Research On Knowledge Acquisition Mechanism Of New Members In Virtual Communities Of Practice

Communities of practice will gather people having a keen interest in a certain field of knowledge, to help these people to exchange ideas and creativity. With the rise of the blog, Wikipedia and social networks, communities of practice is moving from offline to online. More and more considerations will be taken on virtual communities of practice as a key technology for knowledge management by community managers.Understanding the transition process of new members to competent members, the knowledge acquisition process and influencing factors of new members in communities, community managers are better able to manage new members, enhancing the overall level of knowledge in communities. The study is based on the theory of knowledge acquisition and the theory of communities of practice. With the integrated use of methods including literature research, interviews and questionnaire study, we constructed knowledge acquisition process model and influencing factor model for new members of the virtual communities of practice. The role of community members in the process of obtaining knowledge and the factors influencing the behavior of knowledge acquisition are explored, and relevant policy recommendations are raised based on these conclusions.In virtual communities of practice the new members acquire knowledge primarily through changing the identities of the communities. New members need to go through the structured transfer and unstructured copy process of knowledge acquisition. New members achieve transition from new members to advanced beginners and then competent members.Three types of the factors for new members of virtual communities of practice to acquire knowledge are individual, community and technical factors. Individual knowledge factors including perceived comparative advantage, perceived image acquisition and perceived value of the source of knowledge; community factors include reciprocal atmosphere and fairness atmosphere; technical factors include synchronous and asynchronous interactions.Perceived comparative advantage of knowledge promotes knowledge acquisition behavior. Perceived image of knowledge acquisition has no direct role in promoting knowledge acquisition behavior. Perceived value of the source of knowledge promotes knowledge acquisition behavior. Perceived image of knowledge acquisition promotes perceived comparative advantage of knowledge. Perceived value of the source of knowledge can promote perceived comparative advantage of knowledge. Perceived value perception of knowledge sources can promote perceived image of knowledge acquisition. Community atmosphere (reciprocity) can promote perceived value of the knowledge sources. Community atmosphere (fairness) promotes perceived value of the knowledge sources.In addition, mediating effects and moderating effects of model variables are also tested.Finally, based on the findings above, incentive measures and recommendations are proposed from three aspects, community atmosphere, the subject and the object of knowledge acquisition.