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Collaborative Processes and Knowledge Creation in Communities‐of‐Practice
Author(s) -
Breu Karin,
Hemingway Christopher
Publication year - 2002
Publication title -
creativity and innovation management
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.148
H-Index - 60
eISSN - 1467-8691
pISSN - 0963-1690
DOI - 10.1111/1467-8691.00247
Subject(s) - context (archaeology) , knowledge sharing , perspective (graphical) , process (computing) , knowledge management , business , community of practice , point (geometry) , informal learning , knowledge creation , public relations , marketing , sociology , computer science , political science , social science , paleontology , pedagogy , geometry , mathematics , artificial intelligence , biology , downstream (manufacturing) , operating system
This paper challenges the view of employees’ reluctance to share what they know, thus, attributing the ‘stickiness’ of knowledge to motivational factors. The study investigated informal mechanisms for knowledge sharing, taking a community‐of‐practice (CoP) perspective as a point of departure. A large‐sized organisation in the utilities sector provided the context of the research. Existing CoP theory is advanced by surfacing the motivations for participation in CoPs, by eliciting the contributions informal, self‐organising communities achieve in a commercial context and by documenting the process by which informal community activities become absorbed into the formal organisation.