quite contrarily a romantic impression emerged that of a ‘Gentleman’s Club’ with quaint, antiquated rituals and ceremonies and clear rules of conduct, termed in this research as Codes of Conduct laced with humor, wit and cultivating bonds. Here in the context of CoPs ‘competencies’ are defined as domain knowledge (Jorgensen & Lauridsen, 2005; Carbery & Murphy, 2007).

To summarize some of the ‘ambient’ conditions for natural formation of CoPs are:  Relative atmosphere of trust

 Informal platforms for friendships

 Mutual exchange of stories and shared narratives

 Shared goals and objectives

 Competencies – Domain knowledge

3.6.1 STORYTELLING AND COMMUNITY FORMATION:

‘Expertise is also shared through storytelling about previous events and happenings’

(Juriad & Gustafsson, 2007) Storytelling provides a powerful bonding and this is what makes the mechanism of formation of a CoP so subtle and yet too complex to be

replicated across the board (Lave and Wenger, 1991). Historically there is a tradition of story-telling in the Indian Administrative Services; if one strolls back to the days of ICS officers then one would find that they were excellent raconteurs who narrated their life experiences to the juniors and general society. Referring to ICS men who retired to Britain (Gilmour,2005) writes ‘Yet once home, a strange fondness for India would often afflict them, and they would spend their evenings sunk in a club chair with a gin and tonic,

boring everyone with endless tales of the Punjab’. A considerable effort would be made in

3.6.2 SHARED MEANING – CONSTANT NEGOTIATION & BELONGING: An in-depth reading of the CoP literature indicates that there exists an ‘appearance of shared meaning’ within CoPs being studied, which entails a sense of belonging to the

community (Handley et al, 2006). ‘Shared meaning’ can be defined as ‘shared

understanding of their roles in the community and what that means in their lives and in the larger community’. The idea of shared meaning of a community of practice members is defined as a ‘constructed understanding’, where they construct a shared understanding of the role and practice selectively from the myriad maze of information (Wenger, 1991; Brown and Duguid, 1991). Shared meaning of a CoP is constantly negotiated and is not static but a very active dynamic process(Wenger, 1998).

Importantly the shared meaning can be summarized to have the following characteristics: 1.0 Shared understanding of the roles of the individuals in the CoP through Practice. So one has to actively participate to acquire this meaning.

2.0 Relationships play a very key role here in creating a shared meaning (Handley et al. 2006).

3.0 Shared meaning is contextual and is influenced by the prevailing circumstances which are the forces enabling the formation of CoPs (Wenger & Snyder, 2000).

5.0 The shared interpretation manifested as meaning emerges for the CoPs as a resource for newcomers and is a shared resource for the community members.

3.6.3 NEGOTIATED MEANING – PARTICIPATION:

Here Wenger(1998) talks about meaning not in abstract philosophical terms as in meaning of life, but meaning as an experience of daily living, which is shared by a lot of social science scholars and is part of a long tradition (Lave & Wenger, 1991). Some of the

profound seminal works by other scholars which include Giddens and his ‘structuration theory’, Bourdieu’s ‘Outline of a theory of Practice’ and Deleuze’s ‘Assemblage theory’

reflects the concept, that the development of human understanding happens through participation in a social world, meaning is acquired in social living, also known as praxis or social practice. In the context of Communities of Practice, meaning is constantly negotiated through participation, the experiential mode of belonging and understanding the world to which one belongs as members of Communities of Practice. What is intriguing then is that the process of negotiation of meaning happens through action,

reflection, absorption, communication and connecting with one another within the Communities of Practice. Historical character of meaning is to be recognized in the

process of negotiations, so one inherits a repository of meaning and then build one’s own

through the process of participation (Wenger, 1998). Relationships play a very key role in

the negotiations of meaning but it also changes, one redefines one’s relationships and

look at old relationships in new light as one acquires new meanings (Hedberg et al, 1990).

3.6.4 NEGOTIATED MEANING – REIFICATION:

Reification – is a process of translating the shared meaning into tangible physical objects (Wenger, 1998). In other words one’s entire social experience is shaped into reification of objects, called artifacts. As Wenger (1998) defines there will be artifacts which will be the legacy of a shared meaning which was prevalent in the past for a newcomer into a Community of Practice, where the newcomer will feel and experience the past through the

reified object. Wenger’s (1998) study explored five examples of apprenticeship like

midwives, tailors, quartermasters, meat cutters and non-drinking alcoholics. In all the

instances of ongoing CoPs the apprentices were initiated through sharing of ‘legacy’

artifacts like stories and narratives which played a key role in transferring knowledge and

past experiences, and often has been dubbed as ‘repositories of accumulated

wisdom’(Orr,1990b; Brown & Duguid, 1991). Some of the other forms of artifacts are

abstractions, tools, symbols, terms and concepts. 3.6.4.1 Limitations of Artifacts:

Wenger (1998) cautions that artifacts are experiences extended over time and codified and preserved through reification but they do not capture entirely the context of the

experience, and more so, the meaning was constituted in another setting. In this research the limitations of artifacts is a very relevant point for the researcher since there are possibilities of mistaken interpretations of what constitutes an artifact which has been passed on to the next generation and is part of the shared repertoire of the CoPs.