Engineering the community of practice for maintenance of organizational knowledge

Organizational knowledge is normally viewed as something that can be captured, transmitted, processed, stored and retrieved. In this paper we argue for a transactional view in which knowledge is collective, distributed and dynamic. By that view, organizational knowledge is created and maintained primarily through seamless collaborative and social processes. This implies that storage of and access to knowledge is less of a concern than is the reciprocity inherent in shared practice. We argue that the most effective goal for cognitive analysis and design is to promote development of a work-place community of practice in which knowledge is created, shared and maintained via natural processes of communication, negotiation and collaboration. We use descriptions from ethnographic, studies to identify a number of important processes and argue for workplace reengineering strategies that strengthen natural interactions within the workplace.