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Knowledge Sharing and Communities of Practice 157

and authentic community experiences. Hagel and Armstrong (1997) argued that
virtual communities have economic as well as social signifi cance. Like Rheingold, they
recognize that virtual communities are based on the affi nity among their participants
that encourages them to participate in ongoing dialog with each other. Knowledge
sharing between participants can generate “ webs of personal communication ” that
reinforce the sense of identifi cation with the community.
Although the literature discusses virtual communities in abundant detail, the
technology-mediated interactions were supplanted by a substantial amount of old-
fashioned telephone exchanges, face-to-face meetings, and general neighborliness
( Rheingold 1993 ). When videoconferencing fi rst began to be widely used as an alter-
native to face-to-face business meetings, it was quickly found that this medium worked
well but only after participants had met in person and established some sort of social
presence. If participants met one another for the fi rst time during a videoconference,
or a teleconference for that matter, the interactions were much more awkward and
slow, and the knowledge that was exchanged tended to be less signifi cant ( Hayden,
Hanor, and Harrison 2001 ). Psychologists have found that in face-to-face talks, only
7 percent of the meaning is conveyed by the words, while 38 percent is communicated
by intonation and 55 percent through visual cues, and that up to 87 percent of mes-
sages are interpreted on a nonverbal, visual level ( Telstra 2000 ).
Seely Brown and Duguid (2002 ) point out the neglect of the social aspects of knowl-
edge sharing, noting that documents do more than merely carry information. They
“ help structure society, enabling social groups to form, develop and maintain a sense
of shared identify ” (p. 189). The community-forming character of the Internet is by
now quite well known. In fact, a number of technologies that were originally intended
to transmit information such as the Minitel system in France used to book travel and
serve as an electronic phone book quickly became used as messaging systems between
users. Similarly, transactional Web sites such as eBay and Amazon.com hold value not
only in terms of their product offerings, but also in the ability of visitors to the site
to annotate content and thus communicate with other visitors.
While technology is a feature of some communities, technological means of inter-
acting are by no means a necessary component of communities. Technology comes
into play when members are more dispersed and when they have fewer occasions to
meet face-to-face. The critical components of a community lie in the sharing of
common work problems between members, a membership that sees clear benefi ts of
sharing knowledge among themselves and who have developed norms of trust, reci-
procity, and cooperation.