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Supporting Virtual Communities of Practice

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Industrial Knowledge Management
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Abstract

The importance of knowledge sharing and reuse in knowledge management in order to share best practice and prevent duplication of effort has led to much interest in the concept of communities of practice. Trends towards flexible working and globalisation have led to interest in the use of technology to support geographically dispersed communities. In this paper, we describe a system which facilitates and encourages the sharing of information between communities of practice within (or perhaps across) organisations and which encourages people to interact where there are mutual concerns or interests. We discuss the extent to which knowledge flow through an organisation is supported and describe a number of factors that we have found relevant to the success or otherwise of virtual communities of practice.

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© 2001 Springer-Verlag London

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Davies, J. (2001). Supporting Virtual Communities of Practice. In: Roy, R. (eds) Industrial Knowledge Management. Springer, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4471-0351-6_13

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4471-0351-6_13

  • Publisher Name: Springer, London

  • Print ISBN: 978-1-4471-1075-0

  • Online ISBN: 978-1-4471-0351-6

  • eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive

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