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To explore the shared experience of organizational change from centralized allocation and control of services and resources to an empowering partnership approach to service delivery in one Canadian home care program.

Applying an interpretive phenomenological design, data from in‐depth interviews with a purposeful sample (n=28) of providers, clients and informal caregivers were analysed using hermeneutic techniques, and validated by member checking and peer review.

The overall experience of change was comprised of two dynamic change patterns: extrinsically introduced organizational development, facilitated by contextual factors; and intrinsically developed transformational change, impeded by the same contextual factors. The patterns together comprised participants' enactment of an answer to the existential question, “To have or to be?”

While interpretive research does not elicit generalizable results, the findings of this study illuminate the importance of choosing change strategies appropriate for the intended change, addressing what the change may mean to all involved, and confronting the contextual factors that undermine the change.

New strategies are needed if engrained attitudes, values and beliefs about professional service delivery are to be changed.

The interpretation exposes the nature of professional practice in health and social services, the impact of this work context on practice, and concrete strategies for managing organizational change.

This paper seeks to outline a social epistemological and ethical warrant for engaging in knowledge exchange on the social web, and to emphasise socio‐cognitive and emotional factors behind motivation and credibility in communities supported by social software. An attempt is made to identify positive and negative patterns of interaction from this perspective and to argue for more positive intervention on the part of the information profession.

The paper outlines social epistemological and related theory, cognitive and social drivers of behaviour and then draws together evidence to justify the definition of patterns that will be important to the project.

A programme of evaluating online knowledge exchange behaviour using a social epistemological framework is needed. In order to do this, methodological development coupling formal epistemological with interpretive techniques for examining belief formation are also necessary.

Considerations for the design and deployment of knowledge platforms and for engagement with existing communities are outlined.

The ideas presented attempt to define an important role for the information profession within a new paradigm of participation and social interaction online.

The connection between social epistemology theory and LIS has long been appreciated, but social epistemology is rarely applied to practice or to online social platforms and communities.