A Case Study of Knowledge Sharing in Finnish Laurea Lab as a Knowledge Intensive Organisation

Virtual communities of practice (VCoP) are one of the most important tools for knowledge sharing in both business and academia. Roused interest in on-line knowledge sharing resulted in research into the most influential factors affecting the behavior of the participants of VCoPs. Existing research in this area are non-comprehensive of the influential factors – some concentrate on the technological while others on the non-technical aspects. After examining key current research and identifying the most critical factors, this paper proposes a conceptual model for the purposes of knowledge sharing in knowledge intensive organizations using VCoPs. This model combines the important factors, the notion of reciprocity and social ties between the VCoP participants. Hypotheses are formulated between the constructs of the model. An attempt is made to validate the model. This statistical validation and drawing of conclusions are to be continued but meanwhile, a brief presentation of qualitative part of the research is presented to prove that effective VCoPs in knowledge intensive organizations need a good sense of community and active knowledge exchange. For the case study, this paper used Laurea Labs, which is a member of the European Network of Living Labs.