ANIMATION OF AN INTER-ORGANIZATIONAL COMMUNITY OF PRACTICE AS A CONDITION FOR IMPROVING PROFESSIONAL PRACTICES IN THE HEALTH AND SOCIAL FIELD

Abstract

Communities of practice are defined as groups of people involved in a common practice in order to improve it by sharing knowledge and experience. They are identified as privileged means of knowledge management, yet their animation remains poorly described. The research aimed at de-identifying the method of animation of an intentional inter-organisational community of practice around a project called ACESO for ACcompagnement Evolutif et SOlidaire. The animation was similar to “tercing third party” (Xhauflair and Pichault, 2012). “Tercing third party” draw on the experiences of the actors to develop their critical thinking, help them to take actions and maintain the changes over the time. In order to characterise the process that led to a transformation of practices, the qualitative analysis, mobilising data collected using complementary methods (interviews, focus groups, documentary analysis and participant observation), was based on the five dimensions of tercetisation. The analysis confirms the effectiveness of the five dimensions of tercetisation and identifies two others: the development of common values as the basis of a collaborative dynamic and the transformation of the « terced » into a “tercing third party” as a condition for the sustainability of the changes. Tercetisation facilitates knowledge management and the self-transformation of actors within the community of practice. The transformation of the « terced » into a “tercing third party” also facilitates dissemination within each of the project’s partner structures. These results allow us to better understand the interest of a “tercing third party” in animation of an intentional community of practice and in the management of inter-organizational knowledge.