Mediating Role of Leadership in the Development of Communities of Practice

Abstract

This chapter aims to demonstrate that leadership is a Community of Practice (CoP) mediating influence for problem solving and innovation that should be incorporated in the contemporary CoP model. Jean Lave and Etienne Wenger (1991) coined the term “Community of Practice” to describe how groups of professionals network to identify common solutions to everyday problems. Wenger et al. (Cultivating communities of practice: a guide to managing knowledge. Harvard Business School Press, Boston, 2002) elaborated a CoP theory explaining how field practitioners develop and share working skills through the dimensions of domain, practice, and community, each related to diverse activities and life cycle stages of knowledge creation. Today, numerous organizations have adopted CoPs to promote innovation among their professional constituencies. CoPs have been characterized as spontaneous networks of people that operate without hierarchies or leadership structure. However, the current CoP literature suggests the mediating role of leadership over the capacity of members to produce problem-solving and innovation. A revised CoP structure in which leadership appears a mediating influence for CoP development is necessary to validate the existence of considerable research reporting leadership expressions as influence over CoP socialization and knowledge creation. By acknowledging the mediating role that leadership exerts over CoP knowledge creation, organizations sponsoring communities of practitioners may be able to overcome the challenges in leveraging the spontaneous nature of the community with the legitimization of knowledge creation structures.