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Knowledge Management and Communities of Practice: Supporting Successful Knowledge Transfer

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The Palgrave Handbook of Knowledge Management

Abstract

This chapter presents the story of a community of practice that was initially emergent and then organisationally supported. Although much has been written about communities of practice and how they can support learning, it has also been widely acknowledged that institutionalising communities of practice can be challenging, with many failing to deliver on their promise. Of interest in this chapter is how the community in question was supported in ways that enabled it to remain a true community of practice, while creating real value for both the organisation and members of the community. A qualitative research case design revealed three distinctive themes in terms of why the community remained successful both in its ongoing membership and its capacity to create and transfer knowledge: recognition of value adding by both the members and the organisation; the role of personnel support in the community of practice; and championship not management. Each of these is considered in turn. Overall, the lessons are that the capacity to successfully transfer knowledge was based upon organic, bottom-up growth; continued focus on maintaining its core purpose; high levels of stakeholder trust; and supportive governance structures.

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  1. School of Business, UNSW Canberra, Canberra, Australia

    Deborah Blackman

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  1. Deborah Blackman
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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Suleman Dawood School of Business, Lahore University of Management Sciences, Lahore, Pakistan

    Jawad Syed

  2. School of Management and Enterprise, Faculty of Business, Education, Law and the Arts, University of Southern Queensland, Toowoomba, Queensland, Australia

    Peter A. Murray

  3. School of Business and Economics, Loughborough University, Loughborough, Leicestershire, United Kingdom

    Donald Hislop

  4. Muscat University, St Helens, Merseyside, United Kingdom

    Yusra Mouzughi

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Blackman, D. (2018). Knowledge Management and Communities of Practice: Supporting Successful Knowledge Transfer. In: Syed, J., Murray, P., Hislop, D., Mouzughi, Y. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of Knowledge Management. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-71434-9_10

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