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The article referred to by FT Liu is excellent www.co-i-l.com/coil/knowledge-garden/cop/knowing.shtml.

The challenges Professor McDermott presents us with are very real. While CoPs may occur naturally in organisations and professions, seeding and cultivating them into existence is a non-trivial problem set. Professor McDermott lays the challenges out very clearly.

The intellectual foundation for the project is the CoP theories of Wenger, where participation in an enterprise is central to creating practical knowledge (in our case, the enterprise is HR). In his 1999 book Communities of Practice, he begins with four premises:

1. “We are social beings. Far from being trivially true, this fact is a central aspect of learning.” Wenger argues this is the most powerful and natural learning of all, which is why he likes Communities of Practice (CoPs); people learn best in the social milieu of fellow practitioners.
2. “Knowledge is a matter of competence with respect to valued enterprises – such as singing in tune, discovering scientific facts, fixing machines, writing poetry, being convivial, growing up as a boy or a girl, and so forth.” We can assume all of our IC CoP members have achieved a high level of competence in practicing HR (the valued enterprise) in their respective organizations. Their competence is a reflection of their knowledge and the purpose of the HR CoPs is to tap into this “tacit” knowledge. ACoP members have also achieved some level of competence in some aspect of the HR enterprise. This means, initial CoP members (seed members) must all be competent in HR and be actively participating in the practice of HR.
3. “Knowing is a matter of participating in the pursuit of such enterprises, that is, of active engagement in the world.” For Wenger, this is the big deal. In our case, each CoP member participates in the enterprise of HR as they deal with the real world day-to-day HR processes and issues of their situation. Thus, their “knowing” comes from constantly dealing with real world HR situations (i.e., “participating” in the practice) in the context of HR constructs such as policy, labor law, employee needs, etc (the “reifications” of the practice). Importantly, Wenger argues that the optimum place for learning is where the CoP members discuss where and how the reifications of the practice (constructs, policies, laws) promote or interfere with the practice of HR. For example, a problem implies an inadequate construct for dealing with something about the HR practice and compels a search for a construct that works.
4. “Meaning – our ability to experience the world and our engagement with it as meaningful – is ultimately what learning is to produce.” In the HR case, the learning in the CoP needs to be meaningful…that is, it is valuable to the CoP members because it helps them do their job better and/or it contributes to profession or country.

Note: In later thinking Wenger describes legitimate peripheral participation as an important way of learning too, but especially as a way to bring newcomers up to speed in the practice or as a source of future CoP members. For example, they may watch from the periphery and never contribute, but still be learning and even end up as an active core CoP member in the future. By lurking from the sidelines they are still participating enough to improve their competence in the practice of HR or they probably wouldn’t be doing it. Further, they are learning how to participate in the CoP they are observing.

• “For individuals, it means that learning is an issue of engaging in and contributing to the practices of their communities.” In our case this means an individual CoP member needs to engage and contribute to optimize personal learning. This implies the design requirements of (a) having engaging topics and (b) creating a social environment when contributions are the norm.
• “For communities, it means that learning is an issue of refining their practice and ensuring new generations of members.” Initially, the community (CoP) will search for a definition of the practice of HR in their industry in Singapore as they (the members) individually and collectively do it. Later the community works to refine the practice with devices such as “best practices” or new or better constructs (reifications). And finally the community recruits new members to continue the work of the community---which is to continue to refine the practice of HR in their industry in Singapore.
• “For organizations, it means that learning is an issue of sustaining the interconnected communities of practice through which an organization knows what it knows and thus is effective and valuable as an organization.” In our case, the organization is WDA/HCS, which has an interest in sustaining HCS CoPs (if they exist) or nurturing them into existence if they don’t. Defining and refining the practice of HR, including documents, allows HCS to know what the profession knows and thus be “effective and valuable as an organization.”