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Communities of practice in the distributed international environment

Communities of practice in the distributed international environment Modern commercial organisations are facing pressures which have caused them to lose personnel. When they lose people, they also lose their knowledge. Organisations also have to cope with the internationalisation of business forcing collaboration and knowledge sharing across time and distance. Knowledge management (KM) claims to tackle these issues. This paper looks at an area where KM does not offer sufficient support, that is, the sharing of knowledge that is not easy to articulate. The focus in this paper is on communities of practice in commercial organisations. We do this by exploring knowledge sharing in Lave and Wenger's (1991) theory of communities of practice and investigating how communities of practice may translate to a distributed international environment. The paper reports on two case studies that explore the functioning of communities of practice across international boundaries. http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png Journal of Knowledge Management Emerald Publishing

Communities of practice in the distributed international environment

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Publisher
Emerald Publishing
Copyright
Copyright © 2000 MCB UP Ltd. All rights reserved.
ISSN
1367-3270
DOI
10.1108/13673270010315920
Publisher site
See Article on Publisher Site

Abstract

Modern commercial organisations are facing pressures which have caused them to lose personnel. When they lose people, they also lose their knowledge. Organisations also have to cope with the internationalisation of business forcing collaboration and knowledge sharing across time and distance. Knowledge management (KM) claims to tackle these issues. This paper looks at an area where KM does not offer sufficient support, that is, the sharing of knowledge that is not easy to articulate. The focus in this paper is on communities of practice in commercial organisations. We do this by exploring knowledge sharing in Lave and Wenger's (1991) theory of communities of practice and investigating how communities of practice may translate to a distributed international environment. The paper reports on two case studies that explore the functioning of communities of practice across international boundaries.

Journal

Journal of Knowledge Management – Emerald Publishing

Published: Mar 1, 2000

Keywords: Case studies

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