جماعات عملگرا به عنوان ابزاري نوين در مديريت دانش

Communities of Practice as a New Tool in Knowledge Management

Nowadays, Communities of practice(Cops) are acquiring increasing importance among leading organizations as means to promote knowledge generation and dissemination.Although a large proportion of knowledge management initiatives focus on technology, great emphasis is also being given to the social aspects of knowledge and its management. In this paper, first an introduction to knowledge management, its significance and the role of Cops in the knowledge era are presented. Later, community and practices are separately elaborated. Various ways by which communities of practice are defined and their different typologies are also presented. Generally, CoPs are categorized as internal communities of practice, communities of practice in network organizations, knowledge networks, knowledge nurturing and disseminating, leveraging and probing communities. Various structures of Cops including stratified and egalitarian, differences between Cops and teams, the relationship between CoPs and intellectual capital, their limitations and some examples of CoPsʹ application in global organizations are among other topics that have been elaborated in this paper.