In this article, just accepted
for publication in Management Learning,
we describe the Silver Academy, a project involving over 100 unemployed and
self-employed managers over the age of 50, who came together with the purpose
of sharing knowledge and experience in starting up their own businesses. The
starting point for the study was whether this group of demoralized managers who
had recently experienced traumatic redundancies from highly paid and
prestigious jobs could function as a community of practice – whether, in other words, they could function
as a community not only supporting each other emotionally but sharing
knowledge, skills and networks in radically restarting their lives outside the
corporate world. During the project we noted that the Academy successfully matched
the notion of a community of practice, in that participants built mutual
relationships, shared engagement in activities and came to regard themselves as
a ‘forum’, ‘support network’ and a ‘community of interest’. However, applying Bion’s (1961) theory of
groups, our study challenges the homogenous and consensual notion of a community of practice, illustrating how,
through unconscious group processes, some group members exhibited work-group
mentality and the capacity for realistic hard work (and leadership), while
others were caught in a basic-assumption mentality, prone to feelings of
anxiety, guilt and depression, or in the words of one participant becoming ‘a group of lost souls’. As a longitudinal, three year study, in
contrast to the more commonly undertaken cross-sectional studies, ours reveals
many of the intricate dynamics, fissures, splits and conflicts in a community
of practice that tend to go unreported.
We believe that our research
has considerable value at a time of great dislocations in employment patterns,
when automation and artificial intelligence will draw increasing numbers of
people (including professionals and managers) to situations similar to those
facing the members of the Silver Academy. Forming communities of practice aimed
at sharing knowledge may be a first step towards discovering new meaningful
work opportunities and restoring their careers. The success of such communities
of practice, however, will depend on the extent to which they will manage to
channel their energy and creativity to productive ends while managing
collective and individual anxieties.
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