The Role of Virtual Communities of Practice in Knowledge Management Using Web 2.0

Despite the critical importance of knowledge management (KM) in helping organizations to improve performance and achieve the desired goals, the reality of the application of KM indicates that there are plenty of obstacles; most prominent of which are the difficulty of tacit KM, the poor cooperation and sharing in KM, and the difficulty of dealing with its techniques. This paper aims to determine how to take advantage of the virtual communities of practice that employ Web 2.0 technologies to overcome the obstacles of KM. Employing the descriptive approach based on theoretical analysis of literature, the results revealed that Web 2.0 technologies involve important applications in personal KM, supporting participation in participatory KM, in addition to supporting communication and interaction mechanisms. Moreover, results indicated that Web 2.0-based-communities of practice play major roles in capturing tacit knowledge, facilitating innovation, as well as knowledge sharing and collaboration.