Communities und Wissensmanagement: Wenn hohe Erwartungen und wenig Wissen zusammentreffen

摘要

The idea of communities is very popular in the current discussion on knowledge management in practice: Positive and emotional associations as well as high expectations, especially regarding communication and innovation, have resulted in the foundation of communities as informal groups of shared interests in many organizations. Compared to the community-euphoria, the empirical foundation of the concept can be characterized as unsatisfactory. It is not yet clear if communities content the proposed potential of creativity and innovation. It is also an open question to what extent such communities can develop and exist on the basis of self-organization claimed by the theoretical community-concept. This article tries to analyze the attractive power and chances of communities in detail and points to the critical aspects which can be understood as scientific tasks.