Although Communities of Practice have become a core concept in understanding how knowledge is managed within organizations, there have been few studies of the praxis of formation of Communities of Practice. In this article, we report on a Grounded Theory study of the members of a previously identified Community of Practice within the UK Higher Education Academy Psychology Network. In addition to providing data on the functioning of the community, the study also revealed a hitherto unrecognized form of community that exhibits all of the characteristics of CoPs yet has only a transient existence that seems to nucleate around an existing core community. Drawing on the metaphor of quantum behaviour, we termed these communities Quantum Communities of Practice. We describe a theory to explain this phenomenon that is grounded in the data from the study. We conclude by discussing the value and validity of our findings and methodology and indicating the next steps we will take in our research.
This paper presents a critical review of some of the claims made for CoPs. It will address questions such as "Are CoPs really suitable for use in a business setting?" and "Can a CoP ever be truly virtual?"
NGOs need to tackle the problems of effective communication that arise from their local-global nature. This paper examines Knowledge Management (KM) practices for use with portal technologies in order to promote Communities of Practice in both local and
Communities of Practice: Creating Learning Environments for Educators: Vol. 2 - contains links to authors and a full introductory chapter - deals with distributed CoPs
Communities of Practice: Creating Learning Environments for Educators: Vol. 1 - contains links to authors and a full introductory chapter - deals with co-located CoPs
Business narrative is a set of techniques based on the collection and interpretation of stories collected from a workplace. This technique is most effective when applied to seemingly intractable problems such as culture change, trust, innovation, leadersh
ASME's Communities of Practice is an online interaction tool designed with mechanical engineer's needs in mind: links to helpful resources, industry news and, more importantly, solutions and ideas from peers. It's much more than discussion boards, because there are many tools integrated into this site to help Communities of Practice members connect with each other. Access to the Communities of Practice site is open to both members and non-members of ASME.
Tomoye Releases 'Collective Intelligence' Tool, ebizq.net January 1, 2007
Tomoye, the Community of Practice Company™, today announced the launch of Tomoye Ecco 1.6, which introduces a new generation of communities of practice designed to leverage the latest workforce and technology trends including collective intelligence and social computing.
Tomoye, the Community of Practice Company™, today announced the launch of Tomoye Ecco 1.6, which introduces a new generation of communities of practice designed to leverage the latest workforce and technology trends including collective intelligence and social computing.
Communities of Practice (CoPs) are informal structures and not part of formal management line structures. They comprise members who do similar work, employ similar skills and face similar issues or have some other common interest in the work environment.
Masters thesis on social software (e.g., blogs, wikis, social bookmarking services)...and how they support learning, knowledge management, and communities of practice.
Systemic reform often involves partnerships between multiple communities of practice (CoP). In order to understand the strengths and challenges of a partnership, it is necessary to examine the objectives and practices of the constituent communities and th
ELISA is a successful professional community in Edinburgh, but where does it go next? Wendy Ball suggests that the next stage of development for such groups involves defining your purpose and continuing to question motives.
The workshop focuses on current research trends in technology enhanced learning solutions that aim at addressing the multiplicity and complexity of needs of Communities of Practice all along their lifecycle.
This paper examines the nature of virtual teams and their place in the networked economy. Using the evidence from two recent sets of studies, it highlights some of the barriers to effective virtual team working and demonstrates the critical importance of
This paper provides an overview of virtual teams in the information age, focussing on the definition of virtual teams, their salient characteristics, the communication issues they face (including information overload, geographic and social distance), th
This Working Paper is the outcome of a short study commissioned by Intercooperation on existing communities of practice (CoPs) in the development sector in India.
This paper presents a taxonomy of facilitation tasks that have to be carried out to support various COP processes that take place during the different stages in a COP’s life-cycle.
Review of "WHERE DID THAT COMMUNITY GO? - COMMUNITIES OF PRACTICE THAT DISAPPEAR" by Patricia Gongla and Christine R. Rizzuto Chapter 24 in Knowledge Networks: Innovation through Communities of Practice
Review of "UNDERSTANDING THE BENEFITS AND IMPACT OF COMMUNITIES OF PRACTICE" by Michael A. Fontaine and David R. Millen, Chapter 1 in Knowledge Networks: Innovation through Communities of Practice
This paper aims at giving a more detailed description and discussion of two concepts of “community” developed in the research areas of text production/writing and social learning / information management / knowledge sharing and comparing them with ea
In this study the global Information Systems academic community is viewed as a community of practice in which knowledge is resident but inadequately shared.
C. Kimble, F. Li, and A. Barlow. Virtual Teams: Contemporary Insights, Institute of Chartered Financial Analysts of India (ICFAI) University Press, (2004)
C. Kimble, P. Hildreth, and P. Wright. Knowledge Management and Business Model Innovation, Idea Group Publishing, Hershey (USA)/London (UK), November 2000.(2000)