Sustainable Communities for Knowledge Management Systems in the New Technological Era

The topic of knowledge management has received considerable attention in research as well as practice. However, the success of knowledge management systems remains elusive. This chapter provides a framework, which suggests that knowledge management success can be achieved by designing sustainable communities of practice. Communities of practice have proven to have significant economic and practical implications for organizations. A growing body of literature in knowledge management recognizes the importance of communities that foster collaborative learning in organizations and almost all knowledge management systems have a ‘network’ component that facilitates connecting people in communities of practice. Technological advancements in social systems such as weblogs, wikis, social networking sites, and virtual worlds enable new ways in which such communities can be supported. This study takes into account affordances of these technologies in facilitating knowledge management. This study draws on literature in knowledge management and communities of practice to arrive at properties of a community that make it sustainable. These properties can then be viewed as a blueprint of what a community needs to have to achieve its function of fostering collaboration and hence, generating knowledge. In sum, this research is intended to help practitioners arrive at how best to design communities in knowledge management systems. DOI: 10.4018/978-1-60566-954-0.ch021