B203 Business Functions in Context – Revision Notes

Introduction

* Communities of Practice (Wenger, 2007) - are groups of people the come together to share knowledge and experiences and learn from one another whilst providing a social context for that work. Three characteristics are crucial:

1. The Domain - It has an identity defined by a shared domain of interest. Membership implies a commitment to this and therefore a shared competence that distinguishes members from other people. 2. Community - In pursuing their interest, members engage in joint activities and discussions, help each other, and share information. They build relationships that enable them to learn from each other. 3. Practice - Members of a
* New knowledge in a firm is acquired through what Cohendet and Simon describe as the ‘delicate balance’ between specialist communities and formal functional units

* Hard knowledge architectures are the functional units and hierarchical structures, often visible from organisational structure charts.

* Soft knowledge architectures are the communities that create specialised, innovative, organisational knowledge

Operations Management

* Is concerned with activities that produce goods or deliver services to the customer. Seen as the ‘doing’ part of the organisation it is typically responsible for around 70% of total costs.

* Relationship between the operations function and other core and support functions

* Transformation process

* Transformed resources – are treated transformed in a process, usually a mixture of material, information and customers

* Transforming resources – the resources that act on the transformed resources, usually classified as facilities

* Products = tangible, service = intangible

* Facilitating services – a those produced by an organisation to support its products. Facilitating products are the opposite

* 3 levels of operation and process