A study on employees learning through communities of practices : case of Sabah Museum state department / Lediah Maun and Tracylyn Biug

Community of practice is defined as "a group of people who share an interest in a domain of human endeavor and engage in a process of collective learning that creates bonds between them" (Wenger, 2001, p. 1). It means the members in the CoP will:

a) Share their knowledge, information and experience.
b) Engage on discussions that will build the relationships.
c) In so doing indirectly form a community around the domain.

CoP is important in providing a means to exchange data, information and knowledge freely and indirectly breakdown communication isolation. Generally, there are two types of community of practice which are self organizing COP and Sponsored COP. Self organizing CoP is the original form of practice where the organization or the members of the organization itself are not aware of the existence of community of practice in their midst. CoP actually exists within them but they themselves did not realize it. Meanwhile, sponsored CoP is initiated, chartered and supported by the management. It means, CoP exists through management leads. In this context, the management is aware and is involve in the forming the community of practice in the organization. This is where the management itself helps the community to develop. CoP is important for the organization where it is part of learning towards the improvement of job within the members of the organization. In order to improve their job, the community of practice shared their knowledge and information between each other to learn something of what the other knows or has.