Self organizing virtual communities

November 9, 2006 | article by Ken Thompson in Virtual Teams (46)

Major Oil Company, Schlumberger, exploits self-organizing virtual communities.

David Wessel reports in an article in the Wall Street Journal by David Wessel entitled Motivating Workers By Giving Them a Vote how in multinational organisations with thousands of employees spread all over the globe effectively sharing knowledge, expertise and experience can be a real headache.

The article describes the success Schlumberger have had in using online communities of practice with some 23 communities ranging from chemistry to well-engineering supporting 140 special-interest subgroups, and involving more than 11,750 employees as members.

Schlumberger attribute much of their success in this area to the decision they made to make the communities self-governing and even allowing each community to elect its own leaders.

Self-organisation is a critical success factor in sustainable biological communities.

Tags: self-managed teams, virtual communities

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Bioteams Books Reviews

BIOTEAMS book just published

March 5, 2008 | article by Ken Thompson in Book Reviews (37)

You followed the blog; you listened to the podcasts; you watched the movies; now read the book! "Bioteams: High Performance Teams Based on Nature's Most Successful Designs" is now available from Amazon.

Buy it now from:
Amazon.Com
Amazon.Co.UK

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