Knowledge‐sharing in an online community of health‐care professionals

Abstract

Structured AbstractPurpose -The purposes of this study are twofold: (1) to examine the types of activity that nurses undertake on an online community of practice (APN-l) as well as the types of knowledge that nurses share with one another and (2) to examine the factors that sustain knowledge sharing among the nurses from their local perspectives. Design/methodology/approach -An in-depth case study with mixed methods was adopted to obtain rich and naturalistic data including online observations of the messages posted in APN-l, interviews with twenty-seven members of APN-l, and content analysis of online messages. Findings -The most common type of activity performed by members of APN-l was "Knowledge sharing," followed by "Solicitation." Regarding the types of knowledge shared, the most common were "Institutional practice" and "Personal opinion." The factors that have helped sustain knowledge sharing within the online community of practice include: (1) a self-selection, (2) validation of one's practice with others who share a similar working situation, (3) a need to gain better understanding of current knowledge and best practices in the field, (4) a noncompetitive environment, (5) the asynchronous nature of the online communication medium, and (6) the role of the listserv moderator. Originality/value -This study contributes to the growing knowledge base of communities of practice that span organizational boundary. Administrators can use the coding schema developed in this study to gauge current activities of existing online communities of practice. Additionally, they can use the six factors to sustain knowledge sharing community for fostering new/existing online communities of practice.Keywords: knowledge sharing, online communities of practice, types of knowledge, nurses Knowledge-Sharing Among Health-care Professionals 1 IntroductionOrganizations and professional associations are increasingly examining the potential of online communication networks to enable members to share knowledge and engage in continuing workplace learning and professional development (Gray, 2004;Wasko & Faraj, 2005). The notion of communities of practice as a milieu for knowledge sharing has gained significant ground in recent years (Smith, 2003;Hung, Tan, Hedberg, & Koh, 2005), particularly in the corporate world (Ruhleder, Jordan, & Elmes, 1996;Wenger & Snyder, 2000). According to Wenger, Dermott, and Snyder (2002), communities of practice can be described as "groups of people who share a concern, a set of problems, or a passion about a topic, and who deepen their knowledge and expertise in this area by interacting on an ongoing basis" (p. 4).Among the main reasons why communities of practice are effective tools for knowledge sharing is the fact that much of an individual's knowledge is intangible and tacit in character (Ardichvili, Page, & Wentling, 2003). Tacit knowledge, defined as knowledge that is understood without being stated (Biggam, 2001), has a personal quality which makes it hard to formalize (Polanyi, 1966). Tacit knowledge...

Learning from the field and its listserv: Issues that concern health literacy practitioners

“…Subscribers who are most inclined to use the list as a feedback resource, seem to be students or practitioners who are in the nascent stage of a health literacy job or career. These findings are consistent with other studies of how health and non-health professionals use a peer, subscriber listserv [1,2,6,7,10,11,13,17].…”

Facilitating knowledge exchange between health-care sectors, organisations and professions: a longitudinal mixed-methods study of boundary-spanning processes and their impact on health-care quality

“…Five studies used a combination of qualitative and quantitative research methods. 57,74,86,88,90 Half of the studies were published since 2007, [55][56][57][58][59][61][62][63]67,68,[70][71][72][74][75][76]81,87,88 and the majority (n = 33, 86.8%) of research was published since 2000, 15,[55][56][57][58][59][61][62][63][64][65][66][67][68][69][70][71][72][74][75][76][77][78][79][80][81]…”

“…57 Also included were two comparative case studies (one from the UK and the USA and one from the UK and South Africa). 82 Twenty-four studies (63.2%) used qualitative methods, 15,55,56,58,59,[61][62][63][64][66][67][68][69][70][75][76][77][78][79][80][81][82]87,91 of which 13 had a case study design 56,58,61,62,66,69,70,[75][76][77][78]79,82 and five were specifically ethnographic in their approach. [78][79][80][81][82] Nine studies used only quantitative research methods 60,65,[71][72][73]…”

“…Of the included studies, 17 were from the UK, 15,56,[61][62][63][64]68,70,[75][76][77]79,80,82,83,90,91 13 were from the USA, 55,[58][59][60]65,66,71,73,[84][85][86]88,89 four were from Canada, 69,72,78,81 one was from Australia, 74 one was from Ireland 67 and one was from Israel. 57 Also included were two comparative case studies (one from the UK and the USA and one from the UK and South Africa).…”

Information and knowledge sharing within virtual communities of practice

“…Within this context, the use of VCoPs to enhance both tacit and explicit knowledge sharing among stakeholders is the central theme of this research. Tacit knowledge is what people carry in their minds and is, therefore, difficult to access (Hara & Hew 2007;Panahi, Watson & Partridge 2012). Explicit knowledge can be articulated, codified and stored (Hara & Hew 2007;Panahi et al 2012).…”