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A knowledge community is a
community A community is a social unit (a group of living things) with commonality such as place, norms, religion, values, customs, or identity. Communities may share a sense of place situated in a given geographical area (e.g. a country, village, tow ...
construct, stemming from the convergence of
knowledge management Knowledge management (KM) is the collection of methods relating to creating, sharing, using and managing the knowledge and information of an organization. It refers to a multidisciplinary approach to achieve organisational objectives by making ...
as a field of study and social exchange theory. Formerly known as a discourse community and having evolved from forums and web forums, knowledge communities are now often referred to as a
community of practice A community of practice (CoP) is a group of people who "share a concern or a passion for something they do and learn how to do it better as they interact regularly". The concept was first proposed by cognitive anthropologist Jean Lave and educat ...
or virtual community of practice. As with any field of study, there are various points of view on the motivations, organizing principles and subsequent structure of knowledge communities.


Perspectives

As a web or virtual construct, knowledge communities can be said to have evolved from bulletin board systems, web forums and online discourse communities through the 80s and 90s. When framed with the scores of social networking sites coming online at the turn of the millennia, knowledge communities can be described as another form of social media. The biggest difference between
social network A social network is a social structure made up of a set of social actors (such as individuals or organizations), sets of dyadic ties, and other social interactions between actors. The social network perspective provides a set of methods for an ...
sites and knowledge communities is, social network sites typically lack moderation or an outcome orientation. Social knowledge management technologies such as Knowledge Plaza are emerging and aim at reconciling these differences. Stemming from social exchange theory, a well-established perspective is to view knowledge communities as a type of exchange. The motivations for participating in the exchange vary. The exchange remains open based on the perceived value (e.g., return on time investment) to knowledge community members. Knowledge communities can also be viewed as a method by which to do organizational or process
innovation Innovation is the practical implementation of ideas that result in the introduction of new goods or services or improvement in offering goods or services. ISO TC 279 in the standard ISO 56000:2020 defines innovation as "a new or changed entity ...
. KCs are often founded to introduce change to a system, an organizational or societal by identifying, creating, representing and/or distributing data, information and/or knowledge in and via a community context on the pretext that more significant value will be created via a knowledge value chain. From an organizational perspective, knowledge communities serve to maintain the strong ties and
weak ties In social network analysis and mathematical sociology, interpersonal ties are defined as information-carrying connections between people. Interpersonal ties, generally, come in three varieties: ''strong'', ''weak'' or ''absent''. Weak social ti ...
of the organization with many diverse publics; they help feed quality back into the organization (via more timely feedback and narrative analysis of discussions), drive organization credibility (via more rich exposure and building public trust by incorporating diverse opinion) and speed
knowledge transfer Knowledge transfer is the sharing or disseminating of knowledge and the providing of inputs to problem solving. In organizational theory, knowledge transfer is the practical problem of transferring knowledge from one part of the organization t ...
and knowledge utilization, as well as do
knowledge mobilization Knowledge sharing is an activity through which knowledge (namely, information, skills, or expertise) is exchanged among people, friends, peers, families, communities (for example, Wikipedia), or within or between organizations. It bridges the ind ...
(e.g., by providing a conversation space to bridge gaps between research and practice). Common across perspectives is, knowledge communities can be employed to identify, create, represent, and/or distribute knowledge within and/or between populations.


Organizational behavior and structure

Knowledge communities nurture and facilitate ongoing relationships and a
Knowledge Ecosystem The idea of a knowledge ecosystem is an approach to knowledge management which claims to foster the dynamic evolution of knowledge interactions between entities to improve decision-making and innovation through improved evolutionary networks of ...
where ideas are exchanged on an ongoing basis. Knowledge value is generated (derived, realized) during the transactional nature of the exchange. Existing knowledge can be synthesized (e.g. research fused with ideas from the field or other research) or new knowledge created via exchanges. KCs use a variety of two-way communication tools (e.g., via discussion board, article commenting, rating, poll, webinar ) to foster discussion and the exchange of ideas. The organizational structure of knowledge communities varies significantly based on sponsorship and purpose. Contribution, moderation and content governance within knowledge communities is typically distributed amongst a core set of community members who become community moderator\facilitators. At a minimum, members of knowledge communities typically include a mix of
subject-matter expert A subject-matter expert (SME) is a person who has authority, accumulated great knowledge in a particular field or topic and this level of knowledge is demonstrated by the person's degree, licensure, and/or through years of professional experience ...
s, moderators, facilitators and the general public or a target population. While information within a knowledge community is usually promoted to be open and public, persons are able to keep information private as well. Public information within knowledge communities is sometimes covered by
Creative Commons Licenses A Creative Commons (CC) license is one of several public copyright licenses that enable the free distribution of an otherwise copyrighted "work".A "work" is any creative material made by a person. A painting, a graphic, a book, a song/lyrics ...
and is given credit to the creators. Knowledge communities are seen as a bridge between traditional publishing models and an open access systems.


Pitfalls

Knowledge communities and communities or practice suffer from the same pitfalls of all communities. To some, the mission driven orientation can be a detractor to creativity. To others, the exchange aspects reek of the over
commodification Within a capitalist economic system, commodification is the transformation of things such as goods, services, ideas, nature, personal information, people or animals into objects of trade or commodities.For animals"United Nations Commodity Trad ...
of culture and, by pooling experts or like-minded persons, KCs and CoPs can often be less diverse than traditional communities. Perhaps the societal response has been the emergence of social networks. Again, however, it is important to point out social networks and knowledge communities are related, but not the same.


References

* Earl, M. (2001). Knowledge management strategies: Toward a taxonomy. ''Journal of Management Information Systems'', 18(1), 215–233. {{refend


See also

*
Collaboration Collaboration (from Latin ''com-'' "with" + ''laborare'' "to labor", "to work") is the process of two or more people, entities or organizations working together to complete a task or achieve a goal. Collaboration is similar to cooperation. Most ...
*
Community of practice A community of practice (CoP) is a group of people who "share a concern or a passion for something they do and learn how to do it better as they interact regularly". The concept was first proposed by cognitive anthropologist Jean Lave and educat ...
(CoP) *
Innovation Innovation is the practical implementation of ideas that result in the introduction of new goods or services or improvement in offering goods or services. ISO TC 279 in the standard ISO 56000:2020 defines innovation as "a new or changed entity ...
*
Knowledge building communities A Knowledge Building Community (''KBC'') is a community in which the primary goal is knowledge creation rather than the construction of specific products or the completion of tasks. This notion is fundamental in Knowledge building theory. If knowl ...
(KBC) *
Knowledge value chain A knowledge value chain is a sequence of intellectual tasks by which knowledge workers build their employer's unique competitive advantage and/or social and environmental benefit. As an example, the components of a research and development project ...
*
Knowledge ecosystem The idea of a knowledge ecosystem is an approach to knowledge management which claims to foster the dynamic evolution of knowledge interactions between entities to improve decision-making and innovation through improved evolutionary networks of ...
*
Knowledge mobilization Knowledge sharing is an activity through which knowledge (namely, information, skills, or expertise) is exchanged among people, friends, peers, families, communities (for example, Wikipedia), or within or between organizations. It bridges the ind ...
*
Learning community A learning community is a group of people who share common academic goals and attitudes and meet semi-regularly to collaborate on classwork. Such communities have become the template for a cohort-based, interdisciplinary approach to higher educati ...
* Learning organization * Professional learning community (PLC) * RIBA Knowledge Communities * Virtual community of practice (VCoP) *
Virtual team A virtual team (also known as a geographically dispersed team, distributed team, or remote team) usually refers to a group of individuals who work together from different geographic locations and rely on communication technology such as email, inst ...
* Value network * Value network analysis * Virtual community (VC) Community websites