Communities of Practice

1.1 Introduction Each year corporations spend millions of dollars training and educating their - ployees. On average these corporations spend approximately one thousand dollars 1 per employee each year. As businesses struggle to stay on the cutting-edge and to keep their employees educated and up-to-speed with professional trends as well as ever-changing information needs it is easy to see why corporations are investing more time and money than ever in their efforts to support their employees’ prof- sional development. During the Industrial Age companies strove to control natural resources. The more resources they controlled the greater their competitive edge in the mark- place. Senge (1993) refers to this kind of organization as resource-based. In the Information Age companies must create disseminate and effectively use kno- edge within their organization in order to maintain their market share. Senge - scribes this kind of organization as knowledge-based. Given that knowledge-based organizations willcontinuetobeadrivingforcebehindtheeconomy itisimperative that corporations support the knowledge and information needs of their workers.