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Communities of Practice

Fostering Peer-to-Peer Learning and Informal Knowledge Sharing in the Work Place

  • Book
  • © 2009

Overview

Authors:
  1. Noriko Hara

    1. Bloomington School of Library & Information Science (SLIS), Indiana University, Bloomington, USA

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  • New methods of informal learning with Co.
  • Includes supplementary material: sn.pub/extras

Part of the book series: Information Science and Knowledge Management (ISKM, volume 13)

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Table of contents (7 chapters)

  1. Front Matter

    Pages i-xi
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  2. Introduction

    Pages 1-6

  3. Theoretical Foundation

    Pages 7-23

  4. Ethnographic Accounts of a Community of Practice in Square County

    Pages 25-46

  5. Characteristics of a Community of Practice in Square County

    Pages 47-78

  6. Communities of Practice and Information Technologies in the Circle County Public Defender’s Office

    Pages 79-94

  7. Online Communities of Practice: Beyond Organizational Boundaries

    Pages 95-111

  8. Toward an Understanding of Communities of Practice

    Pages 113-124

  9. Back Matter

    Pages 125-137
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Keywords

About this book

1.1 Introduction Each year corporations spend millions of dollars training and educating their - ployees. On average, these corporations spend approximately one thousand dollars 1 per employee each year. As businesses struggle to stay on the cutting-edge and to keep their employees educated and up-to-speed with professional trends as well as ever-changing information needs, it is easy to see why corporations are investing more time and money than ever in their efforts to support their employees’ prof- sional development. During the Industrial Age, companies strove to control natural resources. The more resources they controlled, the greater their competitive edge in the mark- place. Senge (1993) refers to this kind of organization as resource-based. In the Information Age, companies must create, disseminate, and effectively use kno- edge within their organization in order to maintain their market share. Senge - scribes this kind of organization as knowledge-based. Given that knowledge-based organizations willcontinuetobeadrivingforcebehindtheeconomy, itisimperative that corporations support the knowledge and information needs of their workers.

Reviews

For two decades or more managers and theorists have argued about the role of Communities of Practice (CoPs) in Knowledge Management: how and why do they work or not work? can or should they be managed? do they or do they not contribute to sustained learning? This lucid and compelling book clears up the mess. After setting the theoretic scene, Hara uses her considerable skill as a trained ethnographer to provide accounts of CoPs in action, observing and reporting on the work of both face-to-face and online communities. She shows how CoPs produce, sustain and develop cultural knowledge in a process of localized organizational learning that supports members through good times and bad. Hara is a talented writer: the extended accounts of work in Public Defender work in two different County Courts are compelling reading. Specialists and non-specialists alike can learn from this text: Hara’s emphasis on identity and culture and her findings on the specific and varied effects of IT in Communities of Practice are important contributions to thinking about KM.

Elisabeth Davenport

Professor Emeritus

Napier University, Edinburgh

Authors and Affiliations

  • Bloomington School of Library & Information Science (SLIS), Indiana University, Bloomington, USA

    Noriko Hara

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