In my gap-year I worked as a stockroom assistant at Next and after reading this week's lecture notes it is clear that we had a Community of Practice, although I would put the community under the "unrecognized" or "bootlegged" category as we saw ourselves as a group and often went under the radar of management, but while we had the core employed stockroom group of myself, Corinna, Sam and Clare, we had several other members who would come from the shop-floors to help when we had a big delivery, such as Tracey on womenswear, Moira on menswear and Lorraine on Kidswear who were unofficially "part of it".
What it's about
Having built relationships in the stockroom through common interest - both at work and outside work, there were two joint enterprises of the CofP. The first to get the job done on time to the best of our ability, but the other was to get one up on the manager as while everyone knew we did a good job, she would constantly demand more. When we did well, it would be ignored. When we didn't do well, we would be in the office and then we stuck up for ourselves together. We all pulled together to work as effectively as possible.
Sale-time was a perfect example of a joint-enterprise. It was our job to do the tagging of clothes in the stockroom, along with temporary members of staff who would become part of our CofP. Our goal was to get the tagging done by a set time on a set day and we shared tips on how to do things quicker, and teach the new members of staff how to get up to speed quickly.
How it functions
As Wenger states, members are brought together by joining in common activities and by "what they have learned through their mutual engagement in these activities". I was brought into the CofP by finding myself in the stockroom on a temporary basis, learning what to do through mutual engagement which lead to my employment as a stockroom assistant.
New members would be brought into the mix and thrown in at the deep end, learning would be achieved through common activities and not through text-book "training" - although this was meant to be provided. We had the intent of learning together because it made the job easier and if one day one of us was having an off-day, the others would drag that person up. Although we had a list of things to do, we often did work off our own back and ran our stockroom independently together. While there was authority in the form of different pay-bands, we all considered each other equal.
Capability it has produced
While the CofP was active, we learnt how to do things more effectively, came up with routines to make the day run smoothly and had our own CofP characteristics like nicknames for the management that only we knew, for example. The stockroom also knew how to do a lot of things the rest of the store didn't, therefore people depended on us which also gave us a sense of community and belonging in our surroundings.
This CofP has now dispersed - in a few short months, I went to uni and the rest of them got other jobs. The dynamics of the community of practice had changed and it could be argued there wasn't one at all within our replacements as they didn’t work as effectively.
However the capabilities our CofP produced extend to a social level. I still go into Next for a chat with everyone, Clare and I chat on Facebook and Corinna has emerged as one of my closest friends at home. We often reminisce about our days at Next and discuss the latest things going on that we've heard on the grapevine, so our CofP also shares characteristics with the "memorable" stage. Most people who have worked at this Next branch have said you never escape it completely, and I'd say that's very true indeed.
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An interesting choice James. This seems to be a bit of a hybrid CofP? You're absolutely right to highlight the "bootlegged" nature of CsofP (where Wenger & Co started) because that sense of being "against the grain" of the organisation is key. However, your network seems to be an extended official work group rather than a true CofP?
ReplyDeleteA good example of Wenger's early notions was the "sorting out the photocopier" CofP. The joint enterprise is as the group's title suggests. The organisation don't allocate training and roles/remuneration to this problem (maybe some admin staff are responsible for calling out the engineers) but the organisation couldn't function if the engineer had to be called each time. Possibly 'Anne' on the fifth floor is generally known by all those with call-out responsibilities as someone to ask for help before calling engineers. Perhaps Anne contacts Bob in accounts who knows more -and has a friend Chris -who works at his old firm & used to be a copier engineer, and can direct him over his mobile to fix anything that doesn't absolutely need a new part. Maybe Dianne used to be just one of the 'duty-to-call people, but now is the obvious alternative to Anne as a first port of call, because she had the desk next to the photocopier and picked up lots of the knowledge necessary. Further imagine that these people know each other and irregularly swap updates to their knowledge via e-mail. That would be a (loose) CofP in Wenger et al's original formulation.