Knowledge presents us with a number of problems in this kind of context. On the one hand, it is typical that there exists no clear context that facilitates the creation of new knowledge. On the other hand, the bulk of that knowledge is to exclusively found in the head of the professionals who have developed it from their day-to-day practice, and so typically not to be found in any of the usual types of documentary support (mainly paper or electronic file). This lack of record brings about a situation where this knowledge is scattered geographically, having no real structure, and resistant to any kind of documentary treatment. Nor do training plans reach all members of the collective included in that context in the same way. And lastly, derived from all of the above, this knowledge is to be found encapsulated in an almost exclusive way in the persons who possess it, being instantly accessible only in a fragmentary, hardly exhaustive way.
Published in Chapter:
Communities of Practice in Public Administration: The Case of Catalonia’s Government
Mario Pérez-Montoro (University of Barcelona, Spain) and Jesús Martínez (Generalitat de Catalunya, Spain)
Copyright: © 2011
|Pages: 22
DOI: 10.4018/978-1-60566-802-4.ch023
Abstract
Currently, Knowledge Management (KM) is being received very positively by organisations. Nevertheless, there is a particular type of organisation in which there has been less of a general demand for KM: the public organisations. However, in the last three years, a Knowledge Management project, based in communities of practice (CoPs), has been put into practice in the area of the Justice Department in the Catalan government, the Generalitat of Catalunya. The aim of this work is to present a detailed analysis of this project. To achieve this aim, first of all, we are going to introduce the implementation methodology and the results obtained, as well as the success variables involved in this project. This will allow us to offer a guide for implementing CoPs in public administration. Lastly, by way of conclusion, we will provide a series of conclusions and lessons that can easily be applied to the majority of community of practice projects that are implemented in the Public Administration context.