2. Intranets and Knowledge Sharing

An intranet can support many activities within an organization, including the sharing of knowledge between peer groups. When groups form between these knowledge sharers, they are referred to as communities of practice, sharing and managing knowledge of a particular area within the organization.
A community of practice plays a valuable role in strengthening the knowledge and identity of an organization, and the focus groups that form due to similar professional interests and concerns. As a way of communicating within a community, an intranet is an important and useful tool. El Tayeh (2007) states that “socialisation means to convert individual into group tacit knowledge”, an intranet that is being used effectively can be sharing and managing knowledge for the community of practice, but also to the rest of the organization. The community creates a knowledge base, of which it has responsibility for, but can be shared by any within the company who wish.
Intranets have been just used for the purpose of storing knowledge, becoming a largely unused resource that is not used effectively. A community of practice that uses the intranet to communicate ideas, knowledge and collaboration will see how ‘dynamic and innovative’ the use of an intranet can be. As Robertson’s article points out, a community of practice relies on human interaction (2007), but successfully used, an intranet can utilise Web 2.0 technology to create online human interaction. A weblog, set up within the intranet can communicate the productivity of a community of practice to the rest of the organization, as well as communicating to other members of the community. A weblog along with a home page for the community within the intranet, can also promote the existence of a community within the organization. However, the changeable and less static nature of a weblog is a key issue to the communication between the community and others within the larger organization.
A community of practice is a group of people who form a community within an organization to share and disseminate information. The use of an intranet within an organization can contribute to the effectiveness and communication within the community, encouraging knowledge sharing and collaboration. An intranet can also communicate to the larger organization of the output and effectiveness of this knowledge sharing.

References

Robertson, James. (2004). Intranets and knowledge sharing. Retrieved 27th August, 2007 from Step Two Designs: Beyond the Idea : http://www.steptwo.com.au/papers/kmc_intranetsknowledge/index.html

El Tayeh, Amjad. (2007). Using digital socialization to support geographically dispersed AEC project teams. Journal of Construction and Engineering Management, 133(6), 462-473.