Study on Knowledge Sharing of Community of Practice Based on Social Network Perspective

Kaiji Liao, Huihui Xiong

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DOI: 10.4236/ib.2011.33037                

Abstract

Based on social network perspective, we developed a model about the knowledge sharing of communities of practice (CoPs), analyzed the knowledge sharing of CoPs from the view of the network density, network centrality, network structure. And we found out that only the above indexes are kept in appropriately level can stimulate the knowledge sharing in CoPs. The strong ties contribute to the transfer of implicit knowledge, while the weak ties promote explicit knowledge. At last, according to the result of our study, we proposed some suggestions for further study on knowledge sharing of CoPs.

Keywords

Social Network Analysis, Community of Practice, Knowledge Sharing

Conflicts of Interest

The authors declare no conflicts of interest.

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