Chapter 1 - Communities of Practice: The Key to Knowledge Strategy

Abstract

Communities of practice are everywhere. They exist within businesses and across business units and company boundaries. Even though they are informally constituted and reside within a specific area of practice, these self-organizing systems share the capacity to create and use organizational knowledge through informal learning and mutual engagement. Wenger believes that communities of practice are key to understanding the complex knowledge challenges faced by most organizations in today's knowledge economy. To that end, Wenger sets the boundaries of what constitutes a community of practice and how it resides within different types of organizations. In this chapter, Wenger proposes a framework that motivates firms to recognize the critical knowledge generated by communities of practice to engage and identify common work practices, foster belonging, and deploy a knowledge strategy through transformation. With his framework, Wenger highlights how communities forge new connections and relationships with the greater organization—where the community is legitimized as a place for sharing and creating knowledge.