Week 6, 6.3 Organizational unit

When Wenger uses the term ‘organizational unit’ you think of a large business, with many people and no distinguished people. It’s a large organisation, with no specific faces of people, where people are separated by numbers rather than names. This idea is describe as ‘distinct’ from communities of practice because Wenger is trying to emphasis the familiarity of people in the community, to show the ‘togetherness’ of them. ‘Communities of practice are not a new kind of organizational unit; rather, they are a different cut on the organization's structure—one that emphasizes the learning that people have done together rather than the unit they report to, the project they are working on, or the people they know’. This example from Wenger’s reading shows the idea that communities are different to organisations. For example, the members of a community are working together to reach an agreed target. Durkheim ideas of community are apparent here, where they have ‘shared norms and values’ and the sense of togetherness, rather than a large organisational unit where there is a hierarchy and each individual has to do their own work and report to someone else with it. The difference is shown in the following examples; an organisational unit will have a Manger an office worker and an office junior, and each member has their own specific tasks to do daily. A Community of Practice e.g. a Ballet School who have to pass a dance grade, all work together at the same level, learning routines in order to pass the exam. You could argue that an office does have aspects of a community of practice in the sense that the workers are all trying to reach an intending target or deadline and some characteristics of CofP are built up during this time, e.g. the different workers learning things from each other and the mutual agreement that they want to learn and work. But, Wenger would criticise this idea with the statement that CofP relationships do not disappear and grow; ‘It does not appear the minute a project is started and does not disappear with the end of a task’. CofP differ from this idea, because all the members come together and continue in the group for months, years etc, and will cross many boundaries and deadlines together and these relationships remain solid, rather than being built in times when the members need to pull together to reach a target, like it could be argued office workers do.