Virtual communities of practice: A study of communication, community and organisational learning

Communities of practice are recognised as important to the social fabric of knowledge (Wenger, 2004), and are described as social structures which enable knowledge to be managed by practitioners. According to Wenger (2004), members of these groups share a passion for something they know how to do, and they regularly interact for the purpose of improving their discipline. More recently in the literature there has emerged the notion of virtual communities of practice, where members make use of information and communication technologies to share stories, knowledge and communications. The emergence of virtual communities of practice in an organisational setting raises some issues for the ways communication and learning at work occurs. Little is known about the application of communities of practice theory in the virtual domain, especially in relation to these issues. This paper explores the communication and learning experiences of member of virtual communities of practice by drawing on qualitative data from a study of multiple worksites. The findings identify some barriers to sustaining communities of practice in a virtual context, and the issues which exist when organisations intentionally create these communities for specific organisational purposes. These issues include: ways in which the virtual community of practice is created or emerges, cultural diversity within the community and experience of new members in the community. Introduction The notion of learning as a key to an organisation's success has enjoyed many years of attention in the literature (Pfeffer & Sutton, 2000; Davenport & Prusak, 1997). For organisations operating in today's digital era, learning retains its prominence, but the ways learning occurs and is managed challenges traditional organisational models (Dubé, Bourhis & Jacob, 2005; Loebbecke & Wareham, 2003). One theory of managing knowledge is 'Communities of Practice' (Lave & Wenger, 1991). Communities of practice are recognised as important to the social fabric of knowledge (Wenger, 2004), and are described as social structures which enable knowledge to be managed by practitioners. According to Wenger (2004), members of these groups share a passion for something they know how to do, and they regularly interact for the purpose of improving their discipline. More recently the notion of virtual communities of practice has where members mainly use information and communication technologies (ICT) to share stories, knowledge and communications. The emergence of virtual communities of practice in an organisational setting raises some issues for the ways learning at work occurs. As Cramton (2001)