Making MAKCi: An emerging knowledge‐generative network of practice in the Web 2.0

• Published in: VINE. Very informal newsletter on library automation 2010, Vol.40 (1), p.39-61
• Main Author: Garcia, Blanca C
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Case studies; Collaboration; Communities of practice; Community development; Information systems; International; Knowledge management; Knowledge sharing; Literature reviews; Participation; Social networks; Social research; Software; Studies; Web 2.0; World Wide Web
• ISSN: 0305-5728; 2059-5891; 2059-5905
• DOI: 10.1108/03055721011024919

Following a third-generation knowledge management (KM) approach, this article aims to report on a three-year series of practitioners' experiences engaged in a consensus-building exercise known as the MAKCi exercise. Designed to illustrate a real-world KM case, this research work used participant observation, on-line interactions and interviews as methodological tools to explore how knowledge management as a discipline has benefited from the use of Web 2.0 technology. The first part of the article depicts the Most Admired Knowledge City (MAKCi) exercise as a research and learning space networked and tightly connected on-line by common interests of participants. The second part of the article brings further understanding on how networked learning and knowledge creation has been made possible by the use of Web 2.0 tools. It is advanced that higher levels of knowledge co-creation at a global scale can take the shape of networks of practice (NoPs) in knowledge-based development contexts such as the one explored for the MAKCi exercise. The research is limited to a three-year recording of practitioners' experiences. Knowledge-based social systems, such as networks of practice (NoPs) are identified as emerging social configurations fostering knowledge-intensive networked learning. NoPs clearly depend on collaboration within networks. Thus, the paper advances that some emerging models of knowledge-intensive networks such as (NoPs) are natural KM vehicles to foster and promote intensive tacit knowledge conversion into explicit scholarly knowledge regardless of geographical location, becoming highly relevant to knowledge-based development (KBD) practitioners.