A CASE STUDY OF COMMUNITIES OF PRACTICE AND

ICT TOOLS IN KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT

ON INTERNATIONAL COOPERATION IN SCIENCE AND

TECHNOLOGY RESEARCH

Juan Miguel González-Aranda, Rafael Rodríguez-Clemente

Doñana Biological Station, Spanish Council for Scientific Research-CSIC

Avenida de Mª Luisa S/N Pabellón del Perú, 41013 Seville, Spain

Sebastián Lozano

Department of Industrial Management, University of Seville

ESI, Camino de los Descubrimeintos, s/n, 41092 Seville, Spain

Keywords: Knowledge Management, Communities of Interest, Communities of Practice, Tele-work and Collaboration,

Social Networks and Organizational Culture.

Abstract: This paper discusses how Formal Workgroups within the framework of Coordination Actions projects

funded by the EU Commission within the context of the MEDA and the different Framework Programmes

on Scientific and Technological Research (STR) initiatives, have assisted and nurtured the existing and

emerging Communities of Practice (CoP) in International Cooperation on STR, Development and

Innovation in the Euro-Mediterranean Area. It also illustrates how in some specific cases these CoP are

evolving towards Formal Electronic Networks of Practice (NoP) thanks to the application of specialized

thematic-oriented Knowledge Management (KM) methodologies, by means of the intensive use of new

Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) instruments, mainly based on the adaptation of open

source Content Management Systems (CMS) architectures. Hybrid platforms, specifically based on “mixed”

schemes between LAMP (Linux+Apache+MySQL+PHP) and Plone/Zope (Python programming language

scripting) architectures and technologies are proposed to achieve these ambitious objectives. A case study of

the Euro-Mediterranean Integrated Water Resources Management (EU-MED-IWRM) CoP is presented as

an example of an on-going development.

1 INTRODUCTION

The future creation of the Euro-Mediterranean Free

Trade Area (EU-MEFTA) (scheduled for 2010), the

development of the European Neighbourhood Policy

(ENP) and the activities of the MEDA Programme

that implements the Euro-Mediterranean Partnership

(launched as a consequence of the Barcelona

Declaration, November 28, 1995) have favoured

initiatives financed by the EU Commission which

have characterized the International Cooperation on

Science & Technology Research, Development and

Innovation in the Euro-Mediterranean Area (EU-

MED-STRDI).

This Cooperation has revolved around two main

axes:

• the bilateral cooperation initiatives between the

27 EU Member States (EU-MS) and the so-

called Mediterranean Partner Countries (MPC):

Algeria, Egypt, Israel, Jordan, Lebanon,

Morocco, Palestine, Syria, Tunisia and Turkey

• and the actions funded by the EU by means of

the use of several instruments, mainly the

MEDA Programme (e.g. the EUMEDIS Project

on IST) and the different EU Research

Framework Programmes (FP). The authors

have been actively engaged in applying KM

and ICT tools in several 6

and 7

FP funded

projects aimed at fostering the EU-MPC

cooperation, notably: MELIA, MED7,

ASBIMED and EUROMEDANET 1&2

(Rodríguez-Clemente and González-Aranda,

2007).

415

Miguel González-Aranda J., Rodríguez-Clemente R. and Lozano S. (2008).

A CASE STUDY OF COMMUNITIES OF PRACTICE AND ICT TOOLS IN KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT ON INTERNATIONAL COOPERATION IN

SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY RESEARCH.

In Proceedings of the Fourth International Conference on Web Information Systems and Technologies , pages 415-422

DOI: 10.5220/0001516904150422

 SciTePress

An in-depth analysis of the results of these

initiatives shows that the international cooperation

on EU-MED-STRDI is not a new phenomenon. It

has existed from around the middle of the 20

century or, even, earlier, i.e., when most of the MPC

get their independence from European powers.

These collaborations started from the establishment

of spontaneous STR relationships between both

sides of the Mediterranean Area in the form of

small-sized Communities of Interest (CoI). These

relationships involved groups of individuals

(scientists, technicians, economists, industrialists,

Ph.D students,…) where knowledge sharing occurs

among them as they engage in debate and

discussion of each other’s ideas and results, and

through collaboration on joint research projects,

thus leading to the establishment of the first Formal

Workgroups, a process already studied in general by

Crane (1972). Thus, knowledge and innovations are

shared quickly across organizational, cultural and

national boundaries through these informal

relationships, which are usually reflected into the

form of many publications on specific common

interest topics. This reasoning is based on the

concepts of “reciprocity” in knowledge sharing,

respect for intellectual property rights and common

trust in research (Bouty, 2000; Liebeskind et al,

1996).

The analysis also shows how the role of KM in

these initially informal social networks has changed

due to the new paradigms associated to the

Information Society Technologies (IST) and how the

connection with the new Knowledge-Based

Economy also affects the EU-MED-STRDI

cooperation itself: Past are the times when all the

possible interactions were based on the exchange of

postal letters. Today, ICT tools and KM

methodologies creates a scenario where these social

networks are mainly structured around either CoI or

CoP. These social networks are themselves

reinforced and nurtured by ICT/KM through the

provision of coordination and management

mechanisms, implemented via existing or new

Formal Workgroups (FW), structured as Virtual

Teams by means of Tele-work and collaboration,

(a.k.a. groupware tools). Eventually, these networks

may increase in size and evolve towards the well-

known as Formal Electronic NoP (Brown and

Duguid, 2000; Teigland, 2003).

Recent advances in ICT have also enabled the

creation of computer-supported social networks akin

to CoP, where individuals are able to discuss and

debate issues electronically. The success of CoP for

facilitating knowledge exchange, both electronically

and in face-to-face meetings, has recently pushed

initiatives on how to take advantage of this type of

networks as well as gather their benefits in

workgroups and virtual teams. Note, however, that

CoP are broader than FW and their associated virtual

teams, as they tend to gather all interested parties in

a given domain that have interacted, in a way or

another. Yan and Assimakopoulos. (2003) discusses

this distinction in detail.

2 BACKGROUND AND

THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK

The literature offers several definitions for the

concept of CoP. Wenger et al (2002) define CoP as

follows: Communities of practice are groups of

people who share a concern, a set of problems, or a

passion about a topic, and who deepen their

knowledge and expertise in this area by interacting

in an ongoing basis.

According to the theoretical background

proposed by these authors, a CoP is combination of

three structural elements:

• the DOMAIN of knowledge, which defines the

area of shared inquiry and the set of issues

discussed in the community

• the COMMUNITY, its members, the social

fabric, their motivation, and interactions

• and the PRACTICE, the set of interacting

processes, frameworks, ideas, tools,

information, styles, language, stories and

documents that the community members share.

The DOMAIN is the space of questions that

could interest a number of parties, individuals,

organisations, etc. In this sense, it defines the

universe where different COMMUNITIES are

created, considering a COMMUNITY as the

network formed by the interested parties that have

entered into contact by any means (physical contact,

letters, news in journals, electronic communication,

etc.). The PRACTICE of the COMMUNITY is the

interaction among its members, in such a way that it

could be more or less guaranteed that a member of a

CoP can reach another member by a direct or an

indirect interaction. In a given DOMAIN there can

be several CoP that could expand or merge by

interacting with each other.

The COMMUNITY is subject to an evolution

process and changes itself as time goes by. It is

initiated and develops over time to the current shape

and it is also embedded in a political, environmental,

social and economical context that is always

evolving. There is a mutual interaction between the

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COMMUNITY and its surrounding CONTEXT.

Every CoP has some kind of output, outcome and

impact. Outcomes are the results of a programme or

project relative to its objectives that are generated by

its respective partners’ outputs. Outputs are the

tangible products (goods, services) of a programme

or project. And impacts are the effects, positive and

negative, primary and secondary long-term changes

produced in a community by a programme or

project, directly or indirectly, intended or

unintended. In this sense, it is clear that depending

on this positive and/or negative impact the

sustainability will or will not be guaranteed.

Additionally, there are two key factors:

• the Motivation of its members, visible in their

personal interest and in the priority they

attribute to CoP in their daily activities

• the Mandate of the concerned organisation(s)

defines, on the one side, the thematic focus with

the declared interest of the organisation in a

concrete outcome and, on the other side, the

mandate gives open space for self-commitment

to its members (working time and financial

resources).

Another concept to consider is Legitimate

Peripheral Participation (LPP), which refers to how

newcomers become members and eventually

experienced old timers of a CoP or collaborative

project. According to LPP, newcomers become

members of a community initially by manifesting

their interest and/or participating in minute and

superficial yet productive and necessary tasks that

contribute to the overall goal of the community.

These activities are typically simple and carry low

risk to the community as a whole, but are also

important. It crucially involves participation as a

way of learning —of both absorbing and being

absorbed in—the “culture of practice.” by means of

interacting and developing an “absorptive capacity”

of the new knowledge created and feedbacked again

by the CoP.

An extended period of LPP provides learners

with opportunities to make the culture of practice

theirs (Lave and Wenger, 1991).

CoP can be initially classified in 2 groups:

• Internal CoP: defined entirely within a single

organization

• and CoP in Network Organizations: A network

organization is a relationship among

independent organizations (Powell, 1990).

We will focus our analysis on the latter. Member

organizations in a network work in close and

continuous cooperation on projects or processes

involving partnerships, common products and/or

services, and possibly sharing a common strategy. In

solving problems in today’s environment, it is

becoming increasingly important to cross

boundaries, either within the organization or to

external organizations for fresh insights. Learning

and knowledge exchange through networks focuses

on the inter-organizational network as a resource

generator to enhance learning. Simultaneously, the

concept of NoP (Brown and Duguid, 2000;

Teigland, 2003) has emerged as a means to describe

informal, emergent social networks that facilitate

learning and knowledge sharing among individuals

conducting practice-related tasks. Brown & Duguid

(2000) argue that CoP are a localized and

specialized subset of NoP, typically consisting of

strong ties linking individuals engaged in a shared

practice, typically face-to-face and who usually

coordinate through third-party new ICT instruments

(e.g. internet-based groupware tools). In Electronic

NoP, the essential communication channel of

asynchronous computer-mediated communication

has a profound influence on how knowledge is

actually shared. In this respect, inter-organizational

CoP are close to NoP. A NoP is an open activity

system focused on work practice, and it may exist

primarily through electronic communication. It is a

type of CoP in which there is a social space where

individuals working on similar problems help each

other and share perspectives about their practice.

However, in a NoP, people working within

occupations or having similar interests engage in

knowledge exchange about the problems and issues

that are common to their occupational community

and shared practice.

In turn, NoP can be classified into:

• Self-organizing NoP: a loosely organized and

informal network that has no central

management authority or sponsor, whose

membership is voluntary, and where there is

little explicit commitment

• and “Formal” NoP: those which have a

membership that is controlled by fees and/or

acceptance through some central coordination

authority, usually based on a FW structure

(Programme, Project, etc) that also assists in

organizing, facilitating and supporting member

communications, events, and discussion topics.

However, a NoP has a focus on specific work

issues and strategies of immediate importance to the

membership, and it may in fact become an adjunct to

an affinity network. An example of an affinity

network is purchasing managers, members of an

association who may form NoP where they

communicate on a regular basis on strategies,

practices, opportunities, and innovations. Therefore,

the frame of a CoP or, even, a NoP can give rise to a

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FW when an structure, means, and deliverables are

foreseen. On the other hand, a FW can assist to

support the evolution of existing CoP, which, in

some specific cases, evolve towards Formal

Electronic NoP. A real-world example of how that

can be done is presented in the next section.

3 THE EU-MED-IWRM COP

There exists a general perception that water

management models in the Mediterranean Countries

are still constructed from points of view that ignore

contributions from all the key stake-holders

(specially users and citizens), who are determinant

for the impact on the territory of water schemes and

the satisfaction of the water demand, specially from

the sustainability point of view and taking into

account the social, economic, environmental and

institutional dimensions. In this section, the process

and methodology that allow moving from FW

initiatives to Electronic NoP is illustrated with a

specific case study, namely the EU-MED-IWRM

CoP.

3.1 The MELIA Coordination Action

Project

Research in this topic (i.e. DOMAIN) is of common

interest of the EU and its MPC in view of the

economic integration of both sides of the

Mediterranean area, the risks associated to the

climatic change and the increase in frequency of

water risks events (such as droughts or floods).

Another general perception in the Mediterranean

area is the lack of visibility of the important role that

Science and Technology play in the sustainable

development of the region. Part of these problems

are due to communication gaps between political

and administrative institutions, scientists, cultural

workers, lawyers, economists, end-users and

citizens, who, following the theoretical framework

provided in the last section, make up the EU-MED-

IWRM COMMUNITY. Within this COMMUNITY,

there exist many individuals who have been actively

involved in past and ongoing initiatives, mainly in

form of Projects supported by the European

Commission through different Framework

Programmes or other Cooperation instruments:

WASAMED, FOGGARA, WADAMED, MED-

REUNET, SED-Net DESURVEY, WADI, MELIA,

SEMIDE-EMWIS, EU-MEDA-WATER, MED-

EUWI, EU-MEDSTAT-ENV, REMOC-INBO, etc,

and whose targeted objectives should be

disseminated by using appropriate instruments,

language and contents based on the DOMAIN

dealing with IWRM in the Mediterranean Area.

The MELIA (Mediterranean Dialogue on

Integrated Water Management) Coordination Action

(CA), was officially launched in September 2006 as

a strategic EU Commission funded FP6-INCO-MPC

project. Its aim is to establish an open dialogue

between experts from both sides of the

Mediterranean and among the key stakeholders

concerned and affected by water use and

management, that is, to strength the interactions,

PRACTICE, between the EU-MED-IWRM

COMMUNITY.

Some of the main goals of the MELIA

Coordination Action are:

• Building a knowledge base for IWRM planning,

based on integrating contributions from

different perspectives, involving the wide

spectrum of stakeholders and based on the EU

Water Framework Directive.

• Develop a Mediterranean-wide awareness of the

social (cultural and participatory), economic and

technological issues related to water

management.

• Propose participatory mechanisms and

prevention tools to avoid competition in

resources allocation between regions states and

different waters users.

• Provide legislative and administrative bodies

with criteria and arguments agreed in a

consensual way by a wide representation of

social, economic, scientific and political actors

from different countries, to support sustainable

water policies and economy.

• Provide the intellectual basis and the indicators

to perform a benchmarking exercise of

Integrated Water resources management in the

Mediterranean area.

• Contribute to the construction of a common

frame and knowledge, and to the development

of a common terminology and semantic and

help water negotiations.

On the other hand, the opening of MELIA to

interested people by the dissemination of the results

obtained, will be the most relevant and appreciable

output, namely: extending the CoP within the EU-

MED-IWRM COMMUNITY. This purpose needs a

wide communication strategy, addressed to all those

stakeholders involved in water use who set up the

EU-MED-IWRM CoP, in rising awareness at the

educational level, in research, administration and,

specially, policy making.

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Figure 1: MELIA CA Governance structure and WP.

Initially, a scheme based on Vertical and

Horizontal Work Packages (WP) (see Figure 1) was

proposed to tackle the complex DOMAIN and its

relationship with the MELIA CA Governance. An

important question for internationally distributed

CoP is the degree of centralization or

decentralization. Who has responsibility, and how

much? Should there be a secretariat? Should there be

regional sub networks? There is no blueprint for the

ideal network structure and the governance

structures. Nevertheless, some core elements can be

found in every network. At the top of many CA are

some well-reputed chairpersons, who have a

strategic role. A steering committee and a

management board occupy a more active role, being

responsible for strategic questions and operational

planning. An initial MELIA Consortium (CORE

GROUP) (see Figure 2) was set up with 45 partners

representing 16 countries from both the EU (Italy,

Spain, Cyprus, Greece, Belgium, Malta, Austria) and

the MPC (Turkey, Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia,

Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Palestine) and

belonging to different categories.

The wide range of categories involved in

MELIA and the governmental and

intergovernmental status of some partners will help

to obtain concrete results and will be effective

advising those responsible about problems related to

water management in the territory. The

interdisciplinary of the MELIA CoP COMMUNITY

also led to many critical reflections and kept the

discussions lively. Moreover, the general Public

should participate in these debates in order to avoid

lack of concern or, worse, the loss of opportunities

to reach a sustainable management of water with the

complicity and participation of ALL users, including

the common citizens. Raising awareness of the

competing demands of water, and the conflicts

related to this issue is one of the targets of MELIA.

Figure 2: MELIA CA CORE GROUP.

This reasoning fits the LPP model described

above, where MELIA CA assists newcomers to join

and learn into the Mediterranean IWRM CoP. In any

case, a basic prerequisite for a successful CoP is

common interest among its Members. People will

only share knowledge if they think that all parties

will obtain benefits. Trust in the partners is a basic

value, and has to be maintained again and again

through intensive communication and shared

experiences (Ahuja et al, 2003; Ardichvili et al,

2003;Govindarajan and Gupta, 2001).

3.2 The MELIA Knowledge

Management Strategy

Based on the existing feedback between the defined

Work Packages, it is necessary to define a KM

Methodology. Managing information within

networks, produces a continuous organizational

process in which knowledge is generated, adapted

and shared, and transferred to water sector target

groups and partners. Information management

allows MELIA CA to explicitly enable and enhance

the productivity of these activities and to leverage

their value for the group as well as for individual

members. This KM Methodology foreseen into the

MELIA CA will assist specific knowledge functions

and link them with institutions or individuals outside

the network, thus expanding the CoP. The cycle of

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information management and knowledge creation

will be organized in a way that the following cycle

of functions is ensured: (1) Establishment of the

information base; (2) Adaptation of information and

sharing within the network; (3) Transfer of the

information to target groups (water users, managers,

IWRM implementers); (4) Generation – or better –

consolidation of common knowledge (local and

global levels).

The essential outcomes of information

management, knowledge generation and transfer,

will be to provide innovative strategies for relevant

stakeholders, such as the Directors of Water and the

Ministries of EU and

MED Countries, and, on the other hand, to raise

public participation and awareness. Their level of

impact is in direct relation with their level of activity

and operation.

4 MELIA CA ICT PLATFORM

Figure 3 shows the visible face of the MELIA CA

Platform, which consists of a Groupware web-based

portal (http://www.meliaproject.eu). This type of

user interface can be considered as a common, well-

understood and friendly paradigm. Its Extranet

platform is based on “hybrid-mixed” schemes

between LAMP (Linux+Apache+MySQL+PHP) and

Plone/Zope architectures, where specific PHP and

Python programming language scripts were designed

and implemented, providing a series of tools:

• synchronous tools (web conferencing, chats,…)

• asynchronous tools (fora, external editors, both

very useful in the scientific context for the

exchange of common ideas and publications

collaborations, etc.)

Given the large amount of actors involved (45

partners in the MELIA CA case), using just the

traditional mechanisms of interaction, mainly based

on the exchange of emails, would be inefficient and

practically unmanageable. One of the main

distinctive features is the Virtual Teams design,

which aims at a symbiosis of physical and virtual

work environments. There exists a simple premise:

one Work Group per WP and one Virtual Team per

Work Group. In order to get a feeling of the working

of the Platform, Figure 4 shows the internal folders

structure of one of the WP, namely WP0:

Coordination and Management.

4.1 Platform Members’ Role scheme

Each WP follows the following Role-oriented

scheme.

• General Public: They are not registered into the

system and they have only Read permission to the

contents that have been published (“Public

content state”).

Figure 3: MELIA CA web Platform.

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Figure 4: Folder structure of WP0: Coordination and Management.

• Intranet Members: Members who are registered

into the system. They have a login and password

to access into the Intranet. There are two types:

• WP members: At least, an Intranet

member belongs to one WP. WP

members have at their disposal interactive

tools to add new contents: files, folders,

links, HTML web-pages; etc. they can

work collaboratively on these contents

(using external editors,…) and interact

among them (Fora and P2P tools).

• WP Leaders and Deputy Leaders: They are WP

members who assume the role of activity

coordinators within the WP. They are

“Reviewers” of the KM products generated into

their WP, and they decide if they can be

published or not. They have the responsibility of

giving visibility of the contents to the General

Public, allowing them to be indexed by the

search engines in Internet, etc…

• Manager: This is a role only reserved to the

MELIA Coordinator and the Webmaster.

4.2 Contents Workflow and Members’

Role Scheme

The Role-oriented scheme used is complemented

with a Contents Workflow, with its corresponding

states and transitions. This Workflow assists the

users to upload, submit for reviewing and, if

approved by the WP Leaders/Deputy Leaders

(acting as KM WP Managers), publish new contents.

In a first phase, an initial Knowledge Base

Taxonomy was implemented, structured through:

• One Thematic Area Library corresponding to each

Thematic WP

• One Library for each MPC.

• One Library for each EU-MS

In order to compile a single final EU-MED

Knowledge Base on IWRM, semantic-oriented

mechanisms are necessary for using the Platform. In

this sense, some OWL Web Ontology Language

instances have been designed. They are mainly

based on the key terms of reference suggested by the

IWRM experts within each WP. Presently they are

running as Beta prototypes.

All these features are complemented by the

users’ personal areas, where users can configure

their profiles, shared activities, consult their tasks

and deliverables “smart” calendar, etc.

5 CONCLUSIONS

This paper presents MELIA CA as a FW initiative

created within and aiming to assist the Euro-

Mediterranean IWRM CoP, to uncouple its work

environment from physical locations. MELIA Work

groups offer team members intuitive and ubiquitous

access to each other, and to information and

resources of their Virtual Work Teams and their own

tools. It is observed in some cases an evolution

towards a Virtual Electronic NoP model.

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Despite these technological developments,

‘human factors’ should not be neglected in an

increasing virtual environment. Useful as they are,

ICTs cannot fully replace face-to-face contacts and

more conventional means of communication

(telephone). Many people are yet unfamiliar with

these new developments. In fact, it has taken around

one year to expand the use of the MELIA CA

Platform to acceptable levels. Additionally, the costs

associated to the displacements (travels and

accommodations) justify the creation of this type of

supporting Coordination Action structures which,

assisted by Tele-work and Collaboration tools based

on these Virtual Teams schemes, provide essential

instruments to the sustainability of these Euro-

Mediterranean RDI social networks.

The ongoing success and the experience

acquired during the course of the MELIA CA

Project has led to the application of the same

adapted ICT tools in the MIRA “Mediterranean

Innovation and Research” CA Project

(http://www.miraproject.eu). Necessary research and

continuous innovation on the new technological

trends (i.e., research on the Web 2.0 requirements,

essentially focused on the semantic web

mechanisms, (OWL)) as well as their development

is guaranteed during the next years in order to

nurture these types of social networks.

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From Knowledge to Action “Water for Life”

http://ec.europa.eu/research/water-initiative/index_en.html

MED 7 Project “Thematic Workshops for the definition of

the Science and Technology Euro-Mediterranean

Policy within FP7”. Funded by the European Union

6th Framework Programme FP6-2002-INCO-

COMultilatRTD/SSA-5 http://www.asbimed.net/MED7/

home.htm

MELIA Coordination Action Project official website

http://www.meliaproject.eu

MIRA Coordination Action Project official website

http://www.miraproject.eu

OWL Web Ontology Language W3C Recommendation

(Overview)

http://www.w3.org/tr/owl-features/

Php programming language (http://www.php.net/)

Plone CMS (http://plone.org/)

Python programming language (http://python.org)

Zope CMS (http://www.zope.org)

WEBIST 2008 - International Conference on Web Information Systems and Technologies

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