IT Supports for Communities of Practice: An Empirically-based Framework

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Date
2002
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Volume Title
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Rob Kling Center for Social Informatics
Abstract
Despite strong interest among practitioners and scholars, the study of communities of practice (CoPs) and Information Technology (IT) is short of empirical research. This paper presents a theoretical framework for communities of practice and provides alternative perspectives on IT supports for communities of practice. The framework was developed based on the literature and ethnographic case studies of communities of practice within two organizations. The study examines how people share and construct their knowledge and how they use collaborative IT to support work practices in two organizations. The surprising finding is that the groups that used IT most intensively had the least well-developed CoPs. The results of the study would inform practice and research in Knowledge Management.
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Keywords
social informatics, community of practice, CSCW, CoP, knowledge management, IT
Citation
Hara, N., & Kling, R. (2002). Communities of practice with and without Information Technology. Proceedings of the 65th annual meeting of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, 39, 338-349.
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Working Paper