Inproceedings,
Communities of practice: Never knowingly undersold
CEUR Workshop Proceedings, 213, page 218--234. (2006)
Abstract
This paper was prompted by the growing ambiguity about what is meant by the term Community of Practice and what such communities are supposed achieve. Like John Lewis' famous tag-line "Never Knowingly Undersold", the term "Communities of Practice" has proved to be both durable and capable of holding many levels of meaning and seems like an appropriate metaphor for the way that the term Communities of Practice is used by some. This paper will show how the use of the term has changed from the early exploratory works of Lave and Wenger (1991), through the later, more theoretical, works of Wenger (1998a) to the current, more "business friendly", version propounded by Wenger, McDermott and Snyder (2002). It will argue that, just as when buying goods from a retailer, when dealing with the Community of Practice, one should also follow the dictum 'let the buyer beware'.
