AUTHOR
Gonçalo Jorge Morais da Costa, Nuno Sotero Alves da Silva and Piotr Pawlak

ABSTRACT

Tourism is a global trend which engages a key role in economics, which in 2007 represented over 745 billion dollars (World Trade Organization, 2007). Still, in accordance to the same institution tourism can be defined as: “the activities of persons travelling to and staying in places outside their usual environment for not more than one consecutive year for leisure, business and other purposes” (World Tourism Organization, 1994: 5). However, the research question of this contribution is not to debate extensively the economic performance of tourism, but if it is possible to state that “locational” privacy in tourism is a fallacy?

The Oxford English Dictionary (2008) acknowledges that the word “tour” is originally Greek, and it means a tool for describing a circle. The word “tour”, in a tourism sense entails a French origin, for the verb: “tourner”. In fact, the first time that “tourism” was used was in 1811, and in the early 19th century “tourist” was predominantly used in an English context, referring to those who went to England!

Today the concept “tourist” refers to everyone that travels for leisure, business and other purposes, and due to ICT (mobile phones, wireless networks, gps, location-based services, etc.) can be always “wired” to the surrounding world (network tourism). In fact, some authors plead the concept of virtual tourist. According to Carlvik and Jonsson (2001: 273) “it is a group of people between 14 to 35 years old that “travels without travelling”, and that uses systematically ICT”. Therefore, it is possible to locate them 24 hours a day through equipment and software (Heikkila and Silven, 2004), leading to serious ethical issues relating to personal privacy.

Due to several threats that global society imposes to national security, societies tend to create legislation to control informational fluxes of personal data. An example of this reality is for instance the Patriot Act in United States. After 9/11 the American Congress adopted this legislation, pursuant to which all Internet and ICT operators must oversee communication in the Internet. Furthermore, the federal agencies have access to connections and private accounts (the authorities can inspect e-mails, control telephone calls and record them, etc.) (Bierzanek and Symonides, 2005).

Although data protection is the top priority of digital solutions, the truth is that is all about information mobility and data saving, reading and processing through multiple technological platforms. At the same time, particular countries (acting jointly or separately) seek to oversee data as much as possible, which leads to contradictory result concerning these three trends. Yet, they all stem from specific moral, social and political values, which in turn are expressed in the acts of (international and national) law, such as: Resolution 45/95 of December 14, 1990 adopted by the UN General Assembly or Convention 108 of the Council of Europe of 1981. The protection of personal data, and consequently the right to privacy are human rights (Sokolowski, 2004).

Moreover, in spite of the World Travel & Tourism Council’s (WTTC) (2007) policy for personal data follow the EU Data Protection Act 1998; it seems to exist several policy vacuums: who controls the liability of this process? Who controls the personal data gathered by the several tourism agents (agencies, hotels, car rental, etc.)? And, which institutions have access to this array of personal data?

Following the etymological roots of control, it is possible to acknowledge that is a “power” that directly determines a situation; a relation of constraint of one entity (thing or person or group) by another, or, the state that exists when one person or group has power over another (Online Etymological Dictionary, 2001). So, we may claim that the aim of control is to promote a perception of security, and following Stahl (2007) privacy and security are intrinsically bounded.

In an explanatory meaning, security as a concept is complement in diverse languages, reproducing the affairs between object (subject) and its environment. Nevertheless it is imperative that security is a normative, an emotionally loaded idea (Mesjasz, 2004). Typically security is categorized in:

• a traditional meaning- security as an attribute of state, absence of military conflict (Kaldor, 2007);
• a broader sense- referring directly to a phenomena occurring in international relations, or directly/indirectly caused by inter-state relations security as a public good (Deudney, 2004);
• a universal sense (of a unit and of a social entity)- human security (Nickel, 2007).

Therefore, we claim that location privacy clearly demonstrates the trade-off concerning personal privacy of tourists and societal control.

REFERENCES

Bierzanek, R. and Symonides, J. (2005). Public international law. Warsaw: LexisNexis Publisher.

Carlvik, O. and Jonsson, I.-M. (2001). Virtual tourist based on PeerRing- communicating with people you have never met. In C. Stephanidis (Ed.). Universal Access in Human Computer Interaction- Towards an Information Society for All (Vol. 3) (pp. 271-275). Norwood: Ablex Publishing Corp.

Deudney, D. (2004). Publius before Kant: Federal-Republican security and democratic peace. European Journal of International Relations, 10, 3, 315-356.

Heikkila, J. and Silven, O. (2004). A real-time system for monitoring of cyclists and pedestrians, Image and Vision Computing, 22, 7, 563-570.

Kaldor, M. (2007). Human security: reflections on globalization and intervention. Polity Press: Cambridge.

Mesjasz C. (2004). Security as a property of social systems. Online at: http://www.allacademic.com/meta/p72561_index.html (accessed at 25 February 2009).

Nickel, J. W. (2007). Making sense of human rights. Blackwell Publishers: Malden.

Online Etymology Dictionary. (2001). Control. Online at: http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?search=control&searchmode=none (accessed at 14 April 2009).

Oxford Dictionary. (2008). Oxford english dictionary. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Sokolowski, M. (2004). Faces of the internet. The State Higher School of Vocational Education: Elblag

Stahl, B. C. (2007). Privacy and security as ideology. IEEE Technology and Society Magazine, 26, 1, 35-45.

World Tourism Organization (1994) Recommendations on Tourism Statistics. New York: United Nations.

World Trade Organization (2008). International trade statistics 2008. Online at: (accessed at 01 July 2009).

World Travel & Tourism Council (2007). Terms and conditions of use and legal disclaimer. Online at: http://www.wttc.org/eng/Contact_WTTC/Privacy_Statement/ (accessed 20 May 2009).

AUTHOR
Gonçalo Jorge Morais da Costa, Mary Prior and Simon Rogerson

ABSTRACT

Alvin Toffler argued years ago that the knowledge based society represents the acme of the human society development, when knowledge become the core resource of the economy, as the last and the ultimate source of power (Toffler, 1995). Moreover, knowledge society is a conception that has often appeared in the literature worldwide in recent years (Savage, 2000).

It is unquestionable that organisations need to manage knowledge resources in order to survive, but how can be described knowledge management? For Brelade and Harman (2003), is the acquisition and use of resources to create an environment in which information is accessible to individuals and in which individuals acquire, share and use that information to develop their own knowledge and are encouraged and enabled to apply their knowledge for the benefit of the organization.

From the above definition we may conclude that the knowledge continuum process (creation, retention and sharing) entails three different analytical levels:

• an individual- where relies the personal mental states, which literature pleads as personal knowledge management (PKM) (Wright, 2005);
• an organizational- which can be described differently in accordance to the different geographical and historical contexts (Cardoso, Gomes and Rebelo, 2003);
• an societal- recognized throughout the arguments stated previously.

However, managers should realize that knowledge is bounded to people (human resources) and therefore, implicating a considerable amount of ethical and moral dilemmas through the “knowledge continuum process” (Costa, Prior and Rogerson, 2008a; 2008b; 2009). In order to solve this paradigm, knowledge management academics and practitioners are approaching the following dimensions: organizational culture, knowledge management technology and ethics.

Culture acknowledges multiple definitions however some key properties seem to be essential to explain this concept: heredity (Linton, 1936); social learning (Galef, 1992); behavioural patterns (Jablonka and Lamb, 2005); belief (Strauss and Quinn, 1997); information (Richerson and Boyd, 2005); biological environment (Odling-Smee, Laland and Feldman, 2003). Despite these perceptions we adopted a synthesizer definition produced by Okunoye (2003, pp. 37): “set of basic assumptions formed from a collective programming of mind, resulting from social interaction of people in groups and society.”

Knowledge management systems are technologies that support knowledge generation, modification and transfer in organizations (Marwick, 2001), being widely recognized and expected to be an important component of organizational practices (Gartner Group, 2002).

From the academic point of view, ethics is one of the main sub-fields of Philosophy. As a field of academic inquiry, ethics seeks to distinguish between what is good and what is bad, and what is right and what is wrong in more or less abstract terms. A formal distinction is possible to achieve:

• theoretical- acknowledges the major philosophical debates (including meta-ethics), as well as ethical theories;
• applied ethics- since the mid 1990s an increasing number of academics and professionals in different fields: economics, public policy and corporate practice, have felt the need to introduce ethics into their respective fields. As a consequence, engagement with ethics is becoming less and less a sole occupation for philosophers.

Given the previous arguments, the generic intention of this paper is to discuss the dilemmas that arise when these knowledge management dimensions are linked. In addition, the empirical results obtained so far in the early stages of data collection (pre-tests and pilot studies), as well as the response of the existing ongoing frameworks will be introduced.

The empirical data collection process is a combination of interviews and questionnaires which present some risks. Furthermore, Yin (1994) claims that one or two pilot studies should be performed to fine-tune the interview protocol or questionnaires. However, pilot studies are not pre-test, because pre-test studies do not act as a part of the research protocol, but to improve the level of confidence (Yin, 1994). This is applied in consistency with the sensitive nature of managers’ and employees’ behaviours and values, as discussed by Waldström (2003).

REFERENCES

Brelade, S. and Harman, C. (2003). A practical guide to knowledge management. [S.l.]: Thorogood.

Cardoso, L., Gomes, A. and Rebelo, T. (2003). Gestão do conhecimento: dos dados à informação e ao conhecimento, Comportamento Organizacional e Gestão, 1, 9, 55-84.

Costa, G., Prior, M. and Rogerson, S. (2008a). Individual ethics and knowledge management: arising conflicts. In T. W. Bynum et al. (Eds.). ETHICOMP 2008 (pp. 117-129). Mantua: University of Pavia.

Costa, G., Prior, M. and Rogerson, S. (2008b). Free ride in knowledge management? Ethical and moral dilemmas! ETHICOMP 2008 (only presentation). Mantua: University of Pavia.

Costa, Gonçalo, Prior, Mary and Rogerson, Simon (2009c). Trustworthy and ethical environment in Knowledge Management: a dilemma to solve! In Network Ethics 2009 (only presentation). Lisbon. Portugal.

Galef, B. G. (1992). The question of animal culture. Human Nature, 3, 2, 157-178.

Gartner Group (2002). The 2002 knowledge management hype cycle. Stamford: Gartner Group.

Jablonka, E. and Lamb, M (2005). Evolution in four dimensions- genetic, epigenetic, behavioural, and symbolic variation in the history of life. Cambridge: MIT Press.

Linton, R. (1936). The study of man. New York: Appelton-Century Crofts.

Marwick, A. D. (2001). Knowledge management technology. IBM Systems Journal, 40, 4, 814-830.

Odling-Smee, F. J., Laland, K. N. and Feldman, M. W. (2003). Niche construction: the neglected process in evolution. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Okunoye, A. O. (2003). Knowledge management and global diversity: a framework to support organizations in developing countries. Turku: University of Turku.

Richerson, P. J. and Boyd, R. (2005) Not by genes alone: how culture transformed human evolution. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.

Savage, C. (2000). The dawn of the knowledge era. Online at: http://www.kee-inc.com/dawn (accessed 20 May 2009).

Strauss, C. and Quinn, N. (1997). A cognitive theory of cultural meaning. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Toffler, A. (1995). A terceira onda. 15ª ed. Rio de Janeiro: Record.

Waldström, C. (2003). Understanding intra-organizational relations through social network analysis. Aarhus: Aarhus University.

Wright, K. (2005). Personal knowledge management: supporting individual knowledge worker performance. Knowledge Management, Research and Practice, 3, 3, 156-165.

Yin, R. K. (1994). Case study research: Design and methods. 3rd ed. Thousand Oaks: Sage.

AUTHOR
Gonçalo Jorge Morais da Costa, Tiago Filipe Rodrigues da Fonseca and Nuno Sotero Alves da Silva

ABSTRACT

Already massive change is happening due to emerging technologies. In fact, some of this convergence is happening organically, as the evolution of interdisciplinary science, a systems-approach and the necessity of sharing tools and knowledge is bringing separate disciplines together (Canton, 2002).

The dictatorship of reductionist perception, too long the unwritten law of modern science, is changing dramatically. An example of this fast innovation, inter-science coordination and action is through the deployment of convergent technologies that allow human enhancement.

However, an important question arises: which are the technologies that allow human enhancement? Nanotechnology, Biotechnology, Information Technologies and Cognitive Science (NBIC) represent a truly interdisciplinary environment to allow human enhancement (Roco and Bainbridge, 2002), being an example implantable microchips which due to nano know how, can communicate with the body’s cells and transmit data on to a computer. So, transhumanism can be considered an international intellectual and cultural movement supporting the use of science and technology, which imposes the following levels of discussion: the concept of enhancement and, the ethics of enhancement.

Enhancement is in its essence improving or adds new capacities to the human body. In spite of its concise definition, it is defined as an ambiguous concept which can mean better and more, but also something that most people may think to be less desirable and that should be avoided (Bood, 2003). The negative evaluation of enhancement appears in the first half of last century due to the appearance of eugenics. However, the difference seems to rely on the “old” eugenics versus the “new” eugenics on free choice and autonomy (liberal eugenics) (Agar 2004). Nonetheless, the basic idea is the same, namely the wielding out of undesirable physical and psychological traits.

So, enhancement dimensions can be understood in terms of four distinctions or tensions, namely (Bruce, 2007):

• enhancement as a change of state or a change of degree;
• permanent or reversible enhancements;
• external or internal enhancement technologies;
• enhancement as opposed to therapy.

In order to get a better understanding of the moral value of enhancement, we need to discuss also the concept of therapy. Therapy concerning enhancement technology is often seen as something “good”, while enhancement is frequently something negative. Such answer is related to the medical paradigm, and even if drawing a sharp line between therapy and enhancement was possible, we would still face the problem of knowing what counts as an enhancement. In order to diminish the lack of uncertainty, we plead three arguments that describe an enhancement in spite of the potential critics that possibly will arise due to the individual notion of human limits or limitations (see for example, Nordmann, 2007):

• certainty- the pyshical, psychological and cognitive characteristics of the human body are enhanced;
• consistency- the outcome of such “biological manipulation” is similar to an “environmental manipulation”. There is no relevant moral difference between them;
• similarity- if we accept treatment and disease prevention, we should accept enhancement. The goodness of health is what drives a moral obligation to treat or prevent disease.

Moreover, a transhumanist discussion must take off from where religion stops, because it is only an axiom (Nooteboom, 2009). Transhumanism should facilitate, rather than disintegrate, the deeper meanings of religion and spirituality. In that sense, to promote a debate concerning the ethics of enhancement we need to focus our attention into two levels of arguing:

• western and eastern religious systems (Lustig, 2008; Zoloth, 2008; LaFluer, 2008; Kirkland, 2008);
• and, western and eastern philosophical systems (Leon and Kass, 2001; Sandel, 2002; Fukayama, 2002; Habermas, 2003).

In conclusion, the answers to obtain in this manuscript are: what is NBIC? Which are its applications in human enhancement and ethical dilemmas that arise? And, if is possible to achieve a global or “weastern” spiritual/ethics concerning transhumanist society?

REFERENCES

Agar, N. (2004). Liberal eugenics: In defence of human enhancement. Oxford, Oxfordshire: Blackwell.

Bood, A. (2003). Human enhancement. The Hague: Health Council of the Netherlands.

Bruce, D. (2007). Human enhancement? Ethical reflections on emerging nanobio-technologies. Edinburgh: Edinethics, Ltd.

Canton, J. (2002). The impact of convergent technologies and the future of business and the economy. In M. C. Rocco and W. S. Bainbridge (Eds). Converging Technologies for Improving Human Performance: Nanotechnology, Biotechnology, Information Technology and Cognitive Science (pp. 71-78). Arlington: National Science Foundation.

Fukuyama, Y. F. (2002). Our post-human future: consequences of the biotechnology. New York: Picador.

Habermas, J. (2003). The future of human nature. Cambridge: Polity Press.

Kirkland, R. (2008). Enhancing life? Perspectives from traditional Chinese value-systems, Journal of Law, Medicine & Ethics, 36, 1, 26-40.

LaFluer, W. R. (2008). Enhancement and desire: Japanese qualms about where biotechnology is taking us, Journal of Law, Medicine & Ethics, 36, 1, 26-40.

Leon, R., & Kass, L. R. (2001). Why we should ban human cloning now: preventing a brave new world, The New Republic, 224, 21, 30-39.

Lustig, A. (2008). Enhancement technologies and the person: Christian perspectives, Journal of Law, Medicine & Ethics, 36, 1, 41-50.

Nooteboom, B. (2009). Transhumanism: how to affirm life and be a good person without help from God: a reply to Nietzsche. Online at: http://www.bartnooteboom.nl/site/index_en.cfm?act=nieuws.detail&varnieuws=712 (accessed 20 May 2009).

Nordmann, A. (2007). If and then: A critique of speculative nanoethics, Nanoethics, 1, 1, 31-46.

Rocco, M. C. and Bainbridge, W. S. (Eds). Converging technologies for improving human performance: nanotechnology, biotechnology, information technology and cognitive science. Arlington: National Science Foundation.

Sandel, M. (2002). What’s wrong with enhancement. Online at: http://www.bioethics.gov/background/sandelpaper.html (accessed 01 May 2009).

Zoloth, L. (2008). Go and tend the earth: a Jewish view on an enhanced world, Journal of Law, Medicine & Ethics, 36, 1, 10-25.

AUTHOR
Penny Duquenoy, Bern Martens and Norberto Patrignani

ABSTRACT

Introduction

In Europe, and most industrialised countries, ICT competences are a prerequisite for the majority of jobs, and even for life as a fully functioning member of society in general. In recognising this, universities, colleges, high schools, careers developers, train-the-trainers organizations, etc. have introduced ICT courses and programmes. But, ICT also introduces many, often quite new, ethical dilemmas for its developers and users (both professional and otherwise). Almost all of the above mentioned courses and programmes, however, focus exclusively on technical-instrumentalist competences, while neglecting ethics. This paper aims at analysing this gap in various ICT curricula and proposes content as well as methodology to fill it.
We do this by focussing successively on various contexts of ICT education.
Professional ICT education at universities and colleges (and equivalent)

Whether at academic or professional level, introducing ethical issues of ICT in higher education ICT curricula often constitutes a real challenge. Teachers are faced with students who have followed years of courses, all of them concentrated only on the technical side. A suggestion for introducing ethics in these situations is to start from real case analysis with a bottom-up approach. One example of a fruitful methodology was tested “in-field” at Politecnico di Torino in Italy for teaching computer ethics to PhD students in engineering (computer science, etc.). It is composed of four steps: describe a real controversial case, identify all stakeholders and their interconnections (“stakeholders’ network”), identify the ethical issues that arise from the scenario and finally, try to define possible alternative scenario(s). With this approach the students’ reaction is usually quite positive since they start from a familiar, technical context (e.g. a “national DNA database”) and then, with the support of the teacher, they “climb” the path towards non-technical issues like the social and ethical consequences of their projects.

In a verbal answer to the UK House of Lords Constitution Committee (February 2008) meeting to discuss “Surveillance: Citizens and the State”, and in response to a question regarding the training of IT professionals in privacy considerations, the reply was “… it is included in the exams and the courses but I have to say that most of the students skip that section because there are not enough marks on it and it is worthy but boring.”

In the Dutch speaking part of Belgium (Flanders), Leuven University College is currently the only institute of higher education where a course on IT ethics features on the IT programme (professional bachelor level). Not unlike the above mentioned Italian course, it focuses on specific cases, student projects, discussion and debate. In so doing, it proves fruitful not only to get future professionals thinking about the ethical aspects of their trade but also promotes several more general “soft skills” (arguing, presenting, debating, etc.). The course is an optional one, offered in the third (and final) year of the programme, and tends to be chosen by about 25% of the students. So, there definitely is an audience for such courses among even the most technically oriented of students. It must be noted however that this particular course is taught by a lecturer whose specialisation is in system management, network security and computer forensics. This probably contributes significantly to technical students taking an ethics course seriously (and voluntarily)…

Secondary (and primary) education

There has been a tendency in European schooling to focus on teaching pupils how to use ICT for their school work, and of course as part of a wider educational approach aimed at improving “digital literacy” and students’ employment opportunities. The substantive issues of “computer ethics” typical in conferences such as ETHICOMP, are not generally addressed other than aspects of computer misuse, and the dangers posed to school children. These latter issues appear to be brought in under a category of “eSafety” and serve to (a) educate children in the use (or rather mis-use) of mobile phones used as cameras, and the dangers of chatting online and (b) meet school policy and risk-reduction exercises. For example, the UK National Education Network states: “All schools have a responsibility to ensure that all pupils and staff access the internet safely and responsibly. Failure to do this could result in disciplinary or legal action taken against individuals, head teachers and governing bodies.”

The Rose Review (a report on the use of ICT in UK schools) published in March 2009 promotes the use of ICT in schools, and encourages greater use at primary level. Two points are worth mentioning here:

1. pupils use ICT effectively to communicate their ideas and to present their work, but they are less skilled in collecting and handling data and in controlling events using ICT;
2. teachers tend to give more attention to those aspects of ICT where they themselves feel confident.

And there are strong indications that the situation in most other European countries is similar.

The Flemish government recently published ICT learning objectives for children of age 12 and 14 respectively. The safe and responsible use of ICT features prominently among them, but if you look at the available teaching materials as well as current educational practice, the stress is almost exclusively on “utilitarian” features. The explanation for this state of affairs may well be the one given above: both teachers as well as textbook authors lack competence in ICT ethics.

Teacher training

We argue that, to meet the education needs identified above, ICT ethics must be treated in teacher training (at all levels, with the possible exception of kindergarten). In the Leuven University College teacher training programme, a course on ICT ethics has been compulsory for (future) ICT teachers since 10 years. In the fall of 2009, the course will for the first time also be offered as an option to students in other topics.

REFERENCES

http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/ld200809/ldselect/ldconst/18/8022002.htm

http://www.nen.gov.uk/

From a report on the Rose Review (Essex Primary ICT curriculum Newsletter):
http://www.e-pic.org.uk/news/newsletter_summer_2009.pdf

Bern Martens, IT, Ethics and Education: Teaching the Teachers (and their Pupils), in Goujon, P. et al. (eds.), IFIP International Federation for Information Processing, Vol. 233, The Information Society: Innovations, Legitimacy, Ethics and Democracy, Springer, Boston, 2007, pp. 181-194

AUTHOR
Göran Collste

ABSTRACT

Within applied ethics moral problems in different spheres of society like medicine, politics and technology are analysed. Applied ethics transcends disciplinary borders. Its point of departure is either ethics or the sphere of application. Thus, one way to do applied ethics is that ethicists use their theories and methods for analysing moral problems in, for example, medicine, politics or technology. Another way is that researchers or professionals confront ethical problems within their sphere or research or practice. Applied ethics is relevant both for ethicists and for researchers in different societal spheres and it has become more and more common that ethicists cooperate with researchers from other disciplines in multi-disciplinary projects.

There are some established methods in ethics. Among them are conceptual analysis to achieve clarity, argumentation analysis to structure and assess arguments and theory construction to develop and justify normative views. These methods are familiar and we can recognise them from the works of Rawls, Dworkin, Kymlicka etc. However, for applied ethics these methods are not sufficient. When the applied ethicist is analysing moral issues in a specific sphere, for example medicine, for the sake of relevance he or she needs empirical knowledge about the sphere in question. The applied ethicist has to acquire empirical knowledge and/or cooperate with researchers within the sphere of application. Hence, it is necessary with multi-disciplinary work in applied ethics. But, when a multi-disciplinary project develops, due to the different disciplinary outlooks of the researchers involved there are many possible misunderstandings and confusions.

Recently, a new multi-disciplinary project titled Personal Health Monitoring – Ethics financed within the European FP 7-program started. Personal health monitoring comprises all technical systems that are collecting, processing and storing data linked to a person, that allows monitoring the parameters of the person and that leads to health-monitoring about the person. Examples of the new technology are sensors in patient’s clothes or implanted in a patient’s body, home facility management systems etc. The aim of the research project is to develop multidisciplinary tools for ethical assessment of emergent technologies for personal health monitoring in order to both achieve new knowledge about the ethical aspects of the technology and to influence the direction of the emergent technologies towards realisation of health care values. Disciplines involved are besides applied ethics, psychology, informatics, and organisation theory. In this paper, the new research project will be used as a case for discussing problems and benefits with multi-disciplinary applied ethics.

From the beginning the researchers involved in the new project had to overcome some terminological misunderstandings and diversities. For example, a first step was to develop “taxonomy”. But what does that mean in this context? Another task was to construct a “dependency map”. What is that? These are just two examples of terms that were foreign to some project disciplines but established within others and hence created some initial misunderstandings. A first aim of the paper is to discuss how terminological differences can be overcome.

What methods in ethics are useful in this kind of projects? Which other disciplinary methods could be used? How can methods in ethics and other disciplines, for example psychology and informatics be combined? These are some question that will be discussed in the paper.

The purpose of the paper is to contribute to the methodological discussion within applied ethics and broader, to the methodology of multi-disciplinary research.

AUTHOR
Valérie Chanal and Chris Kimble

ABSTRACT

Communities of practice were originally described in terms of a set of emergent social arrangements, termed legitimate peripheral participation, that act as a vehicle for spontaneous and situated learning (Brown and Duguid 1991; Lave and Wenger 1991). Later, what was essentially a social dynamic within a relatively small group became, first, a theory of organizational learning (Wenger 1998) and was then presented as a tool for knowledge management (Wenger, McDermott et al. 2002), to be deployed by consultants as a component from their knowledge management toolboxes. The theory behind the ‘implementation’ of communities of practice, holds that it is possible to bring people together with the objective of sharing knowledge and then to ‘cultivate’ a community of practice that will produce a planned and predictable benefit for the host organization.

In our paper, we will portray this move as a shift from the spontaneous, emergent and creative groups described in the early work – to borrow a term from Hutchins (1995), communities that are ‘in the wild’ – to the cultivated, confined and controlled groups described in Wenger’s later works – in effect, communities that have been captured, tamed and domesticated.

This second view of ‘tame’ communities of practice has often lead them to being presented as a form of risk free, social-based technology for knowledge management (e.g. Lesser and Storck 2001). According to this view, traditional ICT tools will take charge of the more easily captured and codified explicit knowledge, while communities of practice provide a solution to the management of the more problematical tacit knowledge, which, because it cannot be transferred directly, is seen as a key source of competitive advantage (Grant 1996). From an organization’s standpoint, this view has some obvious attractions, but it is not without its problems.

Empirical studies of the ‘implementation’ of communities of practice suggest that it may not easy to create a community of practice to order. Gongla and Rizzuto (2004) note that when an organization ‘spotlights’ a community of practice and tries to manage it, the members may simply pretend to disperse and go underground. Similarly, Thompson (2005) provides an example of how a company attempted to ‘clone’ a community of practice and spread its example of ‘best practices’ throughout the organization. As with Gongla and Rizzuto’s example, in the end, the members of the group withdrew and the company only succeeded in stifling what it sought to nurture.

The objective of this paper is to examine the view that communities of practice can be used as a tool for KM by asking if it is possible to instrumentalize them. Within the context of our ‘wild’ vs ‘domesticated’ typology, the questions we ask are the following: can organizations instrumentalize communities of practice in order to create and share knowledge? What are the risks of instrumentalizing communities of practice? What (if any) part of communities of practice should stay wild and what parts can be domesticated in the service of organizational learning?

To answer these questions, we will use the findings of action research that was carried out in a small microelectronics firm over a period of two years (Cappe 2008). The company develops microelectronic systems for the medical, telecommunications, automotive and aerospace markets. An initial analysis of the knowledge management systems in this organization highlighted the limits of an existing intranet as a means of knowledge sharing. It appeared that the people who needed the technical knowledge it contained did not use it because the knowledge was not sufficiently ‘situated’. As a result of this study, the management of the company began to explore the possibility of setting up communities of practice to facilitate knowledge sharing in certain key technical and strategic areas.

The aspect of this case that is of particular interest and value is that it was possible to follow the design and development of two intentionally formed communities of practice from their very beginnings. These communities were formed around two groups of people who played a key role in the company: project managers and technical experts. Before this experiment, these two groups had little opportunity to meet and to exchange knowledge about their practices.

The results show that there were indeed some positive aspects to bringing people together in such a community of practice. For example, in the same way as the claims processors in Wenger’s study (Wenger 1998), it appeared to answer a deep demand for more social links between persons doing the same job in an organizational context of heavy control and tight quality management procedures. However, it also brought to the surface areas of friction, especially with the management of the company, with whom the conditions for the existence of these groups, their identity and their autonomy of action, had to be constantly negotiated.

The way an organization is capable of absorbing these tensions by redefining its own rules appears to be a key factor in the success of such an experiment. The outcome of the learning within a community of practice cannot be confined to the boundaries of the community. We observed that when the management resisted the group’s suggestions of improvement, this led to the demotivation of the members. This demotivation and resentment of the community’s members was linked to a search for legitimacy within a company where the only activities acknowledged as valuable were those that were project oriented.

Our conclusion is that the study illustrates that the instrumentalization of communities of practice is a managerial myth. Thinking of communities of practice as a safe and domesticated social-based KM technology is flawed. Rather we should think of the ‘implementation’ of communities of practice as an experiment that carries with it the risk of creating a potentially disruptive ‘untamed’ element that can act as a lever for unpredicted organizational change.

In the closing section of the paper, we indicate how this work could be developed further. We link the literature on communities of practice with that on organizational improvisation (Weick 1998) to argue that other forms of spontaneous social phenomena, such as storytelling (Salmon 2008), could be analyzed using a similar perspective. We believe that the connection between practice, often seen as a routinized way of doing something, and improvisation, usually seen as a creative and spontaneous act, is one that deserves further research.

REFERENCES

Brown, J. S. and P. Duguid (1991). “Organizational Learning and Communities of Practice: Toward a Unified View of Working, Learning, and Innovation.” Organization Science 2(1): 40-57.

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