Knowledge sharing in online communities: the power game

摘要

The principal conclusion that can be drawn from our work is that this type of community is not as clear-cut as might be expected. It is possible to find evidence of people motivated by a concern about a practice that was also part of their working lives (Lave and Wenger, 1991); similarly, there is evidence of people who viewed the community in a more instrumental way (Wenger et al., 2002). There is evidence of groups existing within a larger network (Brown and Duguid, 2000), and there is also evidence of people using the group as an "external memory" (Lindkvist, 2005). Perhaps the first lesson that can be learnt from our work is that so-called virtual CoPs are not as easy to categorize as it sometimes appears, and that attempting to apply a "one size fits all" solution to the management of such communities risks oversimplifying a complex situation. Another point of interest was the use of Crozier and Friedberg's "analyse strategique" framework. This helped to highlight certain aspects of community life, such as the potential for playing strategic games, which other approaches might have missed. The term community often carries with it notions of consensus, shared objectives and a friendly and unthreatening environment. Clearly, this is not always the case. The second lesson that we offer from this study is not to overlook the potential for conflict and power games that can lie below the surface of what appears to be an otherwise tranquil and untroubled community.