Virtual teams: reaching across space, time, and organizations with technology
Virtual teams: reaching across space, time, and organizations with technology
Global software teams: collaborating across borders and time zones
Global software teams: collaborating across borders and time zones
The Mutual Knowledge Problem and Its Consequences for Dispersed Collaboration
Organization Science
Re-Embedding Situatedness: The Importance of Power Relations in Learning Theory
Organization Science
Managing cross-cultural issues in global software outsourcing
Communications of the ACM - Human-computer etiquette
Software Engineering (7th Edition)
Software Engineering (7th Edition)
European Journal of Information Systems
Research on Knowledge Communication of Dynamic Virtual Communities Based on Ontology
ICITA '05 Proceedings of the Third International Conference on Information Technology and Applications (ICITA'05) Volume 2 - Volume 02
The global network organization of the future: information management opportunities and challenges
Journal of Management Information Systems - Special issue: Information technology and organization design
Analysing and cultivating scientific communities of practice
International Journal of Web Based Communities
International Journal of Information Management: The Journal for Information Professionals
Identifying the value types of virtual communities based on the Q method
International Journal of Web Based Communities
Hi-index | 0.00 |
Communities of practice, described as social structures which enable knowledge to be managed by practitioners, are recognised as important to the social fabric of knowledge (Wenger, 2004). As a result of the internationalisation of business and the development of enabling technologies, there has emerged the notion of Virtual (online) Communities of Practice (VCoP), where members make use of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) to share stories, knowledge and practices. This new phenomenon raises some issues for the ways knowledge communication occurs at work. Little is known about the application of communities of practice theory in the virtual domain, especially in relation to the communication of knowledge across cultural boundaries. This paper draws on qualitative data from a study of several VCoPs to explore their members' communication and cultural experiences. The findings identify some barriers to sustaining communities of practice in a virtual context, and the issues which exist when organisations intentionally create these communities for specific organisational purposes. These issues include the transition of legitimate peripheral participants to full practising members of the VCoP; cultural diversity in intercultural VCoPs; and the ways in which VCoPs are constructed by management to meet a transient need, rather than allowed to emerge.