Open AccessCommunities of practice with and without information technology
Author(s) -
Hara Noriko,
Kling Rob
Publication year - 2002
Publication title -
proceedings of the american society for information science and technology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
eISSN - 1550-8390
pISSN - 0044-7870
DOI - 10.1002/meet.1450390137
Subject(s) - knowledge management , community of practice , construct (python library) , ethnography , sociology , work (physics) , practice theory , public relations , political science , social science , engineering , computer science , mechanical engineering , anthropology , programming language
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.