Problem
Xerox Corporation enabled individual learning through a strategic community of practice. Consistent with our definition of a community of practice, the groups at Xerox included geographically distributed individuals from the headquarters as well as business units. However, these groups were somewhat different from a traditional community of practice because they were not voluntarily formed by the individuals themselves but instead were deliberately established by the top management at Xerox with the goal of providing strategic benefits through knowledge sharing. This is the reason Storck and Hill (2000) characterized them as "strategic" communities. One of these strategic communities, which had been tasked to help in the management of technology infrastructure, consisted of a large group of information technology professionals who provided leading-edge solutions, addressed unstructured problems, and stayed in touch with the latest developments in hardware and software. According to the group members surveyed by Storck and Hill, about two-thirds of the group's value resulted from face-to-face networking at the group's meetings. This attention to knowledge management by focusing on informal groups of employees has helped Xerox in its recent push in global services. Jim Joyce, a senior executive at Xerox remarked: "It is about understanding where knowledge is and how it is found. By working with human elements of this, there are real things you can do to help people embrace the technology and incorporate it into the workflow" (Moore 2001). Similarly, Tom Dolan, president, Xerox Global Services, recognized: "At the core of Xerox's heritage of innovation is a deep understanding of how people, processes and technology interact with each other in the creation of great work. As a result, our practical, results-oriented, knowledge management solutions can help businesses streamline work processes, enable better customer service, and grow revenue" (Business Wire 2002). Xerox has continued the use of communities of practice, with about 15 learning communities, including more than 1,000 employees being launched in 2007 and 2008. According to Kent Purvis, a managing principal with Xerox's global services division: "We know there is a groundswell of knowledge among our managing principals, along all the lines of business. Now there is a structure in place for sharing it"
In your answers, you must integrate the theory and facts from the case study rather than discussing them separately.
A. Explain Knowledge Management Mechanisms as part of the KM infrastructure, with examples from the case study.
B. Critically assess the importance of the human component in knowledge management with application to the case study.