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

Abstract

ABSTRACTInformation 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.