Applying distributed leadership theory in communities of practice: the case of the united nations.

• Author: Fallah, Nima

1. INTRODUCTION

   The idea of knowledge-based practice has become more popular over the last 20 years. The concept of communities of practice (CoPs) has been developed by Lave and Wenger (1991) in regard to the nature of learning and knowledge sharing. Organizations are utilizing these inter/intra-organizational networks as part of their strategy for problem solving, organisational learning, and knowledge sharing. Despite the increasing influence of CoPs in organizations, still scholars refer to the lack of attention in the literature concerning the manageability of CoPs (Swan et al., 2003); likewise, there is not enough empirical research concerning the role of leaders in them. According to the theory (Wenger, 1998; 2004), occasionally CoPs do not accept a designated/formal leader; hence, as part of their arrangement, we should note words such as "self-organizing" (Lave and Wenger, 1991; Wenger, 1998), "no formal authority", "no hierarchy", "urging instead of ordering" and so on. Although, in the literature for CoPs, it is easy to find terms such as " leader", "coordinator", "animator", "facilitator", "moderator" (Fallah, 2011) but still very few clearly discuss and disclose their role and their leadership behaviour in CoPs. Therefore, we tried to address the gap by conducting an empirical observation in the real working environment, in an international organization. Essentially, to study this important attribute of CoPs, we need to participate in them to observe the practice of leadership, rather than just looking at their arrangements and structures. More precisely, we attempted to explore the apparent paradoxical role of leaders in CoPs in the case of United Nations (UN). The methodology that we have utilized was the qualitative case study analysis. We have selected a CoP at the UN and performed a number of in-depth interviews with formal/informal leaders, facilitators and animators, and with several members of the community. Based on a systematic review of literature (Fallah, 2011), and follow up of other conceptual studies on CoP's management, we proposed the "distributed leadership" as the practical framework for CoPs. The aim of this research is to supply the preliminary empirical evidence on the possible utilization of distributed forms of leadership for CoPs. A novelty of this study lies in twofold exploration: (a) identifying the existence and role of multiple leaders in CoPs (b) the application of "distributed leadership" model to the theory of CoPs.

2. THEORETICAL ROOTS

   Lave and Wenger (1991) defined the concept of CoPs as "[...] an activity system about which participants share understandings concerning what they are doing and what that means in their lives and for their community" (p. 98). The main purpose of CoPs is to develop members' capabilities for building and exchanging related knowledge (Wenger and Snyder 2000). CoPs manage themselves and set their own leadership (Wenger and Snyder 2000), however, the self-managing characteristic of CoPs (Wenger, 1998; Brown and Duguid, 1991) doesn't indicate that practitioners distinguish everything, or have the full skills for managing the knowledge and don't require the help. Additionally McDermott and Archibald (2010) emphasized that "unlike the independent and self-organizing bodies we saw years ago [on the theory of CoPs], today's communities require real structure". The theoretical irony, which we are facing in the CoPs, is quite similar to the case of symphony which Philips (2003) summarized as: "we need a great team of people with diverse skills to perform a symphony well, but no team has ever written a great symphony". He believes that a CoP is led, normally, by an interior "guru" of its area of practice, who "serves also as a magnet to attract" members and keep them together; "their leadership is distributed and situational"; members with higher expertise lead parts of the movement. Recently, Mintzberg (2009) overemphasized the CoPs' leadership importance with a new word--which doesn't exist in the English language--as "Communityship". The term stands between individual practice of leadership on one side and collective citizenship on the other side. He sees community leaders as people who are at the centre, facilitating the knowledge creation and changes, trying to engage anyone and everyone on the practice of main initiatives. While many researchers stressed the existence of leadership in CoPs in different forms, very few look at the theoretical basis of applicable theory of leadership in them, and frameworks for studying leadership in CoPs are scarce (Fallah, 2011). The seminal contribution of Spillane (2006) on the idea of "distributed leadership" gave a real impetus to conduct this research on the connection among distributed leadership, organizational routines and communities of practice. The leadership can be "stretched over" (Spillane and Diamond, 2007) formal/informal leaders, animators and members, with different levels of interests and expertise; noting that, not all members took on responsibility for leadership practice. Formal leaders, by setting routines, merely establish the conditions for practice in the CoPs. In the subsequent section, we assert the theoretical concepts that can be applied for this research.

3. THEORETICAL APPLICATION: DISTRIBUTED FORMS OF LEADERSHIP

   Most of the well-known leadership theories are grounded as the mythological heroic paradigms of leader's roles and behaviours, and classical top-down approaches in the highly bureaucratic structured organizations, and have merely concentrated upon the individuals who are performing formal leadership styles, which are not suitable for the knowledge-based practices (Gronn 1999; Uhl-Bien et...