Knowledge management issues for online organisations: 'Communities of practice' as an exploratory framework

Communities of practice have been identified as sites where knowledge is created in organisations. The author reviews studies of situated learning and situated action and suggests that these two activities may characterise the learning process in communities of practice where they are supported by a distinctive 'social' infrastructure. She analyses recent fieldwork in three online communities (a digital library reference service, a virtual enterprise and an online shopping group) to discover to what extent they may be described as communities of practice, and to establish how they support participants' learning.