Employing trust in organizing communities of practice for knoweldge management

Abstract

Due to the adoption of advanced technologies by organizations and its evolutionary effects on the business environment, work processes and organizational forms, the concept of trust has received renewed and explicit interest in recent organizational theory and literature as an important variable in the success of developing sustainable and advantageous inter- and intra-organizational relationships and coordinating new and distributed organizational structures. While theoretical developments have promoted significant understanding of organizational trust, empirical research has yet to provide well-integrated corroboration. This dissertation employs the concept of trust as an organizing principle to provide a new perspective on how communities of practice in knowledge-intensive organizations can be structured and mobilized using trust and its maturity to provide competitive advantage, by exploring the knowledge management initiatives of a local organization. The role of IS technologies in supporting the development and utilization of trust in this endeavor is discussed.