Draft Paper for the Conference “Advancing Knowledge and the Knowledge
Economy” 10-11 January 2005 at the National Academies, Washington, DC
On Knowing communities1
Patrick Cohendet
Université Louis Pasteur (BETA) Strasbourg, and HEC Montréal.
In a Knowledge-Based Economy, behind the scene of the “visible” infrastructure of
knowledge defined by the hierarchy, firms can be considered as a set of knowing
communities that are complementary and productive in terms of knowledge accumulation
and generation. A knowing community can be defined as a gathering within the
organization of individuals who accept to exchange voluntarily and on a regular basis
about a common interest or objective in a given field of knowledge. The literature
identifies many types of knowing communities amongst which the main forms are
communities of practice (focusing on the accumulation and exploitation on a given field
of knowledge) and epistemic communities (focusing on the exploration of a new field of
knowledge). For the firm, communities are repositories of useful knowledge, which is
embedded in their daily practices and habits. Through this regular exchange, common
cognitive platforms and common social norms are built and will guide the newcomers’
behaviours.
As Brown and Duguid (1991) suggest, the firm can be viewed “as a collective of
communities, not simply of individuals, in which enacting experiments are legitimate,
separate community perspectives can be amplified by inter-changes among communities.
Out of this friction of competing ideas can come the sort of improvisational sparks
necessary for igniting organizational innovation. Thus large organizations, reflectively
structured, are perhaps well positioned to be highly innovative and to deal with
discontinuities. If their internal communities have a reasonable degree of autonomy and
1
This paper is issued from a series of work in process carried out at BETA Strasbourg, with M.Diani,
O.Dupouet, E.Schenck and F.Créplet. It also benefited from a discussion at the Conference in honor of Bart
Nooteboom, nov 25 and 26th 2004, University Erasmus of Rotterdam.
independence from the dominant worldview, large organizations might actually
accelerate innovation”.
As Wenger (1998) noted, a community drawing on interaction and participation to act,
interpret and innovate, acts “as a locally negotiated regime of competence”. Therefore,
communities are suppliers of sense and collective beliefs for agents and play a central
role of coordination in the firm. However, as an organisational mechanism, communities
have limits. In particular, being focused on a given domain of knowledge they do not
lead naturally to diversity. Diversity in organisation can be obtained by the interaction
between different communities
One of the key questions is thus the following: how within a given organisation
communities interact, and more precisely what is the meaning, the role and the
importance of the notion of “cognitive distance “between communities. The concept of
cognitive distance has been introduced in the literature by Bart Nooteboom (1992).
However, if a great deal of effort in the literature has been to investigate the cognitive
distance between individuals or between members of a given learning community (role
and type of trust in the formation of the community, focus on exploration or exploitation
attitude within a given community, etc…), less efforts have been done in analysing the
cognitive distance between learning communities. The contribution will thus try to extend
the concept of cognitive distance to the key question of interactions between
heterogeneous communities.
Intuitively, we can assume that as for individuals, too distant communities within a firm
will not lead to innovative solutions. But if the cognitive distance between communities
is too small the innovative potential of the firm will fade away. However, the interactions
between communities reveal specific properties. More than interaction between
individuals in an organisation, the interaction between communities can be conceived as
a game of language and translation depending on the one side on the habits and social
norms of the respective communities, and on the other side on the number and behaviour
of “browsers” (individuals who navigate between different communities).
Last but not least, this game is arbitrated by the hierarchy. This raises the issue of the
delicate matching between the “visible” hierarchical structure of the firm and the
“invisible” process of active knowledge formation that occurs within the myriad of
communities in a given firm. A too strict control of hierarchy enforcing members to
follow the rules decreed by the “visible structures” would prevent the firm to benefit and
derive value from the knowledge accumulated by the “invisible communities”. Such
decisions certainly would not have eliminated the functioning of community (people
would continue to talk and exchange about their practices), but the useful knowledge
accumulated at the level of the respective communities would presumably have been
hampered to flow to the rest of the organization. The hierarchy cannot influence the
internal functioning of communities, but can find ways to let the knowledge accumulated
by communities flow and bring value to the firm. On the other hand, leaving to the
communities the all process of knowledge creation and formation will expose the firm to
risks of incoherence, inconsistency and anarchy. To a large extent, hierarchy is in charge
of the fine tuning of the cognitive distance between communities.
1. Knowing communities.
In this contribution, we will consider the notion of knowing communities as a general
one, without specific distinction. However, it is important to recall that the literature
distinguishes two main specific types of cognitive communities:
(i)
Communities of practice: the concept was emphasized by Lave and Wenger (1991)
who identified the existence of groups of persons engaged in the same practice,
communicating regularly with one another about their activities. Members of a
community of practice essentially seek to develop their competencies in the practice
considered. Communities of practice can then be seen as a means to enhance
individual competencies, and this goal is reached through the construction, the
exchange and the sharing of a common repertoire of resources (Wenger, 1998).
Self-organization is an essential characteristic of communities of practice.
(ii)
Epistemic communities: are small groups of “knowledge-creating agents who are
engaged on a mutually recognized subset of questions, and who (at the very least)
accept some commonly understood procedural authority as essential to the success
of their collective activities.” (Cowan et al., 2000, p. 234). Because of agents’
heterogeneity, for the sake of knowledge creation, the first task of epistemic
communities is to create a codebook. And as agents lack of deeply shared values,
knowledge creation mode is much like a form of externalisation (conversion of tacit
into explicit knowledge in the sense of Nonaka and Takeuchi, 1995).
As the Knowledge based economy will expand, we consider that these knowing
communities will play an increasing role, because they can take in charge, through the
passion and commitment of the members of the community to a common goal or
practice, of some significant parts of the ‘sunk costs’ of the process of generation or
accumulation of specialized parcels of knowledge. These sunk costs (and more generally,
fixed costs) correspond for instance to the progressive construction of languages and
models of action and interpretation that are required for the implementation of new
knowledge, that cannot be covered through the classical signals of hierarchies (or
markets). This setting is likely to compensate for some organizational limitations
(learning failures) that firms are facing when confronted with the need to continuously
innovate and produce new knowledge.
2. Properties of knowing communities.
As informal groups, knowing communities exhibit specific characteristics that distinguish
them from the traditional organised entities usually analyzed in economics or business
science:
 Communities have no clear boundaries, and there is no visible or explicit hierarchy at
the top of them that can control the quality of work or the respect of any standard
procedure.
 It has been repeatedly argued that what holds the community together is the passion
and commitment of each of its members to a common goal, objective or practice in a
given domain of knowledge. Thus, the notion of contract is meaningless within the
members of the community, and in particular there is a priori no motive to think of
any financial or contractual incentive devices to align the behaviour of the members
of the community.
 The interactions between members of the community are governed by a type of trust
grounded in the respect for the common social norms of the community. Trust within
the community can be measured when one can observe that the behaviours of the
participants, exposed to an unexpected event, are not guided by any form of
contractual scheme, but by the respect of the social norm of the group.
 The recent literature has emphasised that some of the specific motives that guide the
behaviours of members of the community could have an economic interpretation.
Frequency of interactions within the community considerably reduces opportunistic
behaviours. With repeated interactions, hold-ups and moral hazard problems will be
attenuated through the creation of norms of cooperation and routines2 as well as the
intensification of reputation mechanisms. Therefore, a large part of agency problems
will be resolved spontaneously in the Knowledge-based economy.
 The validation of the knowledge takes place in first analysis within a given
community. In the same way, the interpretation of the knowledge provided by the
outside (in particular by the hierarchy) is examined, criticized and reprocessed (to
lead sometimes to creative adaptations) within communities.
All the above features that characterize learning communities contribute to make it clear
the differences between communities and the other forms of coordination units that can
be found within the firm:
 Knowing communities differ from functional groups. Contrary to communities, these
units are under the responsibility of a hierarchy at the top of them, with clear
boundaries separating those belonging to the unit and those apart. Of course, such
functional units can contribute to the process of accumulation of knowledge.
However, when compared to communities (where cognitive links are continuously
activated and enhanced “naturally” between members), these units require
considerable efforts to be made in order to activate the conservation of routines, the
2
The ‘truce’ hypothesis in Nelson and Winter’s routine analysis.



power of replication of the routines, and the continuous improvement of the routines
between members. Moreover, while communities are loci of active and deliberate
learning processes between members in order to create, exchange and accumulate
knowledge, functional units are mainly characterized by passive modes of learning,
such as for instance “learning by doing”, which has been heavily described by the
literature.
Knowing communities differ from project teams, or task forces. These teams of
employees with heterogeneous skills and qualifications are often co-ordinated by
team leaders and put together to achieve a particular goal in a given period of time.
Communities may share some common traits with teams: for instance the group
interest generally coincide with the interest of the members, as noted by Marschak
(1954). However, there is no visible hierarchy in communities, nor any constraint of
time in the process of knowledge generation and accumulation.
Knowing communities differ from coalitions in the sense that the strategic calculation
of agents does not generally determine their adherence to a given community.
Moreover, a coalition has by definition a clear boundary, contrary to communities.
Knowing communities differ from cliques in network theories. If cliques share with
communities the characteristic of having no clear boundaries, they differ in the sense
that the relationships between agents within a clique do not express generally
cognitive dimension. They do not address a clear objective of creation and
accumulation of knowledge.
Knowing communities are repositories of useful knowledge, which is embedded in their
daily practices and habits. The local daily interactions constitute an infrastructure that
supports an organizationally instituted learning process that drives the generation and
accumulation of knowledge by the community. Most of the time, the accumulation of
knowledge by a given community is shaped by a dominant mode of learning (such as ‘by
circulation of best practices’) adopted by the community, and can circulate through the
existence of a local language understandable by the members only. As Wenger (1998)
noted, a community drawing on interaction and participation to act, interpret and
innovate, acts “as a locally negotiated regime of competence”. The communal setting
provides the context, in which the collective beliefs and the representations structuring
the individual choice are built. Communities allow the strengthening of individual
commitments in an uncertain universe. Individuals remain attentive to the specific
contexts and can therefore update the shapes of their co-operative engagements.
Therefore, communities are suppliers of sense and collective beliefs for agents and play a
central role of coordination in the firm.
However, once a community has achieved these cognitive steps in a given specialized
field of knowledge, the issue is to what extent this knowledge can be transmitted to the
rest of the organization: to the “visible” hierarchical structure and to the myriad of other
communities in the firm. Moreover, nothing guarantees a priori the systematic
concordance of interests and objectives of the different communities on the spot.
Constituent communities of the organization are not necessarily all homogeneous or
convergent toward a common objective. Risks of inter-communal conflicts, autism or
parochial partitioning are latent. The coherence of the firm and the existence of common
referential systems become therefore crucial questions. The co-existence of hierarchies
and communities within the firm poses the problem of the spontaneous or deliberate
emergence of referential systems structuring individual and collective beliefs constructed
in the process of decision.
3. Cognitive distance between communities.
As discussed in Nooteboom (1992) in order to achieve a specific joint goal, the categories
of thought of the people involved must be co-ordinated to some extent. Different people
have a greater or lesser 'cognitive distance' between them (Nooteboom 1992, 1999a). A
large cognitive distance has the merit of novelty, but the problem of incomprehensibility.
In view of this, organizations need to reduce cognitive distance, i.e. achieve a sufficient
alignment of mental categories, to understand each other, utilize complementary
capabilities and achieve a common goal. This yields the notion of organization as a
'focusing device'. “Since mental categories have developed on the basis of interaction
with others, in a sequence of contexts that make up experience, there will be ‘cognitive
distance’ between people with different experiences, and cognitive similarity to the extent
that people have interacted within a shared experience (though we do not wish to imply
that ‘cognitive distance’ allows for any simple, one-dimensional scale). Cognitive
distance yields both a problem and an opportunity. The opportunity is that we learn from
others only when they see and know things differently. In the absence of claims of
objective knowledge, interaction with others is the only path we have to correct our
errors. The problem is that people may not understand each other and have to invest in
understanding” (Nooteboom and .., organization science, 2004).
The literature on cognitive distance mostly investigates the cognitive distance between
individuals. The above developments claim for a different way to look at cognitive
distance, by examining the nature of the interactions between communities.To do so,
considering that the unit of analysis is the community, let us focus on how to describe the
nature of interactions between communities. In other ways, what is the meaning of a
“strong” or a “weak” interaction between communities? We propose to explore this issue
through two main hypotheses:
Our first hypothesis is that the structure of interactions between communities can be
defined by two main factors: the repetitiveness of interactions between communities, and
the quality of communication between communities which could be assimilated to the
cognitive distance between communities. Indeed, the two phenomena have common
features, but distinguishing them is important to clarify the different contexts of
interactions between communities.
 The repetitiveness of interactions between communities expresses the “quantitative”
dimension of the relationships between communities3. Some communities may meet
frequently (e.g. workers and managers using the same canteen), and this can generate
some benefits for the firm (e.g. formation of a certain common knowledge,
circulation of news that ‘something isn’t going well’), even though the intensity of
communication between them is low (e.g. minimal common language or grammar to
improve the circulation of knowledge between the communities).
A high degree of repetition of interactions between knowing communities contributes
to stimulate the processes of learning, create favourable conditions for the resolution
of conflicts, and encourage the realization of economies of scale. Organizational
devices, such as group projects or frequent meetings encouraging the socialization of
experiences, are regularly introduced by the management to compensate for the lack
of spontaneous interaction between heterogeneous communities. This enables us to
better understand the importance given to the construction of privileged learning
platforms by firms (‘ba’ in the sense of Nonaka and Konno, 1998). Frequent
quantitative interactions between communities contribute to lower the cognitive
distance between communities, but do not guarantee in the long term the existence of
a common grammar and codes between heterogeneous units.

3
The quality of communication between communities expresses the “qualitative”
dimension of the relationships between communities. Some communities can be
joined together through a rich texture of communication, even if the quantitative
‘degree of repetition’ of interaction is low. Minzberg (1979), for example, quotes the
well known example of operations in hospitals, where the members of the different
communities involved (surgeons, aenesthetists, nurses) meet infrequently but when
they do so, they know exactly what to do and how to work together (thanks to the
possibility of communication provided during their respective training). . Circulation
of knowledge in an innovating firm is based essentially on the sharing of codes and
languages allowing various communities to interact. Thus, it is a question of
relational or cognitive proximity (Nooteboom, 2000) between distributed units,
requiring attention to syntactic, semantic and pragmatic communication, shared tacit
We have simplify the analysis of the quantitative dimension of the interaction between communities by
focusing only on one characteristic (the frequency of interaction). Bart Nooteboom suggested a richer
definition based on 4 characteristics (one of them being the frequency of interaction): “In our view, the
‘strength of ties’ has four aspects. One aspect is intensity, which refers to the effort and commitment of
resources involved, and to the scope of activities taken up in the tie (share of total activities). The resources
that are committed are not necessarily only resources of money, time, or effort, and may also include
psychological resources (commitment, loyalty, fairness, and empathy). A second aspect is frequency of
interaction, a third is openness of communication, and a fourth is duration of ties. Strong ties yield shared
experience, which reduces cognitive distance. Durable ties enable the development of empathy and
identification (McAllister 1995; Lewicki and Bunker 1996; Hansen 1999) as a basis for trust”.
knowledge, flow and interpretation of information, and trust or other conventions of
collaboration.
As a result, the specific combinations of the two dimensions (repetitiveness of
interactions and quality of communication) lead to four different organizational contexts
corresponding to different structure of interactions between communities (cf. table 1).
Low quality of communication
between communities
High quality of communication
between communities
Low repetitiveness of
High repetitiveness of
interactions between
interactions between
communities
communities
Weak interactions (weak ties,
Moderate interactions I (Strong
strong cognitive distance)
ties, strong cognitive distance)
Moderate interactions II (Weak
Strong interactions (strong
ties, Weak cognitive distance).
ties, weak cognitive distance)
Table 1: Different types of organizational contexts of interactions between communities
within the firm.
From the above, it follows that the coherence of the firm requires that hierarchical
structures (including the style of management, the system of decision-making, etc.)
should vary with the organizational contexts of interactions between communities. If
hierarchies cannot influence the internal functioning of a given community, they can
influence the nature of interactions between communities4. In order to extract the
4
Learning communities tend to maintain a cognitive distance vis-à-vis the exterior in particular vis-à-
vis the hierarchy of the organization. The “creative disobedience” is in particular expressed in the
classical example of the “rep” from Xerox, than reinterpret in the own jargon rules and norms of the
community the codified orders that are coming from the hierarchy. This natural tendency could be
interpreted in terms of cognitive dissonance. Cognitive dissonance is a psychological phenomenon
which refers to the discomfort felt at a discrepancy between what you already know or believe, and
new information or interpretation. It therefore occurs when there is a need to accommodate new ideas,
and it may be necessary for it to develop so that we become "open" to them. Neighbour (1992) makes
the generation of appropriate dissonance into a major feature of tutorial (and other) teaching: he shows
how to drive this kind of intellectual wedge between learners' current beliefs and "reality". Cognitive
dissonance has two major effects on learning:
* if someone is called upon to learn something which contradicts what they already think they know —
particularly if they are committed to that prior knowledge — they are likely to resist the new learning.
Accommodation is more difficult than Assimilation, in Piaget's terms.
* if learning something has been difficult, uncomfortable, or even humiliating enough, people are not
likely to admit that the content of what has been learned is not valuable. To do so would be to admit
that one has been "had", or "conned". It is not, however, the qualities of the course which are
significant, as the amount of effort which participants have to put in: so the same qualification may
well be valued more by the student who had to struggle for it than the student who sailed through
potential benefits from inter-community interactions, the role, the nature and the design
of hierarchies should strongly differ according to the different organizational contexts. In
a knowledge-based context, where an increasing part of useful knowledge is hold by
communities, the delicate matching between the functioning of autonomous communities
and the hierarchical system heavily depends on the context of interactions between
communities. We thus consider that the degree of repetition of interactions, combined
with the likeness of representations due to rich communication modes between
communities are the essential elements to understand not only the convergence of actor
anticipations, and adaptation to common norms, but also the coherence of the firm as a
whole.
Obviously, there is no “ideal” organizational configuration for knowledge-creation (a one
best way). Each configuration might be fitting to a specific environment. But we argue
that as the Knowledge based economy develops, decentralized configurations as
proposed above (cases 3 and 4 in Table 1), will be increasingly salient. Cowen and Parker
(1997, p. 28) explain with respect to internal organization that “market changes are
moving manufacturing farther and farther away from steady-state, low variety, long-batch
production runs, relevant to Taylorist methods, to high variety and small runs…
Organizations are adopting new forms of decentralization to cope with the instability,
uncertainty, and pace of change of the market-place… In cluster or network working,
employees of undifferentiated rank may operate temporarily on a certain task or tasks in
teams. The clusters are largely autonomous and engage in decentralized decision-making
and planning… They are conducive to individual initiative (intrapreneurship) and faster
decision-taking. They facilitate organizational flexibility.”
3.2 Interaction between communities and cognitive distance: a discussion.
The implications of the above hypotheses lead the following typology (table I) of
interactions between communities.
1. The first category (low repetitiveness of interactions between communities, low
quality of communication between communities), corresponds to a situation where
communities do not interact in the organization and have not means to do so. Thus,
the coherence of the firm and the innovative impulse of the organization have to come
from an external entity. In such cases, the essence of coordination relies on intensive
managerial coordination, that establishes ex-ante top-down rules and procedures to be
followed by the entire organization, and centralizes the global vision of the product
creation process in what can be called the traditional sequential process mode of
management (as in a typically Taylorist organization). The strong division of work
relies on specialized units that do not interact on a frequent basis, and do not develop
rich modes of communication. Classic incentive and coordination mechanisms such
as Taylorist time and motion management principles drive decision-making.
Management by design clearly dominates management by communities (Amin,
Cohendet, 2004), although local mechanisms of learning in communities (e.g. at shop
floor level) can transmit learning-by-doing effects at the global level of the
organization. In this particular environment, the cognitive distance between
communities does not change through time. Communities remain distant, and there is
no force in the organization that favors a reduction of the cognitive distance between
communities.
2. The second category (high repetitiveness of interactions, low quality of
communication between communities) corresponds to the overlapping problem
solving mode (as in matrix-types of organizations), that aims at bridging and crossfertilizing through repeated informational exchanges between specialized groups in
the organization. When some groups gathering members of different communities are
formed, these groups (such as team projects) are temporary, and each individual
keeps the jargon and codes of his community of origin. The absence of a rich
architecture of communication between the groups leads to an expensive search for a
cognitive consensus between communities, and call for active managerial
involvement, mostly ex-post, to solve disputes and conflicts between communities,
but also designated to implement common knowledge and to co-ordinate beliefs
while producing sense.
The low intensity of communication between communities, especially noticeable in
emergent relations built around many communities, can lead to an expensive search
for cognitive alignment between communities. Co-ordination by leadership
(necessarily conscious and intentional) appears to be the ideal solution in instances
where the costs of communication or compatibility are onerous or where the
resolution of coordination problems is urgent. Therefore, a script of leadership
emerges, charged with coordinating intricate actions or beliefs while producing sense.
Foss (1999) has shown that, in some circumstances, leadership can offer less
expensive solutions than complex mental processes or formation of conventions.
This type of situation also requires a specific coupling between management by
design and management by communities. Part of the solution might reside in the
hands of ‘middle management” that plays, for authors such as Nonaka and Takeuchi,
a decisive role in the innovative quality of the business. The middle managers can be
seen as mediators who know the norms and habits of the communities sufficiently
well to translate messages of the hierarchy into a jargon intelligible to different
communities, and in turn, to translate the messages coming from communities for the
hierarchy.
In such contexts, the high frequency of interactions between communities may reduce
the cognitive distance between them. However, the reduction of the cognitive
distance is an uncertain long term result that may depend on other characteristics of
the relationship between communities such as the duration of the interactions
(Nooteboom, 2004). For instance in short term projects, it is unlikely that the
interactions between agents during the project have significant impacts on the
cognitive distance between communities.
3. The third category (low repetitiveness of interactions and high intensity of
communication between communities) corresponds to the existence of cognitive
structures of interaction between communities. The modular organization, based on
cognitive platforms that allow rather independent heterogeneous communities to
interact efficiently, is the emblematic example of this situation. In such contexts,
learning at the component level is insulated from disruptions by unexpected changes
in product architecture during development projects.
The role of hierarchy is to define ex ante the nature of the platform, and ex post to
redefine the platform if radical innovations are unavoidable. The existence of such an
infrastructure of knowledge (common grammar, common codes, common languages)
may be due to very different historical factors (a type of education that has anticipated
the cognitive forms of relationships between heterogeneous communities, shared
experience that has lasted long enough to permit a common grammar to be built, a
decision taken by the hierarchy to build a modular platform of knowledge, etc.). But
whatever the reason, the common infrastructure of knowledge has taken time and
sunk costs to be built. It not only defines what the communities have in common, but
it also implicitly defines what they do not have in common. Standardized interfaces
between each community and the common platform of knowledge allow each
community to work independently of others. This implies specific advantages, in
particular the fact that, provided that the platform holds, the need for coordination by
hierarchy is significantly reduced.
The functioning of the modular system implies that the cognitive distance between
heterogeneous communities is maintained constant. The innovativeness of the global
system results from the freedom offered to each community to explore in-depth the
variety of options in its specialised field of knowledge, provided that the standard
interfaces are respected.
In this case, management by communities temporarily dominates management by
design. However, if the constraint of the interfaces cannot be respected, then the
efficacy of the common platform becomes severely questioned. This could happen, for
example, when emergent innovations in one community imply the reformulation of
the whole cognitive platform. In such a context, sense-making interventions by the
hierarchy may be needed to decide if the novelty produced requires reformulating the
common platform. If so, a new cognitive process of definition of a common grammar,
codes, language has to be initiated. In summary, the role of the hierarchy is to
intervene at critical moments when the need to reformulate a common platform of
knowledge between communities is perceived as essential. Category 3 is thus a case
where management by design and management by communities sequentially alternate
as dominant modes of coordination.
4. In this fourth category (high repetitiveness of interactions and high intensity of
communication between communities), we can envisage governance by community
alone, with hierarchy needed only to ‘authorize’ or ‘enact’ the organizational forms
produced by the interactive autonomous communities. The organization can
extensively operate in a self-organized manner as one is located in either a
consolidated or an emergent context. It is probable that in such a situation, the
unceasing efflorescence of communities allows the organization to innovate
constantly. This mode could be called management by enactment, echoing the work
done by Ciborra (1996) who described the knowledge platform at Olivetti in such
terms.
The organization can largely operate in a self-organised manner (including the
determination of its core interests, which can occur without excessive market or
hierarchical intervention) in either a consolidated or an emergent context. It is
probable that in such a situation, the unceasing bubbling of communities allows the
organization to innovate constantly since it does not disrupt corporate integrity (this
dimension can be related to the creative spiral as conceived by Nonaka and Takeuchi,
1995). In such a context, where management by communities clearly dominates
management by design, the main role of the hierarchy is to enact the innovative
outcomes produced by the constant interactions of communities.
This situation is the most complex one for understanding the evolution of the cognitive
distance between communities. Indeed, the cognitive distance between communities can
vary for different reasons.
- The first effect on cognitive distance could simply be the existence at a given
moment of time of a common cognitive structure of interaction that holds the
communities together by maintaining at the same time a relative cognitive
distance between communities. However, the main difference here with the
previous case of modularity, is that the cognitive distance is not constant
through time. The cognitive platform is evolving through time, so does the
cognitive distance between communities.
- The second effect on cognitive distance between communities is due to
constant efforts of codification made by each respective community to
convince the other communities of the interest of what they have discovered.
This effort of codification could be appreciated in the perspective of the
“translation “principle put forward by Callon (1999). Each community is
involved in a process of translation to impulse the creative ideas and
principles to other communities. As codification efforts progress, the
cognitive distance between communities is mitigated. However, the reduction
-
of the cognitive distance actually operates only along the innovative domain
which is concerned.
The third effect is the result of the quantitative interactions between
communities that frequently meet. This effect could be reinforced when some
members of a given community are also members of another community.
They act as translators and facilitators of cognitive exchanges.
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