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

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;

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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