Year: 2019
Type: dissertation
Abstract: A community of practice (CoP) is a group of people who work together on an ongoing basis and share knowledge and expertise about common practices, problems, or topics. CoPs are increasingly being acknowledged as critical components in sectors such as health care and business management. Although the potential for CoPs to promote learning, knowledge mobilization, and other benefits is recognized, limited research exists on evaluating CoPs and little agreement is evident on approaches to evaluating CoPs. In particular, there is a scarcity of research and evaluation on extra-organizational CoPs. This dissertation starts with a scoping review of evaluation frameworks for CoPs, describing 16 evaluation frameworks and how they were applied or tested. These frameworks were not fully applicable to extra-organizational CoPs; hence, the impetus for the second study, which was to develop an evaluation framework adapted to this type of CoP. The proposed framework guides evaluators to systematically consider the types of value generated by extra-organizational CoPs and the level of analysis at which value occurs. The dissertation proceeds to assess the applicability of the proposed evaluation framework using qualitative interviews with an extra-organizational community of practice (CoPEH-Canada). The findings show that the evaluation framework proved to be comprehensive as a tool for collecting and analyzing data and framing results. The findings from the application of the framework were used to refine the framework and to better understand the potential value generated by extra-organizational CoPs. This dissertation has practical applications for evaluators, CoP members and other stakeholders; it makes a methodological contribution through the development and refinement of an evaluation framework; and it makes a theoretical contribution by expanding knowledge of extra-organizational CoPs and how they could be evaluated.
Source: TSpace (University of Toronto)
Author: Kaileah A. McKellar
Language: English
Subfield: Public Administration
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W3145502653