Although Communities of Practice have become a core concept in understanding how knowledge is managed within organizations, there have been few studies of the praxis of formation of Communities of Practice. In this article, we report on a Grounded Theory study of the members of a previously identified Community of Practice within the UK Higher Education Academy Psychology Network. In addition to providing data on the functioning of the community, the study also revealed a hitherto unrecognized form of community that exhibits all of the characteristics of CoPs yet has only a transient existence that seems to nucleate around an existing core community. Drawing on the metaphor of quantum behaviour, we termed these communities Quantum Communities of Practice. We describe a theory to explain this phenomenon that is grounded in the data from the study. We conclude by discussing the value and validity of our findings and methodology and indicating the next steps we will take in our research.
This paper presents a critical review of some of the claims made for CoPs. It will address questions such as "Are CoPs really suitable for use in a business setting?" and "Can a CoP ever be truly virtual?"
NGOs need to tackle the problems of effective communication that arise from their local-global nature. This paper examines Knowledge Management (KM) practices for use with portal technologies in order to promote Communities of Practice in both local and
Communities of Practice: Creating Learning Environments for Educators: Vol. 2 - contains links to authors and a full introductory chapter - deals with distributed CoPs
Communities of Practice: Creating Learning Environments for Educators: Vol. 1 - contains links to authors and a full introductory chapter - deals with co-located CoPs
Business narrative is a set of techniques based on the collection and interpretation of stories collected from a workplace. This technique is most effective when applied to seemingly intractable problems such as culture change, trust, innovation, leadersh
ASME's Communities of Practice is an online interaction tool designed with mechanical engineer's needs in mind: links to helpful resources, industry news and, more importantly, solutions and ideas from peers. It's much more than discussion boards, because there are many tools integrated into this site to help Communities of Practice members connect with each other. Access to the Communities of Practice site is open to both members and non-members of ASME.
C. Kimble, F. Li, and A. Barlow. Virtual Teams: Contemporary Insights, Institute of Chartered Financial Analysts of India (ICFAI) University Press, (2004)
C. Kimble, P. Hildreth, and P. Wright. Knowledge Management and Business Model Innovation, Idea Group Publishing, Hershey (USA)/London (UK), November 2000.(2000)
C. Kimble, and P. Hildreth. Encyclopaedia of Communities of Practice in Information and Knowledge Management, Idea Group Publishing, Hershey (USA)/London (UK), October 2005.(2005)
C. Kimble. Innovative Approaches for Learning and Knowledge Sharing, EC-TEL 2006 Workshops Proceedings, 213, page 218 - 234. Knossos, Crete, Sun SITE Central Europe, (2006)