AFKN

Given the lack of AF top-level leadership for a more robust enterprise-wide KM strategy (Bartczak, 2002; Booker, 2006; Wright et al., 2009) along with the organic evolution of the AFKN KM system itself, CoPs became the key focus of the AF KM strategy and remains so today.

Most notably, AFKN today supports more than 300,000 users--a user-base that continues to grow by 1,000 new users and 100 new communities every week (Mayer, 2009).

Overall, the AFKN experience is reflected in a quote from the book, Wikinomics, where authors Tapscott and Williams state, "While hierarchies are not vanishing, profound changes in the nature of technology, demographics, and the global economy are giving rise to powerful new models of production based on community, collaboration, and self-organization rather than on hierarchy and control" (2006, pg.1).

These findings combined with the personal experience of the primary researcher (who was the Director of AFKN since its inception) provide the basis for the qualitative results presented.

AFKN continuously evolves to meet these KM demands; it makes information accessible to the learner, facilitating the reshaping of this pool of knowledge as it forms and reforms itself.

To improve access to expertise, AFKN recently revised 'My Profile' so users can add professional details, including My Biography, My Resume, My CoPs, My Favorites, My Transcript, and My Preferences.

AFKN became the forum for the new knowledge management program, Financial Management Knowledge Management (FM KM).

We selected AFKN as the forum for the new program and gave it a name: Financial Management Knowledge Management (FM KM).

During Hurricane Katrina, we used an AFKN Community of Practice (CoP) as the central repository for everything we said.