A Relational View of Individual Participation in Online Communities of Practice: An Integrative Literature Review

This paper reviews prior research on individual participation in online communities of practice (CoPs). It examines how the concept of CoP has been applied in IS and what theories have been applied to explain knowledge sharing behaviours in online CoPs. To integrate findings in prior empirical IS studies, the paper drew on literature on relationship marketing to re-conceptualize participation in a CoP as a contractual relationship between a member and the online community. A conceptual framework was developed to revisit prior empirical findings in relation to key antecedents and outcomes of individuals’ knowledge sharing in online CoPs. It suggests that the strength of a member-community relationship can evolve through different intermediate processes. There is a need to examine how an online member-community relationship can be formed, developed and sustained by different relational mediators and how individual, CoPs and contextual factors may jointly affect individuals’ participation in online CoPs over time.