There are very few papers on the usage of SNA for knowledge networking in the mining / industrial minerals industry. Some (undocumented) work has been done with Borax, but the most obvious one is a 2000 report from Laurence Lock Lee. In his paper, "Knowledge Sharing Metrics for Large Organisations" which can be downloaded here he provides some insight in the structure and creation of the BHP GMN (Global Maintenance Network), founded back in 1997.The Global Maintenance Network is formalized, and very much structured (facilitated, too), and according to the paper not a community of practice, which is largely unstructured.
The rationale for a facilitated network over a pure community of practice is the business need to meet performance targets and deadlines, which are less of a driver for communities of practice.
BHP has started a very simple yet (seemingly) effective social network mapping of the networks, using sociometric parameters. The fact that it was limited was not a problem, because it still enabled the assessment of the impacts of business unit membership (formal structure) and geographic location on network activity patterns. The paper itself reveals some of the more obvious findings, and some paths forward to overcome the hurdles of data collection for SNA through surveys.
This happened at 1:24:17 AM or
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