Communities of Practice with and Without Information Technology

Abstract

Despite strong interest among practitioners and scholars, the study of communities of practice (CoPs) and Information Technology (IT) is short of empirical research. This paper presents a theoretical framework for communities of practice and provides alternative perspectives on IT supports for communities of practice. The framework was developed based on the literature and ethnographic case studies of communities of practice within two organizations. The study examines how people share and construct their knowledge and how they use collaborative IT to support work practices in two organizations. The surprising finding is that the groups that used IT most intensively had the least well-developed CoPs. The results of the study would inform practice and research in Knowledge Management.