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Knowledge Preservation Through Community of Practice pp 47–66Cite as

Preserving Knowledge Through Community of Practice

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Part of the book series: SpringerBriefs in Information Systems ((BRIEFSINORMAT))

Abstract

This chapter investigates knowledge preservation within a community of practice. The emerging relevance of knowledge preservation arises from the issue of loss of knowledge in organizations, which occurs because they are often unable to properly preserve knowledge after acquiring or developing it. Communities of practice provide a natural setting in which cultivating practice in a “social context” enables members to store collective knowledge over time and to recall it in the future. In this regard, communities of practice can be viewed as one of the most effective ways to preserve knowledge over time and distance. This chapter first aims to define and conceptualize “community knowledge preservation” by examining IS research, organizational literature and empirical evidence on communities of practice traced over time. Furthermore, it offers a different and deeper perspective to help us understand the phenomenon by exploring the mechanisms and tools enabling a community of practice to select, store and actualize explicit and tacit forms of collective knowledge.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Management, Accounting and Economics, University of Naples “Parthenope”, Naples, Italy

    Rocco Agrifoglio

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  1. Rocco Agrifoglio
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Correspondence to Rocco Agrifoglio .

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Agrifoglio, R. (2015). Preserving Knowledge Through Community of Practice. In: Knowledge Preservation Through Community of Practice. SpringerBriefs in Information Systems. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-22234-9_3

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