Individuals come, individuals leave (retire, switch career, 躺平, whatever). How does an organisation ‘retains’ as much tacit institutional knowledge as possible? Documentations, guides, playbooks are some ways, but these have their limitations. Why? Becos meanings are not hard cold words, graphics, and videos, print, online, or otherwise. Humans are social beings, and meanings are socially negotiated in respective social contexts.
Communities (or societies?) are where knowledge ‘resides’, some pple would say. By forming professional learning communities (PLC; or otherwise commonly known as CoP, although the term ‘CoP’ includes various conceptions due to different interpretations of what “communities” meant), organisations create an additional avenue for retaining tacit institutional knowledge. But the value goes beyond knowledge retention (if knowledge can be ‘retained’; also note that documents, guides, playbooks stop here). Members of a PLC, through regular interactions, create new knowledge. Thus, the body of organisational knowledge continually grows and renews.
People in PLC don’t necessarily work together every day, but they are bounded by their respective activity systems at work, which may not be conducive for knowledge creation. In the PLC activity system, rules that encourage learning and creating knowledge together can be negotiated and practised by the community.
references: Engeström (1987);Wenger, McDermott, & Synder (2002)