The co-existence of communities of practice and virtual organisations

There are a significant number of publications treating the issue of collaboration in Communities of Practice (CoP). Simultaneously, there are a lot of activities in the area of collaboration in networked organisations, especially in Virtual Organisations (VO). The authors contend that looking at these two types of organisational forms, which have resembling elements, but are traditionally being looked at from different perspectives, delivers new insights into collaboration practices, especially from a Knowledge Management (KM) point of view. The underlying assumption is that the emergence of CoP can be considered to be a relatively new trend - but also a new challenge - within KM research, stressing especially its 'human-centered' aspects. Responding to this challenge, i. e. the purposeful creation and management of CoP, requires the consideration of a number of factors, which will be highlighted in this paper.