Community of Practice Mediated by Internet The Case of Philanthropy-Quebec
Michel Plaisent, Lassana Maguiraga, Prosper Bernard, Sylvain Favreau dept. Management and Technology University of Quebec in Montreal Montreal, Canada
[email protected] Abstract—This communication reports on an experiment to create and maintain a community of practices in the sector of philanthropy. After defining such communities, and recalling its advantages, the paper describes how internet can support these communities and illustrates this point of view with the presentation of a real case, running for two years in Canada. Keywords-community, social media, philanthropy, virtual, internet, digital tools
I. INTRODUCTION The web provides an opportunity for the organizations to share common interests and more [1]. According to Tapscott and Williams [9], the new economy is indeed based on mass collaboration and collaborative intelligence, especially business networking. The influential study of Voelpel and Han [13] states that a company’s performance is now linked directly to the utilization and share of its knowledge resources. The organizational capacity to be developed will depend on the way that knowledge is produced and circulated. One of the main beneficial approaches to knowledge sharing is thru the development of communities of practice. II.
COMMUNITIES OF PRACTICES
Wenger [14] defines a community of practice as “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”. They assist each others in problem solving, request for information, discuss developments, seeking experience, reuse assets, coordinate and prove synergy. With time their cumulative learning leads to common practices that define the community and improve relationships. These communities are characterized by spontaneity and volunteer basis for participation, and collective responsibility for managing the knowledge they need. The community of practice members communicate regularly with each other and seek to “develop their competencies in considered practice….” and they work for their members by “the construction, exchange and sharing of a common resource repertoire.” [3]. Communities of practice can help increase individual and organizational performance, mainly because they make experts available, suggest common meeting places and offer discussion methods :
Diane Mercier Direction des communications Ville de Montréal Montréal, Canada
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“They considerably improve life at work for the people who have been submerged in too much information. They can be powerful resources consisting of specialists who help make sense of many complicated documents” [5]. A community of practice can be mediated through Internet tools namely e-mails, forums, video conferences, collaborative tools, in order to allow its members to overcome geographical and temporal barriers, all found in social networks websites. What is meant by a social network? According to[7], it is a relationship structure consisting of nodes (organizations or persons) joined by social links (from simple acquaintance to a family link). Among the collaboration work tools should be noted instant messaging, chat, forums, blogs, wikis and real time document editors, calendars, news, bookmarking, storage, discussion lists, etc. There is a list of computer tools expanding the discussion lists to other services such as Google groups in Idealware. In 1967, [8] proposed the theory that, contrary to intuition, anyone could be joined to anyone else by a chain of social relations with six degrees of separation. His theory gave birth to the expression “a small world” to confirm this. According to him social networks are based less on strong links (family) than on weak links (short term, contextual). The second generation of web aims at facilitating communications, interoperability and collaboration on the Web and is characterized by the following elements: improved searching, links, updated content creation, interlinked and collaborative, tags to categorize and thus simplify research. According to [7], social networks capitalize, based on the theory of weak links (6 degrees) that the user manages with a recommendation system, developed repudiation which fits well with referencing linked to work and sponsors; one of its strengths would be to facilitate the attraction of new members whom the software encourages to enter a complete profile. Then the software helps to find people, learn about them and locate them to build links, facilitate collaboration, and share contents. One of these social media is LinkedIn, actually used (as in February 2012) by over 150 millions professionals in the world (4 millions in south Asia) working in hundreds of activities and almost all countries. This online service facilitates the creation
and management of an online personal network, a reputation management tool such as a dialogue between professionals and possibly employers, like its competitors Viadeo and Xing. It is presented as complementary and is more geared towards the profession than the other well-known sites: ”MySpace is the bar, Facebook is the BBQ at the end of the garden and Linkedin is the office,” according to its founder. The main benefits due to its use woul be the following:
increase in productivity by regrouping scattered information facilitation of e the transfer of knowledge sharing of tools and references better learning by sharing values, know-how, social skills and practical elements (tools, methods, processes) innovation(stimulating creativity, bringing forth new ideas,) diminish the location impact and reduce isolation develop organizational and individual capacities
According to [2], social networking would be a good opportunity for organizations in general who wish to extend and consolidate existing informal networks and reinforce relationships between people who already know each other, and encourage and give rapid and consistent feedback. He claims that social sites are the target organizations of non-profit organizations because they allow them to enlarge their communities, reach volunteers and localize their followers. Our project aims at putting into place, by using such social networking, a community of practice, in order to improve charities governance and good management practices, namely increasing competencies in tax compliance. This gave the initial impulsion to the creation of our web-site and group in LinkedIn totally devoted to create a web-community of practice. III.
PHILANTHROPY-QUEBEC: AN EXAMPLE OF A SUCCESSFUL COMMUNITY
Philanthropy-Quebec appeals to Canadian managers by offering a virtual place for sharing to create a real community of practice. These managers are employees, members of boards of directors, and other volunteers in various charity organizations. The values of Philanthropy-Quebec are based on: solidarity, ethics and shared knowledge. The values of the charity organizations of Québec who find a place there for long-term cooperation and with a perspective toward providing a virtual network of mutual aid and the sharing of knowledge on philanthropy. Sharing knowledge is already common practice among well-known multinational companies (Davenport and Voelpel, 2001), but it can be also useful for smaller companies needing to share. The members find on the Website hosting their community of practice several tools as well as group access on the social networks.
Figure 1. Home Page of Philanthropy-Quebec A. Blog Philanthropy-Quebec makes available for its members a bilingual blog, bringing together at least four new articles each week. These articles are written by members of the Philanthropy-Quebec team, talented volunteers and professionals from the world of philanthropy. Readers of the blog are regularly invited to participate if they experience, news, events, etc. to share. B. Newsletter Since September 2011, Philanthropy-Quebec publishes a newsletter which carries the main articles published on their blog. Moreover, the newsletter announces events set up by Philanthropy-Quebec such as: happy hour networking, the promotion of podcasts on important subjects such as fundraising for example. In summary, the newsletter, in the form of a monthly newspaper, provides in condensed fashion news from Quebec’s philanthropic sector. C. Forum Philanthropy-Quebec has established a forum on its Internet site to complete the discussion group, for those who do not know how to use social media but would like to participate in discussions to share their expertise, to dialogue or ask questions to experts, volunteers managers of charity organizations on themes such as fundraising, governance and transparency, and the Income Tax Act. D. Wiki The wiki (a word meaning fast in Hawaiian) of Philanthropy-Quebec is an element of the Website enabling visitors to create or modify a set of definitions linked to good governance, fundraising and fiscal accountability. It involves team work in the writing things, sometimes technical in nature, that are linked to the management of charity organizations. In this way, the community members can add their specific and complementary knowledge to the formal definition, set out by the tax authorities, facilitating all the more understanding for the other members as they use a less legal language.
E. Knowledge base Knowledge management has been demonstrated to be a cornerstone for sustained competitive advantages [10]. The knowledge base of Philanthropy-Quebec gives access to almost 2,000 references, mostly academic or legal, from information published by the government, major law and accounting firms, on the decisions of various court bodies regarding of charity organization taxation. In particular, it enables information on charity organization taxation responsibilities to be found along with a variety of academic publications on the subject of philanthropy. F. Events Calendar Philanthropy-Québec makes an events calendar available to all its members. As a result, each organization can add its event(s) directly on the calendar. This then allows their event to be made known and improves their visibility. G. Survey of the Week The survey of the week is an application put into place to integrated Web users. The survey questions can be on the themes of articles, current affairs, the Internet site users’ opinions, etc. Each Monday, a new survey appears on the homepage. The members can vote and also consult the results of the survey. H. Geopositioning Geopositioning enables very fast location of charity organizations or foundations by showing a geographic map of its position. It is possible to search for a specific organization or even enter a keyword to get a list of those that have activities in common in more than 16,000 organizations in Québec. social networks: The Philanthropy-Quebec community is very active and always growing and wishes to help charity organizations by offering free of charge various services and tools which can be accessed through the main social networks: LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter and Youtube.
Figure 2. Group LinkedIn Home Page Sharing of knowledge and learning: more than 115 discussions are listed under different themes and are commented on by the members. An answer is also given to members by the moderators of Philanthropy-Quebec within 48 hours. Employee and volunteer recruitment: Through careers discussions, the members of Philanthropy-Quebec on LinkedIn can post and consult job offers for free. They can recruit in a targeted manner, since the group consists only of people interested by charity and support the group. Promotion of the organizations: The publicity tab enables managers to post for free events and charity organization publicity. These postings are an excellent way to make their own organization known.
I.
1) LinkedIn LinkedIn is an example of social media and a virtual networking tool appealing to professionals unlike Facebook, which is more for friendly and fun networking. Through LinkedIn users build their professional network and stay in contact with their peers working, like themselves, in charity organizations. The following are among the services offered by LinkedIn: Business networking: This group consists of 900 members including charity organization managers, consultants with charity organizations as clients, people in Québec who are interested in philanthropy. So the Philanthropy-Quebec group is an excellent method for expanding one’s business network in the world of Québec philanthropy.
2) Facebook and Twitter Philanthropy-Quebec uses the social media Facebook and Twitter to communicate with people. Through these networking sites, they keep them updated on current philanthropic events through blog articles, surveys and the tools on the site. On Facebook, Philanthropy-Quebec informs its constituency of current philanthropic events and shares discussions with managers of the charity organizations.The presence of Philanthropy-Quebec on Twitter links it with philanthropists and charity organizations worldwide. 3) YouTube Philanthropy-Quebec is also present on YouTube. Several videos are presented and soon it will also be possible to find podcasts focusing on philanthropy professionals with themes such as fundraising, business volunteers, taxation, etc. The podcasts deal with the following themes: good governance, fundraising, best practices in taxation, etc. Several philanthropic experts took part in creating them.
IV. CONCLUSION According to a six-year study carried out on 70 communities of practice of IBM Global Services certain communities disappear with the passage of time, mainly due to the following factors [6]: The community slides into nothingness because the members leave and there is nobody to take their place. In the last two years, on the contrary the community grew steadily The community is redefined following an identity crisis, a direction change, etc. Charities are expanding in Canada due to immigration increase, illness of an aging population, psychological misery of youth ,etc. The need for such a community will not disappear The community could not merge with another which has similar interests to share resources or one with a more general vocation due to language barrier
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Barriers to implementation must also be alleviated from the inside of the community such as potential unfriendliness to newcomers or information lack of quality [12]. Supporting contributors can also be of great help to tackle urgent requests, supervise local usage and promote the system , as shown in a famous study of the use in China of the of ShareNet system of Siemens, [11].
[7]
The variety of the tools and publicity methods which Philanthropy-Quebec uses shows that it is possible to efficiently assist the members of a community of practice by using tools that are free to the general public. It is thus possible to reach and help them to help each other by sharing knowledge and expertise. The community of practice of Philanthropy-Quebec is always changing, and its impact is growing in the world of philanthropy. Its future depends on the community and its appraisal of the efficiency of the tools made available. Time will tell if this human investment will continue its growth.
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