Knowledge-Sharing in an Online Community of Health-Care Professionals

Abstract

Structured AbstractPurpose -The purposes of this study are twofold: (1) to examine the types of activity that nurses undertake on an online community of practice (APN-l) as well as the types of knowledge that nurses share with one another and (2) to examine the factors that sustain knowledge sharing among the nurses from their local perspectives. Design/methodology/approach -An in-depth case study with mixed methods was adopted to obtain rich and naturalistic data including online observations of the messages posted in APN-l, interviews with twenty-seven members of APN-l, and content analysis of online messages. Findings -The most common type of activity performed by members of APN-l was "Knowledge sharing," followed by "Solicitation." Regarding the types of knowledge shared, the most common were "Institutional practice" and "Personal opinion." The factors that have helped sustain knowledge sharing within the online community of practice include: (1) a self-selection, (2) validation of one's practice with others who share a similar working situation, (3) a need to gain better understanding of current knowledge and best practices in the field, (4) a noncompetitive environment, (5) the asynchronous nature of the online communication medium, and (6) the role of the listserv moderator. Originality/value -This study contributes to the growing knowledge base of communities of practice that span organizational boundary. Administrators can use the coding schema developed in this study to gauge current activities of existing online communities of practice. Additionally, they can use the six factors to sustain knowledge sharing community for fostering new/existing online communities of practice.Keywords: knowledge sharing, online communities of practice, types of knowledge, nurses Knowledge-Sharing Among Health-care Professionals 1 IntroductionOrganizations and professional associations are increasingly examining the potential of online communication networks to enable members to share knowledge and engage in continuing workplace learning and professional development (Gray, 2004;Wasko & Faraj, 2005). The notion of communities of practice as a milieu for knowledge sharing has gained significant ground in recent years (Smith, 2003;Hung, Tan, Hedberg, & Koh, 2005), particularly in the corporate world (Ruhleder, Jordan, & Elmes, 1996;Wenger & Snyder, 2000). According to Wenger, Dermott, and Snyder (2002), communities of practice can be described as "groups of people who share a concern, a set of problems, or a passion about a topic, and who deepen their knowledge and expertise in this area by interacting on an ongoing basis" (p. 4).Among the main reasons why communities of practice are effective tools for knowledge sharing is the fact that much of an individual's knowledge is intangible and tacit in character (Ardichvili, Page, & Wentling, 2003). Tacit knowledge, defined as knowledge that is understood without being stated (Biggam, 2001), has a personal quality which makes it hard to formalize (Polanyi, 1966). Tacit knowledge...

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