Measuring the change in knowledge sharing efficiency of virtual communities of practice: a case study

The aim of this paper is to provide organisational knowledge management teams with a new framework for assessing the performance of communities of practice (CoPs) in terms of efficiency by analysing trends of their efficiency changes. This paper uses the data envelopment analysis (DEA) method to analyse the knowledge sharing activities in CoPs, and classify CoPs into five types based on the trend of their efficiency changes. Our data analysis of the knowledge sharing activities of 16 CoPs within one of the largest steel manufacturing companies finds that most CoPs had the increasing trend efficiency (or had maximum possible efficiency). This is mainly because the company has supported and maintained CoPs as an infrastructure for the social network among its employees. The proposed framework can provide information about the time trend inefficiency change of a CoP, and can guide decision-making to select the appropriate strategies for cultivating them.