Whether a company is a community depends on how people use it, not just its objective characteristics. You could also ask about the difference between a company and a religion. Best, - Craig At 09:17 AM 12/13/2001 -0800, you wrote:

Colleagues,

I teach an MBA E-Commerce class. In the customary class on online communities, we started off with a simple question- "What is the difference between a (for-profit)company and a community?"

This seemingly simple question tied us up into knots as we tried to identify attributes that distinguished the two. The ones we did come up with included contractual vs. voluntary membership, rigid vs. loose organizational structure, paid vs. unpaid participants etc. I think you see where I am going.

At the end of the discussion, one student(who has a Ph.D in biology) said- "Isn't community an all-encompassing construct? Can it not be argued that a company is really a type of community?" While I respected his comments, it really underscored the need to understand this better.

I know community is a construct that is backed by decades of research. I have seen some of the seminal works- but perhaps, not all.

How would you answer the basic question I started out with?

Best, Sandeep

--- Visit my Thought Central-http://faculty.washington.edu/sandeep/blog/blogger.html

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* * * * Craig Stroupe / Assistant Professor / University of Minnesota Duluth / Department of Composition / 1201 Ordean Court # 420/ Duluth, MN 55812 / 218-726-6249 / fax 218-726-8228 / <http://www.d.umn.edu/~cstroupe> * * * *