Transferring Tacit Knowledge in Extended Enterprises

Organizations need to build and use knowledge to remain viable in the face of competition and change. Due to the limits of organization and the bounded rationality of individuals working within the organizations it is impossible to make all of the required knowledge accessible in explicit and readily retrievable formats. Much of the knowledge an organization needs is held tacitly by members of the organization. This "personal knowledge" is normally inaccessible to other members because they have no way to know that it exists. Communities of practice help to mobilize personal knowledge. In this paper we present and discuss the emergence of communities of practice, some tools, concepts and an ontology we have prototyped to facilitate the development of these communities. Such communities provide avenues for sharing and transferring normally hidden knowledge.