Plans and situated actions: the problem of human-machine communication
Plans and situated actions: the problem of human-machine communication
Representing the user: notes on the disciplinary rhetoric of human-computer interaction
The social and interactional dimensions of human-computer interfaces
The Complete Idiot's Guide to Knowledge Management
The Complete Idiot's Guide to Knowledge Management
Cultivating Communities of Practice: A Guide to Managing Knowledge
Cultivating Communities of Practice: A Guide to Managing Knowledge
Knowledge and Organization: A Social-Practice Perspective
Organization Science
Toward a theory of cultural transparency: elements of a social discourse of the visible and the invisible
Re-Embedding Situatedness: The Importance of Power Relations in Learning Theory
Organization Science
The Cognitive Style of PowerPoint: Pitching Out Corrupts Within, Second Edition
The Cognitive Style of PowerPoint: Pitching Out Corrupts Within, Second Edition
The gospel of knowledge management in and out of a professional community
Proceedings of the 2007 international ACM conference on Supporting group work
CHI '08 Extended Abstracts on Human Factors in Computing Systems
The dissemination of knowledge management
Proceedings of the ACM 2009 international conference on Supporting group work
International Journal of Virtual Communities and Social Networking
Sharing Knowledge and Expertise: The CSCW View of Knowledge Management
Computer Supported Cooperative Work
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We explore how the notion of communities of practice (CoPs) was translated and popularized from its original inception by Lave and Wenger in 1991. We argue that the Institute for Research on Learning (IRL), a spin-off of Xerox PARC, proved instrumental in enrolling CoPs into the knowledge management (KM) discipline. IRL objectified, packaged, and made a business out of CoPs. CoPs in KM are now a formalized process coupled with technological artifacts to build groups of people who effectively share knowledge across boundaries. Drawing from participant observations, archival documents, and interviews with KM practitioners in the aerospace industry as well as key players of IRL, our research seeks to unveil the invisible history that the popularization of a theory can often obscure. We argue that CoPs provide a case study for understanding how abstract concepts in science are strategically and subconsciously reified, or made objects of inquiry, and appropriated by actors. This reification of a "soft" science blurs the line between theory and technology.