[Air-l] Re: Company vs. Community

[Alex Kuskis]

----- Original Message -----
From: "Andrejevic, Mark" <MAndrejevic at mail.fairfield.edu>
To: <air-l at aoir.org>
Sent: Monday, December 17, 2001 2:34 PM
Subject: RE: [Air-l] Re: Company vs. Community


> If a company can meet the goals of profit and efficiency by instilling a
> "sense of community", then it will likely attempt to do so. If not, then
it
> certainly won't. The fact that a community doesn't have the ability to
make
> the same decision (without losing its status as a community) starts to get
> at a distinction between the two. The company is a means to an end, but
> isn't a community, in certain important respects, an end in itself?
>
I don't think that "profit and efficiency" necessarily preclude community.
Certainly, some business types think they are creating "communities of
commerce". See Denham Grey's Community Taxonomy at
http://www.voght.com/cgi-bin/pywiki?CommunityTaxonomy .

The following is from a recent Mckinsey Quarterly e-Newsletter:
The case for on-line communities
Remember virtual communities--the business model that was supposed to
make World Wide Web-based companies profitable? Just another overhyped
myth from the days of bubbledom, right? Not so fast: research from
McKinsey and Jupiter Media Metrix shows that community features create
substantial value for both content and retail sites.
http://mckinsey.chtah.com/a/tA8HmvRAG8E6$AHixUQAHwHlw4b/mkq39

There is a recent book by Bressler & Grantham, Sr. (2000) on
"Communities of Commerce" (New York: McGraw-Hill). And Etienne
Wenger's work on Communities of Practice (1998) takes its examples
of COP's almost entirely from business. He and his co-authors have a new
book coming out in March: "Cultivating Communities of Practice:
A Guide to Managing Knowledge", Boston: Harvard Business School Press.
Alex Kuskis
Alex.Kuskis at utoronto.ca