A Community of Knowledge Management Practitioners: Mirroring Power across Social Worlds

In our previous study, we focused on two spaces: a community of knowledge management (KM) practitioners and their respective work organizations. We found that the “community” largely existed to legitimize KM practices, rather than to learn KM practices. Our current study builds upon this work by uncovering how in fact power relationships in work organizations are transferred and mirrored into the community. Consequently, these relationships shape and define the community’s processes: they set up boundaries of the community, reinforce the knowledge sharing practices among the members, and institutionalize community members’ beliefs of KM. We have adopted Strauss’s social world perspective to better understand how the actions and interactions outside of the community impact and mold the community.