Knowledge sharing by entrepreneurs in a virtual community of practice (VCoP)

Abstract

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to examine how entrepreneurs engage in a virtual community of practice (VCoP) to share knowledge. Intensity of engagement is taken as a proxy to measure the strength of knowledge sharing. Design/methodology/approach The archival data spanning over a three-year period from “Start-up-Nation©” (a VCoP purposefully setup for entrepreneurs) are used for analysis. A set of indices are introduced to measure participants’ intensity of engagement in terms of message length, message frequency and reciprocity in the knowledge sharing process. Content analysis is employed to test a sample of “highly engaged”, “moderately engaged”, “low engaged” and “not engaged” discussion topics as part of the online discourse. Findings The authors find that entrepreneurs normally use short (fewer than 100 words) or medium (fewer than 250 words) message size to contribute to the discussions. In addition, the authors find that senior members and discussion moderators play important roles in igniting the “reciprocity” behaviour in stimulating the interest of the community with the topic discussion. The authors also find that highly engaged topics usually lead to further discussion threads. Originality/value This is the first study of its kind to explore how entrepreneurs engage in a VCoP to share their knowledge and experiences. The set of measurement indices tested here provide a tool for the owner, designer and moderator of the VCoP to measure the utility of their website in terms of its members’ participation. In addition, the set of textual and subjective interventions identified here enables the moderator (administrator) of a VCoP to design effective interventions to facilitate online discourse and augments the knowledge sharing process amongst its community members.

An Investigation on the Use by Academic Researchers of Knowledge from Scientific Social Networking Sites

“…These hypotheses were not supported, proving that in the analyzed case the availability of knowledge and the perception of this knowledge as generated by a reliable source, are not sufficient to determine either its incorporation in scientific products or learning of new competences. This is in contrast with the findings of other studies in related fields, like virtual communities of professionals [52] or entrepreneurs [86]. This might be due to the specific nature of the community considered: scientific researchers.…”

A Cross-organizational Ecology for Virtual Communities of Practice in Higher Education

“…This study builds on the existing body of research that has looked at the positive role of CoPs in social learning and knowledge networks (McLoughlin, Patel, O'Callaghan, & Reeves, 2018;Tseng & Kuo, 2014), driving innovative thinking (Stone et al, 2017) and assisting in professional development (P. Brown, 2015;Khalid & Strange, 2016) in both educational (deChambeau, 2017) and industrial settings (Hafeez, Alghatas, Foroudi, Nguyen, & Gupta, 2019;Huang & Perng, 2017;Pattinson & Preece, 2014).…”

“…Technology-supported communities. Wenger's framework (Wenger et al, 2009) for virtual Communities of Practice (VCoPs) (Hafeez et al, 2019) asserts that technology comprises four components: tools, features, platforms and configurations: a) tools: software for specific purposes (i.e. an email client) (Cherry & Latulipe, 2014); b) platforms: packages that combine tools (Spagnoletti, Resca, & Lee, 2015) like for instance Google's G Suite ("G Suite: Collaboration & Productivity Apps for Business," n.d.), used for communication, productivity and storage, with common access and functionality; c) features: specific properties supported by the user interface (i.e.…”

“…Hence, we believe there is a need to give due attention to: a) specialized CoPs that address the particular "epistemic and discursive practices" (Smith et al, 2017) situated in the challenges and dynamics of the field, as opposed to a "one fits all" model (Hafeez et al, 2019;Huang & Perng, 2017;Pharo et al, 2014;Smith et al, 2017) and b) CoPs, from which HE learners can benefit by transcending organizational barriers and gaining authentic knowledge and experience of real-world practices (Albats, 2018;P. Brown, 2015;Johnston, 2016;Lombardi, 2007).…”

A Glimpse into the Virtual Community of Practice (CoP): Knowledge Sharing in the Wikipedia Community

“…Recently, there have been exploratory studies which surveyed how individuals used the virtual community of practice. Hafeez, Alghatas, Foroudi, Nguyen and Gupta (2018), for example, examined how entrepreneurs engaged in a virtual community of practice to share their knowledge. They observed that entrepreneurs used short and medium messages to contribute to the discussions in the virtual community of practice.…”