The Operational Impact of Organizational Communities of Practice: A Bayesian Approach to Analyzing Organizational Change

John Cordery, Edward Cripps, Cristina Gibson, Christine Soo, B.L. Kirkman, J.E. Mathieu

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

29 Citations (Scopus)
437 Downloads (Pure)

Abstract

© The Author(s) 2014. Organizations are increasingly making use of communities of practice (CoPs) as a way of leveraging the dispersed knowledge and expertise of their employees. One important way in which CoPs are predicted to benefit organizations is by facilitating the transfer of best practices. In this study, we examined the impact of the introduction of global CoPs on changes made to operational procedures in three refineries operated by a multinational company over a period of more than 5 years. We used a Bayesian change point detection model to assess the probability that changes in the rate of adoption of new and revised operational procedures occurred following the introduction of CoPs. The results confirmed our predictions, providing support for the idea that CoPs benefit organizations by contributing to the development of better operational routines and demonstrating the utility of Bayesian techniques for assessing the impact of complex organizational change.
Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)644-664
JournalJournal of Management
Volume41
Issue number2
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 1 Feb 2015

Fingerprint

Dive into the research topics of 'The Operational Impact of Organizational Communities of Practice: A Bayesian Approach to Analyzing Organizational Change'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.

Cite this