Enhancing communities of practice knowledge convergence through online collaboration activities

Enterprises highly specialized in a common set of skills and abilities often underperform because of a lack of knowledge convergence among stakeholders. This mixed methods sequential explanatory research investigated whether un-moderated or moderated groupdirected participation is better suited for knowledge creation and convergence within an online community of practice (CoP) for a law firm located in Jamaica. The quantitative phase of the research was a quasi-experimental design that measured the extent to which learning takes place by examining the relationship between the use of an online collaborative tool to discuss law specific scenarios and the resulting knowledge convergence that occurred by completing an online multiple-choice questionnaire. The post-test one-way between groups ANOVA revealed that (F 1,18) = 1.670, p = .213, MSerror = .072, alpha = .05. The multiple-choice post-test mean scores increased over the pretest scores from mu = 46.67 and mu = 40.00 to mu = 70.00 and mu = 58.00 respectively. This reflects a greater performance of the moderated group by 12%. The qualitative phase of the research constituted an exploratory single case study. This portion of the research used online scenarios and face-to-face interview questions interpreted through qualitative content analysis and the constant comparative method respectively. Analysis of the case studies and the interview questions revealed congruence and knowledge convergence in many themes. The conclusion gleaned from the triangulated analysis is that the firm may pursue moderated collaborative group activities online to build knowledge convergence among its CoP professionals.