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Communities of practice (CoPs) are an emerging, unstructured organizational form that many believe will help companies to truly leverage what they know. CoPs appear to have the potential to galvanize knowledge sharing, learning, and change thereby improving a company's performance and making it more competitive. However, a major problem with them is that their organic and informal nature makes them highly resistant to management supervision and interference in their activities. CoPs are therefore controversial because there is no clear role for management in them. In fact, if management does get involved, the community often dissipates. Yet paradoxically, CoPs require specific managerial efforts to develop and support them so that their full power can be leveraged. To discuss CoPs and their role in organizations, the authors convened a focus group of knowledge managers from a variety of industries. To help them prepare for the session, participants were given a series of questions to consider in advance on how management can and should develop and facilitate CoPs. This paper discusses the challenges and successes they have had in implementing CoPs and makes recommendations for practising knowledge managers who wish to encourage and support the development of CoPs in their organizations. It concludes that communities of practice have the potential to dramatically change how enterprises operate and compete because they are the mechanism through which knowledge gets both created and turned into action. While they are made possible by technologies that enable people to share insights and ideas around the world, they are first and foremost a social mechanism. Over the next few years, we can expect to see CoPs evolve and new management techniques develop as we learn new ways to leverage knowledge to create value. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents a list of contributors and their affiliations to volume 1 publication of the periodical in the U.S. They include Suzie Allard, who is chair of the American Society of Information Science and Technology's Special Interest Group on Digital Libraries, Debra M. Amidon, chairman and CEO of ENTOVATION International Ltd and Alex Bennet, U.S. Department of the Navy chief information officer for Enterprise Integration.

This chapter focuses on the development of quantitative measurement methods to support management policies and practices that drive the growth and development of intangible assets. The central proposition is that a valid measurement program will promote increased productivity through better workflow and accountability. The chapter pays particular attention to the role that human capital and knowledge management data play in that picture. Growing an organization's intangible asset base necessitates resource allocation and the optimization of multiple asset categories along with a sound design and execution of specific management policies and practices. These requirements necessitate a clearly defined measurement method and model that is subscribed to by all parties. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sensemaking is presented as a distinctive and powerful view of what organizational knowledge is and what it is knowledge of that can usefully guide the design of knowledge management systems. Sensemaking is distinguished from the traditional, decisionmaking view of a manager which assumes that she faces an independently knowable environment and prospectively chooses courses of action in order to achieve certain purposes. Sensemaking, in contrast, assumes that a manager faces an equivocal situation and must retrospectively impose a sense of order on it. Sensemaking also assumes that the equivocal situations we encounter in organizational life are importantly the result of our own previous action. We present a case study of a knowledge management system in an international consulting firm showing how the behaviors of highly effective consultants reflect principles of sensemaking in their use of the system. We then develop implications for the design of knowledge management systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A key element of knowledge management is building and nurturing a knowledge sharing culture. A number of organizations are developing knowledge sharing proficiencies as part of their recognition and reward systems. Knowledge sharing effectiveness is a critical aspect of knowledge management, and this chapter takes a look at this area in terms of developing and applying a knowledge sharing effectiveness inventory in order to rate how well an organization is performing knowledge sharing activities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This chapter examines the interdependent relationship of learning and the emerging discipline of knowledge management (KM). Following a clarification of definitions, the common ground is explored in terms of structure, strategy, technology, leadership, and environment. Specific areas of intersection addressed include individual learning and KM; learning and communities of practice; learning and systems thinking, and learning and How. A learning continuum is presented to illuminate the relationship between learning and the environment as change drives new knowledge needs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A key element of knowledge management is building and nurturing a knowledge sharing culture. A number of organizations are developing knowledge sharing proficiencies as part of their recognition and reward systems. Knowledge sharing effectiveness is a critical aspect of knowledge management, and this chapter takes a look at this area in terms of developing and applying a knowledge sharing effectiveness inventory in order to rate how well an organization is performing knowledge sharing activities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This chapter presents the foundations for a basic understanding of knowledge flows, agents, artifacts, and transformations critical to any examination of knowledge processing. In doing so, it attempts to bridge the gap between a conceptual understanding of how knowledge contributes to corporate objectives, and the practical issues of knowledge management and knowledge engineering. The base ontology presented builds on elements ranging from epistemology to traditional information design and communications engineering to develop an approach that is both domain neutral and fully scaleable. Expanding on the basic axiom that knowledge enables actions and decisions, it examines knowledge flows as sequences of transformations performed by agents on knowledge artifacts in support of specific actions or decisions. It points out the significant differences between the individual, automated, and collective agent, and how these differences factor into knowledge flows; the concept of knowledge artifacts comprised of both cognitive and physical elements; and the primary behaviors associated with knowledge flows including knowledge creation, retention, transfer, and utilization. Through an examination of how knowledge enables actions and decisions and the supporting knowledge flow behaviors, it examines the role played by ontologies, the importance of semantic analysis, and the functions knowledge performs in knowledge utilization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Knowledge is becoming a primary driver of social and economic well-being as economies begin to depend less on the traditional resources of land, labor and capital (Drucker, 1993). Thus, knowledge creation is an important activity for organizations that strive to achieve greater effectiveness and responsiveness in this turbulent global environment. Knowledge creation is important not only for organizational competitiveness and survival, but can have far-reaching societal, national, and global consequences. This chapter discusses the knowledge creation process and its relationship with other knowledge activities, as well as its role in knowledge management. It examines different types of knowledge and the processes that encourage knowledge creation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article develops a model of organizational knowledge acquisition in terms of modern psychological, sociological, economic and management theories by deconstructing the terms involved: an organization as a collective agent having goals and capabilities to achieve them; knowledge as the hidden state variables imputed to an agent as the basis of its capabilities; and acquisition as the reproduction of dispositions. This form of model enables one to relate the knowledge processes involved to existing models of organizational processes, and to understand such phenomena as knowledge economics and knowledge management. The breadth of the notion of organization encompasses markets, firms and societies; the operational definition of knowledge clarifies its role and the utility of the notion; and the focus on reproduction of dispositions in knowledge acquisition enables the management of knowledge acquisition to be analyzed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]