Title: Investigating the role of community of practice for sharing knowledge in agriculture sector

Authors: Nino Adamashvili; Fedele Colantuono; Francesco Conto; Mariantonietta Fiore

Addresses: Department of Economics, University of Foggia, Polo Cafarelli, Via da Zara, 71121, Foggia, Italy ' Department of Economics, University of Foggia, Polo Cafarelli, Via da Zara, 71121, Foggia, Italy ' Department of Economics, University of Foggia, Polo Cafarelli, Via da Zara, 71121, Foggia, Italy ' Department of Economics, University of Foggia, Polo Cafarelli, Via da Zara, 71121, Foggia, Italy

Abstract: Agriculture is one of the fastest growing sectors. Therefore, movement towards sustainable development requires strong knowledge bases that will be constantly updated. This tendency poses a question about the ways of knowledge sharing. Therefore, the objective of this paper is to investigate the role of information, cooperation and sharing experiences of good practices among farmers in order to develop agricultural sector, and to introduce the Community of Practice as a powerful tool for creating strong network among all key actors of agri-food value chain while considering the experience of the EU SKIN project. In this paper, besides empirical analysis of the related literature, we describe the model of Community of Practice created on base of best practices collected under the project SKIN (Short Supply Chain Knowledge and Innovation Network - H2020). Findings highlight the Community of Practice is able to keep the balance between formal and informal learnings thus minimising the difficulties of understanding and eliminating the informative gap.

Keywords: community of practice; agriculture sector; short food supply chain; knowledge transfer; practice-based learning; innovation; ICT; information and communication technology.

DOI: 10.1504/JGBA.2020.110612

Journal for Global Business Advancement, 2020 Vol.13 No.2, pp.162 - 184

Received: 22 Apr 2020
Accepted: 23 Apr 2020
Published online: 26 Oct 2020 *

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