Ricerc@Sapienza

The increasingly pervasive use of social online services has contributed to raising interest in studying the contribution that the active participation of individuals offers to business. Starting from a validated framework for intellectual capital analysis, the aim of this research is to perfect and implement a method of intellectual capital management and assessment, through the analysis of a community of practice within one of the major Italian telecommunication companies, supported by the adoption of a multi-method approach. The basic assumption is that communities of practice (CoPs) play a fundamental role in innovation because of their intrinsic nature and their ability to shape the organizational knowledge base. After introducing the theoretical background and the integrated step-by-step methodology on which the project is based, the unit of analysis will be a typical example of collaborative communities. This integrated approach will provide both academics and practitioners an effective tool for assessing intellectual capital, its creation and the effectiveness of any investment or implementation plan conceived as a result of its application. Building this research on a mixed methodology approach provides a more complete view, as it allows to calibrate different methods in relation to the different stages of analysis.