Projects as a tool to enforce the creation of communities of practice,

The widespread use of project management is an emerging trait of contemporary knowledge-driven organisations. This paper will make an in-depth study of the relationships among the work of project teams and the idea of knowledge production (within a social- construction approach) with reference to the concept of community of practice. The main aim is to understand whether - and if so, to what extent - organising by project may work as a tool for facilitating informal mechanisms of knowledge creation. The starting point will be conceiving the project as locus or momentum in which experience and practice are shared. Through the analysis of an empirical case study from a knowledge-oriented project-driven organisation, the potential effects of project management on the creation of communities of practice will be examined