Understanding Core Principles of Communities: Shared Mental Models and Transactive Memory Systems as Preconditions for Self-organized Coordination

The integration of external as well as internal users into organizational innovation processes advanced to become one cornerstone within research over the last decades. Especially the investigation on embedded lead-users or... [ view full abstract ]

The integration of external as well as internal users into organizational innovation processes advanced to become one cornerstone within research over the last decades. Especially the investigation on embedded lead-users or internal communities has attracted some attention lately. One form of these internal communities that has been in the focus of several academic fields is the community of practice (CoP), which comprise organizational members sharing common interests, practices and a sense of belonging. While a plethora of scholars investigated on many different aspects of these informal social entities, there is still a huge gap explaining how self-organized coordination as the central mechanism these CoPs work.
We believe that there is an imperative need to understand these mechanisms as it seems hard to integrate a social system one does not fully understand. In order to provide an insight on self-organized coordination we are applying the concepts of shared mental models and transactive memory systems. Self-organized coordination is based on the ability of all interacting members to predict possible actions of other system elements. Thus, shared cognition, shared values and an understanding of dispersed capabilities and competencies within a CoP is crucial to integrate own actions as well as other members actions into joint (innovative) enterprises.
Within a qualitative setting concerning several internal CoPs of the German Federal Armed Forces we are able to show that the aforementioned shared mental models and transactive memory systems evolve along task fulfillment as well as non task related interactions. Furthermore, we are able to show that CoPs depend on shared mental models and transactive memory systems in order to coordinate joint activities in the absence of a formal hierarchy. However, this is not only important for internal CoPs but for communities in general, as it implies that direct integration and governance could cause several problems regarding the CoPs internal mechanisms, calling for rather indirect managerial approaches.