1
Knowledge Creation in Cross-Border and Cross-Sectoral
Collaborations
Exploring EU Externally Funded Security Research and Innovation Projects
as Communities of Practice
Elisa Norvanto
Research and Development Unit, Laurea University of Applied Sciences, Finland
Keywords: Community of Practice, Explicit and Tacit Knowledge, EU Externally Funded Research Projects,
Exploratory Case Study, Knowledge Creation, Knowledge Management, Knowledge Transfer, Qualitative
Research, Security.
Abstract: The purpose of this paper is to explore how knowledge creation in EU externally funded security Research
and Innovation (R&I) projects can be understood through the concept of community of practice (CoP). A
multiple case study design was used to examine EU R&I projects with the Wenger’s identity-practice
framework that characterizes conventional CoPs. Qualitative data analysis was conducted based on rich
empirical data collected during June 2015 July 2017. The results of the study suggested that the EU R&I
project consortium is a knowledge community in its own right, which knowledge creation cannot be fully
understood if analysed as traditional project organizations. CoP framework can provide a meaningful way to
investigate how explicit and tacit knowledge is created and shared within a project consortium and across
different consortiums. Namely the engagement in different phases of the work undertaken by the project
consortium can help to understand how the socialization facilitates knowledge creation and transfers, as well
as identity development as the project evolves. As a whole, CoP theory can provide new insight in the
knowledge creation in cross-border and cross-sectoral collaborations. It can provide a meaningful way to
explore how the knowledge is emerged through a practice in project consortiums before, during, and after
the projects.
1 INTRODUCTION
This study seeks to answer the question ‘how
knowledge creation in EU externally funded security
Research and Innovation (R&I) projects can be
understood through the concept of community of
practice?The main contribution of this paper is to
provide new insight to the debate on knowledge
creation in cross-sectoral and cross-border
collaboration endeavours, such as those of EU R&I
projects.
Knowledge is increasingly being highlighted in
the literature as the key source of competitive
advantage for organizations (Garavan and Carbery,
2007) or commodity (Drucker, 1993; Kenwey et al.,
2006), which needs to be managed (Munro, 2005).
Due to the advancements in technology and
international economic integration, the activities of
an organization are no longer tied up to a certain
geographical location, and the ability to capture and
create knowledge has become a central feature (Daft
et al., 2014). In this ‘network society’ many of the
traditional hierarchical forms of organization are
breaking down, the organizations are increasingly
coming to resemble networks rather than hierarchies
emphasizing also the role of social relationships
within and between the organizations (Castells,
1996). Consequently, the organizations have sought
to employ techniques to map knowledge and control
the flow of information across the organizational
borders leading to increased interest towards
knowledge protection (e.g. Intellectual Property
Rights) and knowledge management strategies
(Munro, 2005). At the same time, there is an
emerging view of knowledge as an intellectual
common, which is open for general use as a public
good (Hardt and Negri, 2000; Polster, 2001). There
are several examples of emerge of these intellectual
commons, such as Free Online Universities, and EU
Funded Projects. Common to these initiatives is that
instead of trying to define, defend and regulate
Norvanto E.
Knowledge Creation in Cross-Border and Cross-Sectoral Collaborations - Exploring EU Externally Funded Security Research and Innovation Projects as Communities of Practice.
DOI: 10.5220/0006585900700082
In Proceedings of the 9th International Joint Conference on Knowledge Discovery, Knowledge Engineering and Knowledge Management (KMIS 2017), pages 70-82
ISBN: 978-989-758-273-8
Copyright
c
2017 by SCITEPRESS Science and Technology Publications, Lda. All rights reserved
knowledge they seek to take the advantage of
information economy and focus on knowledge
management strategies that foster knowledge
production and creation (Hardt and Negri, 2000).
Ability to learn, and create new knowledge has
become central for the productivity and
effectiveness of contemporary organizations (Daft et
al., 2014).
There is a number of knowledge communities
where knowledge transfers and mutual learning can
take place, such as knowledge networks, virtual
teams or multidisciplinary project teams (Kietzman
et al., 2013). In addition, the EU externally funded
R&I projects have been increasingly recognized as
important vehicles for cross-sectoral and
multidisciplinary collaboration and knowledge
exchange. All these communities can provide a
meaningful way to facilitate knowledge creation by
enabling individuals to share knowledge and
information around a certain problem or area of
interest. However, the inherent challenge of these
communities is related to encouraging the
knowledge exchange to take place, and codifying the
knowledge creation and transfer process.
In knowledge management literature the notion
of practice has become central (Gheradi, 2000;
Newell and Galliers, 2006) in explaining how
knowledge is shared and created in an organization.
According to Newell and Galliers (2006) knowledge
is not a resource that can simply be transferred but
as emergent from recurrent interaction among
people in the context of established routines and
procedures or practice. The idea of learning through
practice is also inherently rooted to Lave and
Wenger’s, concept of ‘Community of Practice’
highlighting that knowledge is created through
active participation in communities (Lave and
Wenger, 1991). In these communities relationships
are built, experiences are shared, new knowledge is
created, and problems are solved through social
interactions between community members (Brown
and Duguid, 1991, 1998, 2001; Wenger, 1998; 1999,
2000).
The EU Framework 7 and H2020 programmes
contribute to solving complex societal challenges
and create new innovations through funding cross-
border and cross-sectoral research and innovation
activities. The distinct feature of EU Funded R&I
project consortiums is that they function in cross-
sectoral and cross-border form. As the key purpose
of the EU R&I projects is to innovate new solutions,
exploring the knowledge creation practices in EU
externally funded projects became paramount for
better understanding the effectiveness of such
endeavors to innovate new solutions. Despite the
strong emphasis in striving for innovations, the
knowledge creation in cross-national and cross-
sectoral project consortiums has remained rather
unstudied. Since EU R&I programme is the key
instrument for implementing the European
Innovation Union (European Commission, 2017)
there is an increasing need to understand how these
consortiums function, how the individuals are bind
together, and what are the implications to
knowledge creations and transfers as the individuals
participate in the EU R&I project consortiums. Thus,
the purpose of this paper is to provide further insight
to these issues by borrowing from the theory of
community of practice (CoP) (Lave and Wenger,
1991) to explore the knowledge creation of EU
externally funded security related R&I projects.
Multiple case study design was used and data was
collected from four EU R&I security project
consortiums. The key argument of this study is that
although the EU R&I project consortiums share
many of the characteristics of multidisciplinary
project teams, from the knowledge creation
perspective they should be viewed more as
communities.
2 THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK
A growing body of literature (Boland and Tenkasi,
1995; Engeström 1999; Wenger et al 2002;
Blackmore, 2010) promotes a view of socially-
constructed, collective knowledge as the
predominant source of learning, creativity and
innovation. This social-constructivist view to
knowledge creation highlights the role of social
interaction as the primary mean to acquire and
transfer knowledge (Jaleel and Verghis, 2015).
Within knowledge creation theories two types of
knowledge are usually defined; explicit and tacit
knowledge (Nonaka, 1994; Brown and Duguid
1998; Cook and Davenport and Prusak, 1998;
Wellman, 2009; Chung, 2015). Nonaka and
Takeuchi (1995) proposed a dynamic model of
knowledge creation, which is anchored on the
critical assumption that human knowledge is created
and expanded through a social interaction between
tacit and explicit knowledge (Nonaka 1994, Nonaka
and Takeuchi 1995). The alternative view to
knowledge creation suggests that tacit knowledge
cannot be converted into explicit knowledge, yet it
can be transferred between people for example by
means of mentoring and apprenticeships (Davenport
and Prusak, 1998, 72). In both views the explicit
knowledge refers to codified knowledge that can be
expressed in words, sentences, numbers or formulas
which are context free. It may include theoretical
approaches, problem solving, manuals and
databases. Such knowledge is rather easy to transfer
through different knowledge artefacts, such as
reports and videos. Tacit knowledge is subjective
and is experience based knowledge that cannot be
easily expressed in words, sentences, numbers or
formulas. It also includes cognitive skills such as
beliefs, images, intuition and mental models as well
as technical skills such as know-how and language
skills. (Nonaka and Takeuchi, 1995.) Because of
this, tacit knowledge is often context dependent and
personal in nature. It is hard to communicate and
deeply rooted in action, commitment, and
involvement (Nonaka 1994). Tacit knowledge is
transferred though socialization, engagement in
sharing and creating knowledge through direct
experience.
There is a broad agreement among scholars that
knowledge creation is in the heart of an innovation.
(Quintane et al. 2011; Popadiuk and Choo 2006;
Lam 2006; Swan et al. 1999; Obeso and Luengo-
Valderrey, 2016).Tacit knowledge is regarded as
being the most valuable source of knowledge, which
most likely leads to new innovations in the
organization (Wellman, 2009; Obeso and Luengo-
Valderrey, 2016). Consequently, Gamble and
Blackwell (2001) link the lack of focus on tacit
knowledge directly to the reduced capability for
innovation and sustained competitiveness.
Nevertheless, due to the difficulties to manage and
control tacit knowledge many of the organizations
are concerned with explicit knowledge or those
aspects of knowledge that can be made explicit.
That is portrayed in their knowledge management
strategies that seek to effectively map, locate and
transfer the knowledge (Munro, 2005). According
to Cook and Brown (1999) rather than trying to
codify and transfer the tacit knowledge into explicit,
the focus should be on knowledge creation process
(process of knowing) (Munro, 2005, 55). Innovation
is not primarily a matter of rational problem solving,
but of creating the terms in which a problem is
expressed (Munro, 2005, 61). Hence, knowledge
creation is not only about mapping the knowledge,
but it is also a process of posing problems. Common
to the different views on knowledge creation is that
they highlight the importance of social interaction to
capture and transfer of tacit knowledge.
Consequently, to foster innovations, knowledge
communities have emerged as a key domain in the
realm of knowledge creation.
Theory and evidence suggest that knowledge
creation and sharing are processes that involve
often spontaneously formed groups of individuals
(Corso et al., 2008). Among the different types of
informal networks, communities of practice (CoP)
seem to be the most interesting from a knowledge
creation point of view. The idea of communities of
practice is that learning occurs in social contexts that
emerge and evolve when people who have common
goals interact as they strive towards those goals
(Wenger, 1998). Original research in CoPs has
focused on communities in which members are
collocated and face-to-face communication is the
primary form of interaction (Brown and Duguid,
1991; Lave and Wenger, 1991; Wenger, 1998).
However, as organizations become increasingly
geographically distributed, there has been a demand
on expanding the scope of the concept.
Consequently, also governmental and international
organizations are increasingly interested in
understanding how knowledge creation can be
effectively facilitated in different communities:
online teams, professional groups, multilateral
collaborations, and development projects. The CoPs
are increasingly studied in different contexts (Laxton
and Applebee, 2010; Vuorisalo, 2012, Obeso and
Luengo-Valderrey, 2016).
Anthropologist Etienne Wenger can be
considered as the founding father of the CoP
concept, who defined the CoP as a group of people
who share a set of activities and who interact to
achieve shared objectives and to maintain their
community(Lave and Wenger, 1991). According to
Wenger (1998, 1999) CoPs enhance in sharing and
transferring tacit knowledge by individuals and
groups and also provide organizations with
innovation as community members improve their
practice through the continuous creation of
knowledge. Unlike an organization, which has well-
defined bureaucratic structures, a CoP is often an
informal network of people who share expertise and
knowledge and who develop a shared identity
around a topic or set of challenges. Consequently, a
CoP focuses on a specific domain and its members
develop their practice by communicating the
problem and discussing on the possible solutions
collectively (Wenger et al. 2011).
Wenger (1998) identifies three common
characteristics, which differentiate CoPs from other
knowledge communities. These three characteristics
are: (1) Domain, the area of interest or domain of
knowledge, which defines a set of issues, creates a
common ground and a sense of common identity;
(2) Community, the space, where a group of people
who interact, learn together, build relationships and
through this develop a sense of membership and
reciprocal commitment; and (3) Practice, the shared
repertory of competencies and common resources
(i.e. routines, symbols and language) that members
have developed and with that they can be effective
in their domain. There is an increasing consensus
that the best way to improve organizational learning
is not to focus on capturing, codifying and
documenting knowledge of individuals, but rather to
concentrate on ways, through which knowledge can
be shared, discussed and applied in innovations
(Mittendorff et al. 2006). Hence, understanding the
practices how individuals engage in such
communities is central for knowledge creation to
take place. According to Wenger (1998), how
practice is shaped in a community and how practice
shapes a community are reflected along three
dimensions: (1) Mutual engagement; describes how
community members interact with each other in
practice; (2) Joint enterprise; embodies the shared
interest of community members and the goal of the
community as a whole, and symbolizes what the
community is about; and (3) Shared repertoire;
consists of routines, words, ways of doing things,
stories, gestures, symbols, genres, actions, or
concepts that the community has produced or
adopted in the course of its existence, and which
have become part of its practice. According to Lave
and Wenger (1991) a shared repertoire reifies the
history of a community’s past engagement, which in
turn, can help community members participate in
future practice. As a whole, a community of practice
involves, thus, much more than technical knowledge
or skills associated with undertaking some task.
Members are involved in a set of relationships over
time and communities develop around things that
matter to people (Wenger, 1998, Wenger et al.,
2011).
In addition to practice, Wenger highlights the
centrality of ‘identity’ for the community to unfold.
He argues that the formation of member identities is
embedded in practice. This means that communities
develop a collective identity that becomes part of the
identities of its members. Through learning,
community members negotiate new practices based
on past and present practice, diffusing and
accumulating knowledge and reproducing and
reshaping their identities. They reshape current
practice to new forms, and they themselves create
new identities during the process (Brown and
Duguid, 1998, 2001; Lave and Wenger, 1991).
Consequently, the strength of CoPs in handling
knowledge can be understood through the evolution
of practice and identity which result from a ‘‘shared
history of learning’’ (Wenger, 1998, 86). In these
ways, CoPs provide an effective environment for not
only knowledge sharing, but also knowledge
creation for all members (Brown and Duguid, 1998,
2001; Lave and Wenger, 1991). CoPs function as
information exchange and interpretation nodes,
knowledge retainers thereby offering an effective
platform for transfer of tacit knowledge across the
organizations boundaries (Wenger, 1998). They can
provide a meaningful way to facilitate and capture
the process of knowledge creation.
The studies of knowledge creation have
highlighted the significant role of collaboration in
creating new knowledge (Fong, 2003). Project teams
and task forces are good examples of collaborations.
Structure and knowledge creation in
multidisciplinary project teams has been widely
studied (Senge, 1990; Nonaka, 1994; Nonaka and
Takeuchi, 1995; Nonaka and Konno, 1998;
McDermott, 1999; Kietzman et al., 2013; Shiko et
al., 2015). According to McDermott (1999)
characteristic for project teams is that they are held
together by a certain task, driven by deliverables,
milestones and results. In addition, a project team
typically has designated members who remain
unchanged throughout the project. Finally, a project
team is dissolved once its mission is accomplished.
The other forms of multidisciplinary
collaboration, such as the EU R&I project
consortiums fulfill many of the characteristics of
traditional project teams to great extent ((e.g. formal
structure, task orientation, and bind with a certain
timeframe) Kietzman et al., 2013), they also inherent
elements that would suggest their function to differ
from traditional multidisciplinary project teams. For
example, EU R&I consortiums function in cross-
sectoral and cross-border manner. They have been
designed to encourage practitioners, governmental
institutions, research agencies, non-governmental
organizations and Small and Medium Sized
enterprises (SMEs) to share knowledge across the
organizational and national borders without a clear
structure. In addition, the project consortiums are
formed around a common area of interest rather than
certain task or function. Finally, the individuals
involved in the work of the project consortium often
continue the collaboration in new forms even after
the project has been accomplished (Pirinen, 2017).
As a whole, knowledge creation in EU R&I
project consortiums seem to be rather unstudied. The
most relevant studies related to the topic can be seen
as work of Doctor Pirinen (2015, 2017). He
addressed Knowledge Sources and Transfers and
Learning in EU R&D projects by studying externally
funded R&D projects and their integration into
higher education functions. In his works, Pirinen
outlined the implication of integrated R&D projects
to knowledge creation demonstrating that
international research consortiums can be as
steering forums for higher education and knowledge
sharing through this challenging and integrative
way (Pirinen, 2015, 328). Furthermore, Pirinen
argues that the creativity and innovation related
knowledge is produced in kind of knowledge-
creating communities, such as research consortium
and teaching community in universities and within
teacher teams with participators from the working
life.” Pirinen (2017) refers to these communities as
‘network-based communities’ that work and learn
collaboratively, and which establish a common
interest, objective, dignity and commitment with a
focus on knowledge objects and artefacts. These
works provide a point of reference to argue that the
EU R&I project consortiums rather than
representing traditional project teams, should be
further explored as knowledge communities which
bring together individuals across organizational and
national borders to share and create knowledge
around the common area of interest.
3 METHODOLOGY
The data collection of this study was cumulative,
and it was systematically used for a qualitative
analysis between May 2015 and July 2017. The data
was collected according to externally funded
security related R&I projects (n = 4) at Laurea
University of Applied Sciences (UAS) which were
analyzed as cross-cases. The case study approach
allowed the researcher to explore practices (social
interactions) and community (identity artifacts) in its
natural environment, thus allowing for exploring the
knowledge creation in the context of EU externally
funded security-research R&I projects (Gall et al.,
1996).
Since the knowledge creation in international EU
R&I project consortiums has not been previously
studied from a CoPs perspective, exploratory case
study design provided an appropriate way to
generate further research questions and new
information about the topic in question (Yin, 2012).
An exploratory case study can be used to discover
theory or identify further research questions for
future study by directly observing a social
phenomenon in its natural context (Yin, 2012;
Corbin and Strauss, 1990).
Case study design enabled to use several data
collection methods and sources. In-line with case
study approach (Yin, 1994) the primary data used in
this study was collected through unstructured
informal conversations; documentation about the
projects analyzed collected during observations and
participation to the project-related events, work-
shops and face-to-face and online meetings (n=52);
reviews of project-related documents including the
management data (n=4); project output
documentation, such as minutes of the meetings,
reports, slideshows, and e-mail exchanges; online
tracking of the project’s activities such as Social
media postings, discussion platforms. Characteristic
for the exploratory case study approach, the data
collection was taking place already before the
research questions were formulated.
Qualitative content analysis across multiple cases
was used to explore the practices (social interaction)
and community (identity artefacts) in EU R&I
project consortiums. Deductive and inductive
reasoning was applied to explore how the EU R&I
project consortiums could be understood through
community Wenger’s practice-and-identity
framework of CoPs (Wenger, 1998). The framework
was used to categorise rich data and inductive
reasoning was applied to explore the patterns
emerging from data. The data collection and analysis
stages in this study were undertaken concurrently
(Hartley, 1994). Development of the categories was
grounded in the original data by revisiting the
previous stages of analysis before proceeding
further.
Yin (1994) emphasized that multiple cases
strengthen the results by replicating the patterns
thereby increasing the robustness and providing
external validation to the findings. Within this
multiple case study, data was gathered to generate
findings that in principle were likely to be similar.
Therefore the cases within this research generally
reflect a literal logic, strengthening the findings
compared to a single case study. In addition, data
triangulation (as described above) was used to
increase validity of the study. (Shih, 1998).
Empirical data used in this study was collected
from the following four (4) cases.
Case 1: IECEU: Improving the Effectiveness of
Capabilities in EU Conflict Prevention [Project ID
653371; Funded under H2020] project seeks to
improve European Union conflict response
capabilities Through analyzing and assessing best
practices and lessons learned from European Union
Common Security and Defence (CSDP) Missions
the project seeks to find out how to increase the
interoperability of resources in the crisis
management and peace building and what the
potential for pooling and sharing of EU capabilities
and technologies is. The ultimate goal of the project
is to provide new solutions, approaches and
recommendations for EU to guarantee long-term
stability. The project falls into a category of
‘Coordination and support action’ and it seeks to
address the societal challenge with a
multidisciplinary and international consortium that
embeds of nine (9) organizations representing the
Governmental, non-governmental organizations,
Universities and Private companies from 6 European
countries. The project timeframe: 12.5.2015-
31.01.2018.
Case 2: GAP: Gaming for Peace [Project ID
700670 Funded under H2020] is a project that seeks
to address Societal challenge of Secure Societies-
Protecting freedom and security of Europe and its
citizens through identification of current gaps in
training for the soft skills needed to perform
successfully in multicultural EU missions, and based
on the analysis to develop an innovative base
curriculum and tool for delivery and further
development of that base curriculum through the
design and play of a multiple player online role
playing game. The GAP consortium is
multidisciplinary with expertise in the social
sciences, computer science, end users (including
militaries and police), and SMEs in game design,
curriculum development and skill standardization
and harmonization, and has support from
stakeholders including the ESDC, UN bodies and
NATO. The project falls into a category of
‘Coordination and support action’ and it embeds of
14 organizations from 7 European countries. The
project timeframe: 2016-09-01 to 2019-02-28.
Case 3: EU_CISE_2020: European Union’s
Information Sharing Environment [Project ID
608385; Funded under FP7-SECURITY] draws a
major space of opportunity for national and
European maritime Institutions to collaboratively
innovate their processes and systems, and for
European enterprises to develop a new range of
solutions and services competitive in the
international market. The project is a Combined
Collaborative Project and Coordination and Support
Action and it embeds of 38 organizations from 15
European countries combining the expertise of
governmental agencies, industry, research agencies
and other relevant bodies among EU maritime
institutions. The timeframe of EU_CISE_2020 is
01.06.2014 01.06.2018.
Case 4: MARISA: Maritime Integrated
Surveillance Awareness [Project ID 740698; Funded
under H2020] is new H2020 project, timeframe
between May 2017 and September 2019. The
overarching goal of this project is to provide the
security communities operating at sea with a data
fusion toolkit, which provides a suite of methods,
techniques and software modules to correlate and
fuse various heterogeneous and homogeneous data
and information from different sources, including
Internet and social networks, with the aim to
improve information exchange, situational
awareness, decision-making, reaction capabilities
and resilience. The expected solution will provide
mechanisms to get insights from any big data source,
perform analysis of a variety of data based on
geographical and spatial representation, use
techniques to search for typical and new patterns
that identify possible connections between events,
explore predictive analysis models to represent the
effect of relationships of observed object at sea. The
project is an ‘Innovation Action’ and it embeds of 22
organizations representing 9 different European
countries. The timeframe of MARISA is 01.05.2017
31.10.2019.
4 RESULTS
The results are presented following the Wenger’s
framework (domain, community, practice), as well
as according to categories emerged from the data
(project phases).
Domain: The domain of the four projects can
clearly be identified. The common dominator within
each consortium is related to the challenge it seeks
to address. For example, EU CISE and MARISA are
both strongly connected to maritime security
domain, both seeking to address challenges related
to effectiveness of information sharing and
utilization among the European maritime security
actors. GAP and IECEU projects are both positioned
in a domain of crisis management and conflict
prevention, both projects addressing the issue of
conflict prevention from different perspectives.
Common to all the project consortiums is that there
seems to be a clear domain (area of interest) that has
brought the individuals across the different
organizations together to address the same societal
challenge. The members of project consortiums are
bound together through their interest towards the
topic, rather than a formal obligation to complete a
certain task.
Community: As described by Wenger (1998;
1999; 2000), identity plays a key role for community
to exist. Identity itself becomes a system, which is
constantly shaped by the individuals’ engagement.
Based on the analysis two dimensions related to
identity could be identified; (1) Community Identity,
and (2) Member Identities. With regards to
Community Identity a few evidences point to the
existence of a collective identity of the project
consortiums. First, each project has created a
community identity through several community
artefacts, which distinguishes it from other similar
projects or from the participating organizations; such
as project name and logo; project website; social
media account; common promotional material, and
document templates. The name and logo and the
associated artefacts enhanced the unique identity of
the community also in relation to the participating
organizations. Additionally, the individuals involved
in the projects seemed also increasingly engage
themselves to purely consortium-related activities
although they still were involved in the other
activities undertaken by their home organizations.
This multi-membership (Wenger, 1998) manifested
itself in engagement in different social media
channels to discuss the ideas relevant to the project,
organizing common social activities outside the
working hours, using the project identity in their e-
mail signatures, and also to produce separate
business cards with the project identity.
Membership Identities became evident in all the
consortiums. As members in conventional CoPs, the
individual identities evolved by participating in the
community’s practice (Wenger, 1998). For example,
the coordinators were among the most central
members in the consortiums. They earned their
reputations through their contributions to the
community namely during the drafting of the project
proposal. The empirical data also suggested that
there is a clear pattern that the consortium members
identified one another based on their competences
and labelled those who would not meet the given
deadlines, or would not possess competence to
complete certain tasks. Such judgements were based
on the actions of different members. Furthermore, it
seems that the individuals working for the project
often seized their personal and professional
networks to bring new knowledge to the consortium.
These external experts could also engage in the
interaction, and hence also become part of the
community. Often, the same individuals seemed to
attend the events and engage in the conversations in
social media. Although these individuals were not
formally assigned to the consortium, through their
engagement they become important knowledge
resources and recognized participants of the
community. The third pattern that was identified
was when an individual from one organization was
no longer officially involved in a project.
Nevertheless, different than in traditional project
teams (Kietzman et al., 2013), these individuals still
seemed to hold a role in a consortium. They were
perceived to be part of the community although they
were no longer bound to it through their work.
Practice: As suggested by Wegner (1998) the
community practices has three distinct features; (1)
Engagement, (2) Joint enterprise, and (3) Shared
repertoires. The patterns related to engagement in
the community were explored based on different
phases of the project, which emerged from the
analysis; (1) during initial scoping of the project; (2)
during the development of the project proposal, (3)
after the funding was admitted, and (4) during the
execution of the project. As the cases analyzed
represent four different form and type of
consortiums, each of them inherent unique patterns
of engagement, which may not exist in other
projects. Nevertheless, a number of commonalities
across the cases can be identified.
With regards to the initial scoping of the project,
the data suggests that engagement in the community
has started already before the initial scoping of the
project has begun. A common motivation behind the
engagement seemed to be that an individual or group
of individuals interested in a certain domain, or
working in a certain domain, had a need to look for
external resources to reach these aspirations. Based
on the data, at this phase four distinct engagement
patterns could be identified; (1) a single organization
has drafted a concept and searches for potential
partners relevant to the domain through their own
networks; (2) a single organization is willing to join
a project consortium and searchers a potential
consortium through its networks or official sites
such as EU Participant Portal or networking events;
(3) two or more organizations are/have worked
together in a project consortium and are willing to
continue the work in a new project relevant to their
domain or to the previous projects they have worked
jointly; and (4) a certain individual or organization is
directly contacted based on a proposal of a
previously known partner. In this first stage, the
communication took mainly place through
information technology (IT), such as e-mail,
LinkedIn, Facebook or Skype.
Once the consortiums were formed, in the next
phase, the engagement related mainly to the project
proposal writing process. At this stage, the focus
was on information and knowledge sharing, as well
as on review and provision of feedback to the
written outputs. The communication took mainly
place via digital means, and online meetings were
often used to build an understanding of the purpose
and methods used in the project. The contributions
to the knowledge creation in proposal development
seemed to take place mainly in a form of writing.
The third phase seemed to be the defining
moment for the project consortium. Once the
funding decision came, the level of engagement to
the consortium activities increased rapidly.
Information sharing seemed to become a central
purpose for the interaction at this stage. The
consortium members were requesting information
namely from the coordinator to better understand
their roles and responsibilities in the project. The
information sharing took mainly place via e-mails
and online meetings. Additionally, relationship
building seemed to become increasingly central
purpose of the socializing. It seems that the
interaction within the consortium shifted towards
more targeted partnerships - individuals seeking
opportunities to get to know each another also at
personal level. In all the cases, the whole consortium
met for the first time face-to-face during the ‘Kick-
off meeting’ which is organized within the first
month the project is launched. Although, most of the
interaction within the consortium takes place
through IT, the face-to-face meeting at the beginning
of the project seems to play a central role for the
further relationship building to emerge.
At the project execution phase, the knowledge
sharing takes mainly place through collaborative
working area and database (e.g. eDuuni, Google
Drive). Furthermore, in all the case projects the
involvement of practioners in ‘testing’ and
‘validating’ the project results is central for the
project outcome, and thus is emphasized. Therefore,
the consortiums sought ways to invite external
members to engage in the consortium activities and
to capture their perspectives and knowledge to
support the mutual learning. Workshops, seminars,
online groups, and working groups were used as
primary tools to capture the end-user perspectives.
Furthermore, also in the execution phase the face-to-
face meetings seem to play important role in
relationship and trust- building among the
consortium members. Namely among the
governmental officials there seems to be some
reluctance to share knowledge to other consortium
partners and the personal relationships build among
the consortium members during the events seem to
help mitigate the barriers related to information and
knowledge sharing. Moreover, at the project
execution stage, the focus of the engagement is also
on capturing and storing knowledge. In most
consortiums, the explicit knowledge is captured in
form of reports, documents, videos and recordings,
stored in a common database or a collaborative
working area. The knowledge is also captured in a
form of blogs, slideshows, reports, visiting speakers,
e-Learning tools, which are made available to
externals. ‘How-to-guides’ are developed in order to
capture some of the practices of the consortium and
to enhance the coherence of the knowledge artefacts,
such as reports and presentations, produced during
the project. Table 1. summarizes the key
engagement patterns emerging after the project
consortiums were formed.
Table 1: Engagement patterns at different stages of the
project.
Project
proposal
development
Funding
decision
Project execution
1. Information
and
knowledge
sharing;
2.
Commenting
and provision
of feedback.
1. Overall
consortium
management;
2.Relationship
building;
3. Information
sharing.
1. Overall
consortium
management;
2. Relationship
building;
3. Knowledge
sharing and
learning;
4. Knowledge
capture and storage.
Joint enterprise: Based on the analysis the
negotiation towards joint enterprise could be seen to
take place during project proposal writing process.
During the scoping of the project, the consortiums
did not seem to have a clear joint enterprise: there
was no formal agreement in place binding the
individuals together; the individuals may have never
met each other; and the purpose of the project was
still unclear. Consequently, the topic of the funding
call and the contributions from the coordinator
seemed to be the key ‘tools’ to bind the partners
together. The outcome of this process, and the
purpose (joint enterprise) and goals of the project
(and the consortium) were then formally verbalized
in the Grant Agreement. Nevertheless, the
negotiation over the joint enterprise seems to also be
an ongoing process in the project consortiums. As
the project implementation evolved, there is a
tendency for the community to expand, and reassess
its core purpose. This is evidenced in the ways the
consortium communicates and disseminate the
project results at different phases of the project.
Many of these activities have been outlined already
in the Grant Agreement (dissemination, exploitation
and communication strategy), yet many of the
activities are innovated as the project unfolds. In
addition, the consortium itself embeds innovation
potential which was unforeseen when the project
plan was created. A common pattern seems to be
that the real exploitation potentials unfold as work of
the consortium proceeds. These seem also to be the
moments when the joint enterprise is most actively
negotiated. The consortium partners seem to actively
seek new ways to exploit and disseminate the project
results and knowledge. They may search for new
R&I project funding to leverage the knowledge
created during the project, and seek to integrate the
knowledge to existing and new education and
training programs (Pirinen, 2015).
Shared repertoires: The empirical evidence
suggests that over the time, the project consortiums
developed a rich shared repertoire. All the individual
project consortiums developed their unique routines
(e.g. meeting protocol), gestures (language used in
social interaction) and stories (based on shared
experiences during the project-related events, and
individuals). Nevertheless, the common pattern that
can be identified across all the case consortiums was
related to language. The transformation related to
adaptation of common terminology was significant.
At the beginning, different organizations
representing different professional fields and
organizations would face numerous challenges in
understanding what was meant either by domain
related terms such as ‘capability’, ‘conflict
prevention’, ‘data fusion’, ‘co-creation’, or by EU
R&I project related terms such as ‘Grant
Agreement’ or ‘participant portal. Nevertheless, by
the time the project implementation was to take
place, it seemed that the consortium members
adopted both; EU R&I project related terms and
acronyms (WP, DL, PO, dissemination) and project-
related terms (IECEU, MARISA, SOTA, CPPB,
user-community, soft skills) and where actively
using them in their communications.
5 DISCUSSION
The study demonstrated that EU Funded R&I
projects represent a unique form of a knowledge
community. Such projects have brought together an
array of organizations and professionals which are
not usually seen working together. They have also
enabled organizations and professionals to enter
completely new domains while expanding their
social networks, and learning new practices.
The knowledge created in EU R&I projects is
treated majorly as intellectual common. The
European Commission has an aspiration to
maximize the impact of the different projects by
emphasizing the exploitation and dissemination of
the project results. Consequently, rather than just
creating a new product, process or service, the
consortiums are to engage end-users, policy-makers
and other professionals to the knowledge creation
and exploitation activities. As a result, the project
consortiums do not only engage in task-related
project activities, yet they are expected to engage the
externals to knowledge creation, and to transfer this
knowledge to wider audience. Furthermore, the
knowledge created in one project should be
transferred across the other consortiums. The study
suggested that despite the efforts to connect the past
and existing R&I project consortiums together, more
measures should be taken to extract the tacit
knowledge created project consortiums for broader
audience.
According to Wenger’s characterization of CoPs
(Wenger, 1998), results of this study clearly suggests
that CoP can provide a meaningful way to capture
knowledge creation in EU R&I project consortiums.
As suggested by Wenger’s model, one key aspect of
the CoPs is to describe how the community
functions; the forms of mutual engagement, routines
and purpose, which bind members together into a
common social entity. Members of a community of
practice are practitioners of that community: they
develop a shared repertoire of resources:
experiences, stories, tools, ways of addressing
recurring problems in short, a shared practice. The
partners of the four project consortiums were
brought together based on their interest towards a
common domain. Although, the individuals and
organizations originally operated in separate
domains or represented different disciplines, there
was a common interest towards the topic either
personal or based on profession which brought the
organizations to form a joint enterprise.
Furthermore, just as in conventional CoPs,
community identity and individual member
identities were developed during and through the
engagement in the project consortium. Individual
identities reflecting members’ unique characteristics
embedded with their professional background
(coordinator, researcher, police, lawyer, and
engineer) and competence demonstrated in their
actions (good public speaker, good writer, task
orientated, and socializer). Collectively members
also created a community identity, as the different
projects were widely recognized by their name in the
different professional communities and networks.
However, some challenges occurred when a person
known to the consortium was replaced by a new one.
The identity is not only technical ‘identity artefacts’
but rather about the routines, language, actions that
are embedded in the interaction within the
community. Transferring this tacit knowledge to the
new person seemed to require active socialization
and mentoring. The study also demonstrated that EU
projects represent a domain in their own right and to
access such project consortiums require pre-
knowledge of the domain (professionals working in
a certain domain), personal connections, or personal
motivation to enter a certain domain. When the
organization is not seen as a natural partner in a
certain domain, the role of individuals becomes
central for gaining the access. As described by
Wenger (1998) the strength of the CoP is that due to
their informal nature, the participation to the
communities is not limited by the traditional
organization boundaries, but it is determined by the
individuals’ interaction (doing) in them.
Consequently, for example, the organizations that
had not previously been working in the field of
Maritime security or crisis management could
participate in R&I projects that sought to innovate
solutions to related issues. The results of the study
also suggest that namely in the security domain,
there already exists communities working around
certain challenges and topics, yet finding or
accessing these communities without previous
participation is challenging. However, once an
individual or organization gain practice from a
certain professional field through engagement in
work of a project consortium, they also seem to be
increasingly identified through the projects rather
than their home organization. The data suggests that
once participated in EU security related project
‘legitimizes’ the organization to enter the
community of practioners, as well as become an
important vehicle for such a community. Social
scientists could became maritime security trainers,
and coastal guards become co-creation experts.
Cross-sectoral nature of EU R&I projects seem to be
their defining character, facilitating also
development of multiple identities (Wenger, 1998).
The engagement in consortium activities is
central to relationship building and knowledge
sharing among the consortium members. Although,
the common interaction practice seems to be coined
around e-mail exchanges and using collaborative
working platforms, participation to face-to-face
meetings seem to be crucial for relationship and
trust-building and further information and
knowledge sharing among the consortium partners.
It seems that the technical tasks (study reports,
software, tools) as agreed and outlined in Grant
Agreement could be also delivered without strong
personal ties or sense of joint enterprise.
Nevertheless, the ‘doing’ and contributing and
socializing seem to be the defining features that
facilitate the knowledge creation in EU R&I project
consortium. Willingness to share information and
knowledge among the consortium members seems to
be related to the participation in the community
events, as well as to personal relationships and trust
among the partners.
As a whole, the results of this study
demonstrated, that CoP theory can provide new
insight in the functioning and knowledge creation of
cross-border and cross-sectoral collaborations. It
provides a meaningful way to explore how the
knowledge is emerged through a practice of
consortiums before, during and after the projects.
Contrary to traditional project teams - temporary
social systems - in which knowledge is created only
during the outset of the formal organization, the CoP
approach demonstrates that the EU R&I consortium
is a knowledge community and domain of its own,
which is not formed only to accomplish a certain
task. Participation to EU R&I projects may enable
consortium members to access new professional
communities, which can lead to continuity of work
within the similar issues and with the same partners.
This may facilitate knowledge sharing across the
different EU R&I projects leading to further
knowledge creation and innovations to take place.
Furthermore, due to their rather informal structure,
the EU R&I projects can be effective platforms to
facilitate knowledge creation for the purpose of
national governmental agencies. Such projects, as
understood from CoPs framework, enable the
interested individuals from different organizations to
share information, and more importantly, tacit
knowledge through regular interactions.
Limitations of this study need to be borne in
mind. As the data collection applied ethnographic
methods including observation, participation and
informal conversations, the subjectivity of the
researcher needs to borne in mind before building
further generalizations of the study results. The
study is also limited in its temporal frame, as it does
not address ways that practice and identity emerge
after the projects have been completed. Despite its
limitations, the study demonstrated that community
of practice framework can be used to further study
knowledge creation in cross-border and cross-
sectoral collaborations such as EU R&I project
consortiums.
The future research should study further how the
elements, such as multidisciplinary,
multinationalism and multi-location, impact on the
functioning of the EU externally funded R&I project
consortiums. One issue regarding the knowledge
sharing within EU R&I project consortiums seemed
to be related to the fact that the consortium members
met seldom face-to-face. The issues inherent to
online-based knowledge sharing is related to trust-
building among the members and ability to maintain
the motivation to engage in the community
activities. More research should be made to
investigate the practices that enable and limit the
participation to multi-located knowledge
communities. This could also provide important
insight on the potential barriers and enablers to
knowledge creation in such social systems. In
addition, another interesting point of research would
be to study, how the community or network of
separate EU project consortiums evolve and change
over time, and how the knowledge created in one
project is exploited in the subsequent projects
operating in the same domain. To ensure, that the
knowledge embedded in individuals participating in
such consortiums is not lost, it would be beneficial
to develop, capture, and transfer good practices on
specific topics also across the different project
consortiums. These findings would enable to design
better tools to facilitate synergies between different
project consortiums, as well as develop appropriate
knowledge management strategies to capture the
tacit knowledge embed in project consortiums.
6 CONCLUSIONS
This paper presents a rich description of how EU
externally funded security-related R&I projects can
be understood through the notions of ‘community’
and ‘practice’. As an exploratory multi-case study,
the purpose of the study was to contribute to the
debate on rather unstudied field and pave the way
for further research. Whereas studies in knowledge
creation in multidisciplinary project teams have
failed to address the issue of forming cross-border
and cross-national project consortiums, and
knowledge transfers among such projects, the CoPs
framework can help address these gaps.
Consequently, this paper has made contribution to
knowledge creation by expanding the utilization of
CoPs framework to explore the knowledge creation
in cross-border and cross-sectoral collaborations,
such as international project consortiums.
Consequently this study has added to existing debate
and methodology on knowledge creation practices.
Finally, the study has provided valuable insight to
the previously rather unstudied field paving the way
for the further research related to the learning and
knowledge creation in EU funded R&I projects.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This study and the R&I projects as cases included
were funded by European Union’s Research and
Innovation funding programme FP 7, Horizon 2020.
This study was also made possible by #WINLandFI
Funding ID 303623, from April 2016 to March
2019.
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