Professional Development & Knowledge Management via Virtual Spaces

In the U.S., the mid and late 1990s was a boom period in many ways that included an expanding economy, a growing emphasis upon the value of people's working knowledge, and a range of new Information Technology (IT) applications and information services that depended upon computer networking often the Internet. These themes were represented in professional discourse by a special emphasis upon "knowledge work," "knowledge workers," and new practices, such as "knowledge management." While genuine referents for the "knowledge categories" are often elusive, at best they refer to serious efforts of managers to improve their staff's abilities to become more knowledgeable by sharing information and insights within organizations and to leverage their enhanced knowledge for organizational value.