Managing Knowledge in Large-scale Virtual Projects: a Community-based Approach

Purpose – This paper aims to investigate how virtual communities of practice (V-CoP) develop in\r\nlarge-scale virtual projects.\r\nDesign/methodology/approach – A case study of a large-scale ES implementation was conducted\r\nin Italy and in the USA.\r\nFindings – It was found that management can encourage the formation of V-CoP if, along with the\r\ncreation of virtual project teams they promote informal interaction between the team members,\r\nencourage commitment, and put together “the right mix of people”.\r\nOriginality/value – Understanding how the technical and the functional communities communicated\r\nis meaningful to understand the extent to which different CoP can, virtually, overcome context-specific\r\nbarriers.