Hiroko Wilensky

I am currently a visiting researcher at the University of California, Irvine (UCI) and a software engineer at Boeing Company, Phantom Works. I completed my PhD under the supervision of Professor David Redmiles in Informatics at the School of Information and Computer Sciences at UCI.
My research interests are computer-supported cooperative work (CSCW), knowledge management (KM), communities of practice and work, technology and organizations (WTO). I am interested in what role technology plays in people’s work practices and informal communities at their workplaces. I researched a community of knowledge management practitioners in the aerospace industry. The themes and findings of this research includes:
legitimization of the KM discipline and work practices; power relationships between work organizations and the community and the hardships in disseminating KM in aerospace companies. This research led to a study of the inception and transformation of the concept of communities of practice- i.e. how did a concept in the social science realm transform into a KM tool in business and management. My other research is about the use of Web2.0, in particular, blogs and social network sites at workplaces.