Duguid, Paul

2006-03-24 

Duguid, 2005: CoP theory is inherently a social theory. As such, it is distinct from more individualist accounts of human behavior, such as mainstream economics. Consequently, CoP theory and economics favor different accounts of knowledge. ... this paper challenges economists' attempts to reduce knowledge to information held by individuals and to reject tacit knowledge as mere uncodified explicit knowledge.

Duguid, 2005: ... no text is able to determine the principles of its own interpretation. Or, to put it another way, all are open to multiple interpretations. ... a tacit understanding of the ground rules for interpretation thus plays a role in grounding a particular interpretation of a text - a facet of interpretation that originates outside the text to be interpreted. ... which interpretation is seen as appropriate depends not on the text, but on the nature of the community making the interpretation (Fish, 1994). ... the same knowledge is used in quite different ways in different interpretations among different occupational communities ...  this is not simply a matter of learning to decode a text in the abstract, but of learning to decode from the perspective of that discipline ...

Duguid, 2005: ... membership of the CoP offers form and context as well as content to aspiring practitioners, who need not just to acquire the explicit knowledge of the community but also the identity of a community member. ... thus learning in the sense of becoming a practitioner - which includes acquiring not only codebooks but the ability to decode them appropriately - can be usefully be thought of as learning to be and contrasted to what Bruner (1996) calls "learning about". The former requires knowing how, the art of practice, much of which lies tacit in a CoP. Learning about only requires the accumulation of knowing that, which confers the ability to talk a good game, but not necessarily to play one. ...

Duguig, 2005: ... though practice is not coordinated within a NoP as it is in a CoP, common practices and common tools allow distant members to exchange global know that and to reembed it (Giddens, 1990) in effective, coherent ways through the mediation of their locally acquired knowing how. Consequently, where practice precedes it, explicit knowledge may appear to have global reach (or to be "leaky"). Where it does not, the same knowledge may appear remarkably parochial (or to be "sticky").

Duguid, 2005: Economistic explanations of knowledge diffusion focus on the codification of knowledge (Cohendet & Steinmueller, 2000), access to information (Mokyr, 2002), reduction of transaction costs (Williamson, 1981), and the specification and protection of private interests (Coase, 1988; North, 1981). The practice perspective modifies these assumptions along two distinct dimensions. On the one hand, there are difficulties around what knowledge people can meaningfully share. Such involuntary barriers to sharing might be thought of as epistemic entailments of practice. On the other, there are also difficulties concerning what people will share - not everything has its price. Local communities and even disaggregated networks of practice may simply not want to share, or they may not want to hide what they know. These voluntary constraints on sharing can be thought of as ethical entailments of practice. ... the tacit dimension of a practice's knowledge - knowing how's shaping of propriety, rather than know that's suitability as property - profoundly shapes these entailments. Knowledge, that is, may stick or flow for epistemic and ethical rather than just economic reasons.

Duguid, 2005: epistemic entailments ... division's of labor lead to Hayek's (1945) divisions of knowledge, which create distinct epistemic cultures. Within such cultures, explicit knowledge can travel and remain actionable; between, it usually cannot without difficulty. ... within CoPs or NoPs the potential for flow is high. Shared knowing how, produced by shared practice, creates the possibility of productive sharing of knowing that. But when the practice and knowing how of two communities are different, epistemic barriers develop and productively sharing knowing that becomes much more challenging - even when the different practices lie together within an organization (Benchky, 2003; Carlile, 2002).

Duguid, 2005: ethical commitments ... arguments like Simon's above or Teece's (1986) about "regimes of appropriation" assume that financial incentives will prevent those who have competitive knowledge from sharing it with those outside the regime. Yet people will sometimes share what self-interest predicts they hold secret, and conversely will not share, despite encouragements, when it expects them to reveal. Whether they will or won't share may be determined by the ethical considerations reflecting a community's standards of propriety. ... in all, if we want to understand individual's capacities and motives for sharing knowledge, we need to look not just at the knowledge, but at the communities in which their knowing how was shaped.

Duguid, 2005: ... it is different knowers and their knowing how that turns the same knowledge from sticky to leaky. The ability to read gives any competent users of a language access to knowledge codified in that language. But access to that explicit knowledge does not confer the ability to put it into appropriate use. Tacit knowledge, which confers that ability, is by contrast with the explicit and codified remarkably sticky. ... knowledge paradoxes arise, then, by confusing the dimensions of knowledge by assuming that we can substitute one for the other without problems. Nowhere, perhaps, is this more evident than in the endless problems of "best practice" diffusion. On the one hand, theorists of "best practice" put their finger on the essential point: practice is critical. On the other, they regularly attempt to move a best practice from one community to another by codifying and circulating the explicit knowledge. What, of course, is truly critical is the knowing how embedded in the practice and wrapped around with ethical and epistemic commitments. Without these - and these are admittedly very hard to transfer - the explicit is worth relatively little. ... codification is remarkably powerful, but its power is only released through the corresponding knowing how, which explains now we get to know and learn to do.

Duguid, 2005: ... to recap, the argument proposes a theory of knowledge acquisition rooted not in the epistemological stocks of individual heads, but in the flow of practice within communities. Communities, it holds, have emergent properties that, while they are no doubt the outcome of individual actions, amount to more than the sum of those actions and more than the amortization of transaction costs.

Duguid, 2005: for example, Cohen and Prusak (2001) highlight similarities between CoP and social capital theories. Social capital (SC) theories draw attention to networks of individuals that help to embed economic interactions in social relations (Polanyi, 1957; Granovetter, 1973, 1985). Through social exchanges, people build webs of trust (Fukuyama, 1995; Putnam, 1993, 2000), obligation, reputation, expectations, and norms (Coleman, 1988). In these webs, SC theory suggests, people are willing and able to share knowledge and coordinate action. ... CoP analysis accepts the importance of social capital networks to understanding why people will and will not share. But it makes a distinction between people's willingness to share and their ability to share, suggesting that people have to engage in similar or shared practices to be able to share knowledge about those practices. Thus, where SC theory points unseen links, CoP theory points to unseen boundaries - boundaries shaped by practice - that divide knowledge networks from one another. These boundaries may prevent communication despite all the obligations of good will and social capital that connect them or, indeed, all the incentives of financial capital that may entice them.

Duguid, 2005: ... first, SC theorists' focus on "rational actors" (Coleman, 1988) portrays social groups as little more than "combinations" of individuals (Nahapiet and Ghoshal, 1996). So, while SC analysis encompasses a broad array of social groups, including such things as firms, bowling leagues, housing organizations, and families, the CoP perspective, by contrast, limits itself to communities and networks where practice is coordinated or at least shared. Second, while some SC theorists...view the sharing of knowledge as little more then the exchange of "information that facilitates action" (Coleman, 1988, p. 104) between individuals, and is primarily determined by ties, strong or weak, and good will, CoP theory suggests the challenge of communication is more complex. SC focuses primarily on the circulation of knowledge promoted by what is here called the ethical commitment of the people involved. But, from the point of view of CoP theory, it overlooks the corresponding epistemic commitment.