Abstract
This research aims at understanding how people share knowledge in
their everyday work in a project-based company. The social structures
for knowledge sharing are characterised as formal, informal, and
quasi-informal structures. They vary from those with high formalisation
to the informal, and even include structures which are invisible
and unrecognised in the organisation. They also vary in their composition.
They may share the same or different space, and communication is
based on face-to-face or virtual interaction. Data was collected
by means of documents and interviews (n=18) during the autumn of
2002 and the winter of 2003 from an Internet consultancy company.
The study shows the great variety of formal, informal, and quasi-informal
social structures that are used for knowledge sharing in the case
company. In all, sixteen different structures were found. The number
of formal structures is smaller than the number of informal ones.
Their analysis in terms of five dimensions also shows their great
heterogeneity.
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