Communities und Wissensmanagement: Wenn hohe Erwartungen und wenig Wissen zusammentreffen

The idea of communities is very popular in the current discussion
on knowledge management in practice: Positive and emotional
associations as well as high expectations, especially regarding
communication and innovation, have resulted in the foundation of
communities as informal groups of shared interests in many
organizations. Compared to the community-euphoria, the empirical
foundation of the concept can be characterized as unsatisfactory.
It is not yet clear if communities content the proposed potential
of creativity and innovation. It is also an open question to what
extent such communities can develop and exist on the basis of
self-organization claimed by the theoretical community-concept.
This article tries to analyze the attractive power and chances of
communities in detail and points to the critical aspects which can
be understood as scientific tasks.