Communities of Practice: Fostering Peer-To-Peer Learning and Informal Knowledge Sharing in the Work Place

By Noriko Hara

Book Overview

1.1 Introduction Each year corporations spend millions of dollars training and educating their - ployees. On average, these corporations spend approximately one thousand dollars 1 per employee each year. As businesses struggle to stay on the cutting-edge and to keep their employees educated and up-to-speed with professional trends as well as ever-changing information needs, it is easy to see why corporations are investing more time and money than ever in their efforts to support their employees' prof- sional development. During the Industrial Age, companies strove to control natural resources. The more resources they controlled, the greater their competitive edge in the mark- place. Senge (1993) refers to this kind of organization as resource-based. In the Information Age, companies must create, disseminate, and effectively use kno- edge within their organization in order to maintain their market share. Senge - scribes this kind of organization as knowledge-based. Given that knowledge-based organizations willcontinuetobeadrivingforcebehindtheeconomy, itisimperative that corporations support the knowledge and information needs of their workers.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 3642099106
• ISBN13: 9783642099106
• Release Date: November 2010
• Publisher: Springer
• Length: 138 Pages
• Weight: 0.49 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.3" x 6.1" x 9.2"