----- Original Message ----- From: "Andrejevic, Mark" <MAndrejevic@mail.fairfield.edu> To: <air-l@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@utoronto.ca