Role of transitory communities of practice in business school collaborative knowledge-sharing projects: from the partner's perspective

Abstract

This paper explores the essential roles that academics, graduates/ post-graduates and small enterprise owner-managers play when working together on knowledge-sharing projects. The study uses six projects to explore the life cycle of these transitory communities of practice (CoP) and how they can provide an effective means for sharing knowledge and expertise. This investigation is significant as such sharing of knowledge and expertise is the basis of the increasingly informal knowledge management structures such as networks and open innovation communities. How this is achieved, we suggest is based on two factors: the stakeholders and the transitory CoPs. The stakeholders are the SME managers, academics and newly employed graduates (associates), who co-create value by capturing, analysing and disseminating new-to-enterprise knowledge and experience. They achieve this via temporary CoPs which have their own life cycle of creation, growth and maturity/destruction.