Organizational communities of practice: Review, analysis, and role of information and communications technologies

Information and communications technologies (ICTs) play a key role in supporting Communities of Practice (CoPs). A review of the extant literature reveals six factors that facilitate or constrain the development, sustenance, and effectiveness of CoPs that, in turn, enable generative and degenerative...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Journal of organizational computing and electronic commerce 2016-01, Vol.26 (4), p.307-322
Main Authors: Nithithanatchinnapat, Benyawarath, Taylor, Joseph, Joshi, K. D., Weiss, Meredith Leigh
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Communities
Communities of practice
Community identity
community of practice
community seeding structures
Computation
Digital divide
Electronic commerce
ICT materiality
information and communication technologies
Information technology
Knowledge management
Learning
Lenses
literature review
Literature reviews
Materiality
Nucleation
Organizational learning
organizations
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:Information and communications technologies (ICTs) play a key role in supporting Communities of Practice (CoPs). A review of the extant literature reveals six factors that facilitate or constrain the development, sustenance, and effectiveness of CoPs that, in turn, enable generative and degenerative structures and behaviors that affect epistemic environments within Organizational Communities of Practice (orgCoPs). OrgCoPs are accepted as beneficial organizational learning structures and need to be deliberately designed and cultivated. The materiality of ICTs that is used to support orgCoPs may play a role in supporting or opposing seeding structures. The literature review further reveals five material properties that describe the relationship between the orgCoPs and the technologies used to support it. We argue that these distinct but intersecting properties are germane to understanding the role that ICTs play in supporting orgCoPs and propose that the future work on orgCoPs could be nuanced if examined through the lens of ICTs' materiality.
ISSN:1091-9392
1532-7744
DOI:10.1080/10919392.2016.1228357