Knowledge Collaboration Among Fashion Designers: An A Priori Conceptual Model

Whilst collaboration from the branding and marketing perspective for the fashion industry is well documented, little is known about the knowledge collaboration (KC) of fashion designers, and how information and communication technology (ICT) is involved within their Communities of Practice (CoPs). This paper proposes an a priori conceptual model to enable the examination of KC among fashion designers within their CoPs. It aims to interlink the concepts of KC, CoPs, and ICT to understand fashion designers in their social learning reality. In that regard, the a priori conceptual model addresses three broad research questions: 1) How do fashion designers collaborate? 2) How do they participate within their professional communities? And 3) Does ICT play a role? The concepts used in the a priori conceptual model will be interlinked with specific indicators extracted from past studies. Since past studies had not focused on this area of research before, future studies can benefit from the a priori conceptual model by applying it to examine KC within CoPs of fashion designers or other groups.