Communities of practice in the business and organization studies literature

Introduction. As it approaches the two decade milestone, the concept of Community of Practice (CoP) faces what can be described as a midlife crisis. It has achieved wide diffusion, but users have adapted it to suit their needs, leading to a proliferation of diverging interpretations. Recent critiques lament that the concept is losing its coherence and analytical power. Method. This review uses Benders and van Veen’s (2001) model of a management fashion to account for the popularity of CoPs in the business and organisation studies literature, and for the current crisis. Results. The literature displays considerable confusion between CoPs and other social structures concerned with knowledge and learning, although recent typologies are helping to clarify concepts. Researchers have accepted CoPs as a enduring element in the knowledgebased view of the firm, but practitioners have mostly used CoPs as fashionable management discourse, specifically as a Knowledge Management tool, resulting in numerous publications based on pragmatic interpretations of the concept. By now, the CoP fashion is fading in the practitioner literature, but the researcher community displays renewed interest in the form of several in-depth critiques and a resurgence of theory-grounded studies. Conclusion. The review therefore predicts the CoP concept will successfully mature out of its current crisis through a new period, already started, of theory development grounded in rigourous studies conducted within organisations.