Digital Commons Network^™

Public Service Employees' Experiences In Communities Of Practice, Michael Clifford Shoop

Antioch University Full-Text Dissertations & Theses

Communities of Practice (CoPs) have become a widely used method to enhance knowledge management, knowledge transfer, innovation and learning in large, complex organizations. Since first introduced by Jean Lave and Etienne Wenger in their 1991 book, Situated Learning: Legitimate Peripheral Participation, the concept has been widely discussed in the private, public and educational sectors. Much of the literature has focused on either the abstract, theoretical underpinnings or the structural elements of CoPs with little attention paid to the actual experience of individual participants in CoPs - in effect reflecting the perspectives of the architects and builders of a home but …