COMMUNITIES OF PRACTICE AND THE CHALLENGE OF
MANAGEMENT SUPPORT
Eric Bun, Pieter de Vries
Verdonck, Klooster and Associates, Delft University of Technology
Faculty of Technology, Policy and Management, Department of Systems Engineering, The Netherlands
Gwendolyn Kolfschoten, Wim Veen
Delft University of Technology - Faculty of Technology
Policy and Management, Department of Systems Engineering, The Netherlands
Keywords: Communities of Practice, Management Paradox, Management Support, Support Tool, Case Study.
Abstract: Communities of Practice (CoP) are a strategic asset for innovative organisations. However, managers have
problems to manage and facilitate CoPs, and therewith to harvest the benefits of these communities for the
organisation. The goal of this research is to supply managers with a support framework to facilitate the
development of CoPs, the CoP activities, and their contribution to the organisation. A design science study
is conducted, which comprises of a literature research to develop a knowledge base and a study of cases to
develop an environment base. Combined these sources are used to create a support tool, which was then
evaluated by an expert panel.
1 INTRODUCTION
A community of practice (CoP) offers participants a
social platform to develop, share, store and elaborate
on knowledge in an effective way. CoPs generate
innovative products and services and therefore
contribute to organisational performance. While
CoPs mostly spontaneously emerge, managers
generally feel the urge to support and encourage the
development and activities of CoPs in order to create
an innovative climate in the organisation. However,
management involvement is likely to suffer from the
management paradox; as traditional management
strategies tend to conflict with the core values of a
CoP (Wenger and Snyder, 2000).
Using design science as a research approach, we
present a tool to support the management and
facilitation of CoPs. To this end, findings of a case
study at an international consultancy firm will be
presented in combination with a literature study on
CoP evolvement.
First, the literature study focused on several CoP
evolvement models. The model of Gongla and
Rizzuto (2001) is used as a basis for a general notion
on CoP management and extended with additional
practices from (e.g Wenger and McDermott, 2002;
Brown and Duguid, 1991; Sunassee and Sewry,
2002 and Tremblay, 2004). The extended model is
further used to structure this paper.
Second, interviews and an expert panel were
used to identify and validate additional promising
practices on CoP management. Both the literature
and the lessons learned were then used to develop a
tool that can serve as a support framework for CoPs
in different phases of their lifecycle.
The support framework for managing CoPs
presented in this paper offers new insights for both
business managers and scientists. For managers, the
paper offers a set of guidelines from literature and
practice, which can be used in their daily
considerations regarding CoP support. For research
the paper offers a framework for the facilitation and
management of CoPs that can be used for further
research on the use of CoPs to improve the
innovative capacity of organisations. Such a
framework can be used to:
1. Gain insight in what management interventions
to use in which context to support CoPs
2. Develop best practices and techniques to support
CoPs in creating innovative solutions for an
186
Bun E., Vries P., Kolfschoten G. and Veen W. (2009).
COMMUNITIES OF PRACTICE AND THE CHALLENGE OF MANAGEMENT SUPPORT.
In Proceedings of the International Conference on Knowledge Management and Information Sharing, pages 186-193
DOI: 10.5220/0002305801860193
Copyright
c
 SciTePress

organisation
3. Further develop tools to support the activities of
CoPs and to further harvest their value for the
organisation.
The focus in this study is on issue one. Further
research is needed to deal with the other issues
moving towards a framework that helps to decide
about the productivity of these CoPs for the
organisation.
2 COMMUNITIES OF PRACTICE
The ‘Community of Practice-concept’ is an
approach to generate knowledge by means of social
interactions in a human network. In principle, CoPs
have been used for centuries, but the concept has
only recently been labelled (Lave and Wenger,
1991). Within this research the following definition
is used (Wenger et al, 2002):
“Communities of Practice are groups of people
who share a concern, a set of problems, or a passion
about a topic, and who deepen their knowledge and
expertise in this area through interaction at an
ongoing basis”
There are four main types of CoPs (Vestal, 2003):
1. Innovation community; cross-functional in
nature, works together to figure out new
solutions through the knowledge they already
have.
2. Helping community; focuses on helping people.
3. Best-practice community; concerned with
attaining, validating and disseminating
information.
4. Knowledge-stewarding community; focuses on
connecting people and connecting and
organizing information and knowledge across
the organisation.
2.1 Management of CoPs
For CoPs to be effective participants need to have a
shared interest, form a community and exchange
knowledge within the community on a regular basis.
CoP members thus need to have time and means to
communicate with one another. Since shared interest
is all that is needed to join a CoP, CoPs are
considered different from traditional team work
approaches (Bryan et al, 2004) and comprise
different features including variety, identity,
significance, autonomy and feedback (Bryan et al,
2004).
We can look at management interventions to
cultivate and support CoPs in their activities on three
different levels; Strategic, Tactical and Operational.
In this paper we will focus on the way business
managers have a direct influence on the in- and
output of community processes on the tactical level
by providing, for instance, (financial) rewards, time
and resources. The tactical level is the most
appropriate to influence an organisation’s
management style to improve CoPs support.
Management involvement on the three levels must
be aligned with the stages of development of a CoP
to correspond with for instance the stage of mutual
trust and openness between members, the level of
energy within the CoP and the maturity of
supporting tools and methods.
2.2 CoP Evolvement within
Organisations
CoPs do not simply emerge; they grow, split up,
grow further, evolve and might eventually die.
There are three evolvement theories: the evolution
model of Gongla and Rizzuto (2001), the life-cycle
model of Wenger (1998) and the life-cycle model of
McDermott (2000).
The research elaborates on the model proposed
by Gongla and Rizzuto (2001), because their model
is founded on many case studies and extensively
discusses organisational involvement in the different
stages of development. CoPs evolvement can be
described in five stages (2001):
1. Potential stage; individuals find out that they
have something in common and group in order
to gain insights in the benefits of a community.
2. Building stage; the community defines itself
further, creates an identity and etiquette.
3. Engaged stage; all internal processes are now
aligned to a common purpose.
4. Active stage; communities’ value becomes
essential to engaged participants and the
nurturing organisation.
5. Adaptive stage; the community starts to adapt to
changing environments and deploys new
communities themselves.
Tarmizi and Vreede (2005) integrate these stages
with the evolution models of Wenger (1998) and
McDermott (2000). Gongla and Rizzuto’s (2001)
model differs in stage 4 and 5 because they consider
CoPs’ level of energy and visibility to grow even
further. At the same time this development model
envisages the possibility that CoPs could suddenly
fall apart after each stage. To gain insights in the
COMMUNITIES OF PRACTICE AND THE CHALLENGE OF MANAGEMENT SUPPORT
187

type of management support to use in what context,
it is preferable to use a descriptive model with
limited stages. In other words, stages that could
either end or continue as being described by Gongla
and Rizzuto (see Figure 1).
Figure 1: A visual representation of the different
evolvement models.
In this paper the adaptive stage 5 will not be
considered, because Gongla and Rizzuto (2001)
consider a community in the adaptive stage as part
of the existing organisational processes. In fact,
CoPs in this stage become totally self-organising and
self-supporting and they might even create charters
for new communities (Gongla and Rizzuto, 2001).
Therefore discussing organisational or management
requirements for this stage is not very useful for the
scope case of this paper.
2.3 The Management Paradox in
Support of CoPs
Deploying and managing CoPs in the context of
existing business processes is likely to result in the
management paradox (based on Wenger and Snyder,
2000):
Business managers are able to cultivate cops by
providing the right support (e.g. financial support,
resources, knowledge), but managers could rather
easily destroy the value of communities by imposing
too much or applying counter productive
management efforts. Managers are used to carry out
‘classical’ management strategies which do not
seem to fit these very personal, collaborative,
informal and spontaneous working formats
(processes).
Moreover, the management paradox describes
the conflicts resulting from management efforts to
stimulate performance and productivity on the one
hand and the community core values and
spontaneous developing nature on the other hand.
Classical management styles do not seem to fit new
organisational formats, such as CoPs. Consequently,
the organisations’ ability to actively facilitate and
support the development of such communities
remains uncertain (Thompson, 2005).
3 RESEARCH APPROACH
The goal of this study was to increase our
knowledge on the management issue while
developing a tool to support CoPs development.
This design science approach proposes design as a
research strategy to gain knowledge and
understanding about the object under construction.
Design science can be used to research not just
instantiations (prototypes or systems) but also
models (frameworks and representations) and
methods (algorithms and practices) (Hevner et al,
2004). Design science advocates learning from a
knowledge base and an environment base to
establish rigor and relevance in a design effort with
the intention to create new insights and
understanding through design, and the evaluation of
design (Hevner et al, 2004).
In this study, the object of design is a ‘support
tool’, a framework in which techniques to support
CoP development are captured. Such a framework
helps to address the problem of a management
paradox with respect to CoPs. The research
contribution of this paper is therefore to present an
overview of effective management support
interventions, linked to the different development
phases and organisational levels in the CoP’s life
cycle.
4 GUIDELINES FROM THE
LITERATURE
Various search engines and a snowball method was
used to gather information on guidelines for the
management support of CoPs that form the
knowledge base of this design study. In this section,
the tactical practices identified in the literature are
ordered along the five stages of a CoP’s lifecycle.
Furthermore we added some generic guidelines for
KMIS 2009 - International Conference on Knowledge Management and Information Sharing
188

CoP management on the strategic and operational
level.
4.1 Level 1: Strategic
From a strategic perspective it is of great importance
that an organisation considers itself as a community-
of-communities symbolized as a pile of intertwined
communities (Brown and Duguid, 1991). In other
words, an organisation should accept that they way
people actually work differs fundamentally from the
ways this is described by the organisation in
manuals, programs, charts and others (Brown and
Duguid, 1991). Therefore, knowledge management
should be approached from a community perspective
that connects to corresponding working practices. .
4.2 Level 2: Tactical
In this research we focussed on the tactical level,
because the management paradox is likely to
manifest itself predominantly on this level. A
selected set of the most important success factors are
described here.
Stage 1: Potential Stage
First, a manager should engage an “energiser”, a
person who actively helps to locate and link
individuals. An energiser within an organisation
should identify existing informal groups and
uncover cross-departmental challenges or problems
(Wenger et al, 2002). The appointed ‘energiser’
should have the skills to lower the thresholds for
networking. “Human intermediaries can be quite
valuable in helping connect individuals to other
community members” (Lesser and Storck, 2001:
84).
Second, managers should lower the threshold for
networking by encouraging and supporting face-to-
face events (Tremblay, 2004), common education
and development processes (Gongla and Rizzuto,
2001), corporate universities, libraries, sporting and
diner activities (Wenger, 1998).
Stage 2: Building Stage
In the building stage, managers should consider
whether or not they want to support a community. If
they decide to, they can carry out several
management practices in this stage.
First, a rather trivial management practice is the
provision of time to participate in CoPs (Wenger et
al, 2002). Because community involvement should
not be jeopardized by working activities, people
should feel that they have some time available to
steward a forming community. However, when
business managers provide time, they usually want
to assess the value of a community. Managers
should use non-traditional methods to measure
value, by for instance, listening to members’ stories.
Members’ stories clarify the complex relationships
among activities, knowledge and performance
(Wenger et al, 2002). The non-traditional methods
should be integrated in existing performance
assessment arrangements. People that contribute to
knowledge management initiatives should be
rewarded (Sunassee and Sewry, 2002).
Second, managers can help to define the scope
and type of the memberships and determine ways in
which to identify, attract, or recruit new members
(Gongla and Rizzuto, 2001).
Stage 3: Engaged Stage
In this stage, a community should focus or expand.
Success factors are related to the inner relationships
between community members.
Because a community at this stage becomes
important for the nurturing organisation, managers
should set up regular interactions wherein they keep
track of the activities and outcomes of a community
(Gongla and Rizzuto, 2001). However, a business
manager should acknowledge the values of a
community and could only attempt to redefine
scope, mission or mode of operation, or support
growth (Gongla and Rizzuto, 2001).
Furthermore, in this stage, it becomes important
that communities’ effectiveness is measured and
reflected to community participants. It enables them
“to learn about themselves and improve internal
operations” (Gongla and Rizzuto, 2001: 851).
Stage 4: Active Stage
A community that arrives at this stage needs
management that really coordinates multiple work
groups and teams (Gongla and Rizzuto, 2001).
Business managers should integrate feedback
mechanisms with organisational processes and
report needs. In this way, the essential self-learning
activities of a CoP could be further enhanced
(Gongla and Rizzuto, 2001).
4.3 Level 3: Operational
Tools should be flexible and customisable (Simons,
2000). Tools will be used for both directive (e.g.
COMMUNITIES OF PRACTICE AND THE CHALLENGE OF MANAGEMENT SUPPORT
189

chat, phone calls and virtual meetings) and
nondirective (electronic messaging systems, forums
and) collaboration (Gongla and Rizzuto, 2001) and
knowledge organisation (e.g. collaborative tagging)
(Macgregor and McCulloch, 2006). The last
important functionality of tools should be the
support of Social Network Analysis (SNA), which is
valuable for both managers as well as participants to
uncover interpersonal relationships and potential
CoPs (Cross et al, 2004).
5 CASE STUDY
In addition to the knowledge base the environment
and context in which CoPs evolve was analyzed. For
this purpose a case study was carried out at a large
international IT consultancy firm. Eight semi-
structured interviews were conducted with four
business managers and four CoP participants on how
the consultancy firm manages CoPs in practice. The
aim of the semi-structured interviews was to obtain a
rather holistic view on the way the IT consultancy
firm dealt with CoPs and therefore both managers
and CoP participants were engaged.
Moreover an expert panel session was conducted
in a Group Decision Room (GDR). A GDR provides
electronic meeting facilities and yields additional
benefits over other workshop formats, such as
parallel and autonomous brainstorming, automatic
generated reports and quick results. Two business
managers, four CoP participants and two CoP
experts participated in the expert panel which lasted
four hours. The aim of the panel was twofold:
validating the results of the interviews and
brainstorming on new practices.
Practices were validated by raising statements
which were ranked by the participants. They could
indicate to what extent the statements hold true in
their daily business and community face-off.
Correspondingly, promising tactical management
practices were uncovered by utilising the free format
brainstorming techniques covered in the GDR.
Participants could raise new practices anonymously
which were ranked and prioritised by the group
accordingly.
From the case study, we can conclude and
confirm the following guidelines on a tactical level:
 Appoint ‘Energisers’ (e.g. highly dedicated and
passionate CoP evangelists) in each
department;
 Asses individual employees on how they share
their knowledge throughout the company and
provide rewards (e.g. knowledge sharing
award’);
 Lower the thresholds to constitute CoPs; make
resources widely and easily available for CoP
support ;
 Obligate employees to store ‘lessons learned’
after each project has been finished;
 Utilise ‘intervision’ (exchanging perspectives
and lessons learned about a practice or role) as
a problem solving technique, instruct managers
on how to use it and focus on the autonomy of
the professional;
 Empower employees; design an environment
where people are able to steward the
evolvement of the community.
The utmost important tactical management practices,
as denoted in the case study are summarised in table
1. The table categorises these general practices from
the different stakeholder perspectives.
Table 1: Summary of the major tactical management
practices from the different stakeholder perspectives.
CoP participant CoP manager Expert panel
CoP #1
Provide a new
‘channel’ to
influence
business
decision making
Influence the
emergence of a \CoP
by involving CoP
experts and potential
community members
• Appoint
energizer
• Assess
individuals
• Lower
thresholds
• Store lessons
learned
• Utilise
‘intervision’
• Empower
employees
CoP #2
Evangelise the
CoP and
encourage
potential
members to join
Provide room and
create a culture that
encourage employees
to take initiatives
CoP #3
Empower the
‘emerging
leader’ to free up
resources
Community
interaction through
the ‘emerging leader’
6 A SUPPORT TOOL TO
MANAGE AND FACILITATE
CoPS
The outcome of the literature research and the
results of the case study practices are bundled in a
‘support tool’ for CoP management that is presented
along the three levels of organisational involvement.
In line with the research scope, the tactical level of
organisational involvement is specified along the
four stages of community evolvement. The ‘tool’
consists of a framework (see figure 2) helps
managers to identify managerial interventions that
support the development and success of the CoP at
the different stages of its life cycle.
KMIS 2009 - International Conference on Knowledge Management and Information Sharing
190

6.1 Level 1: Strategic
From a strategic level, the case study discovered the
lack of a uniform approach on CoP management at
the IT consultancy firm. Consequently, CoP support
heavily depends on the particular individual
management style of a business manager. One of the
key consequences of the reliance of an individual
management style is that some employees feel that
they have to put great efforts before they get any
support where others are actively encouraged to
attend various KM development and collaboration
programs. An external knowledge management
(KM) task force, which engage KM experts,
business managers, and various employees of the
consultancy firm, has to overcome problems raised
by developing such a uniform approach.
6.2 Level 2: Tactical
The case study resulted in several findings on how
managers at the IT consultancy firm can support
CoPs in their different stages of evolvement. The
practices uncovered in the interviews and expert
panel add up to the practices denoted in the literature
(section 3).
Stage 1: Potential Stage
In order to link potential community members,
business managers could assume two different
approaches on CoP management. In the first place,
business managers carry out ‘general’ practices
which support on their own accord emerging CoPs
by making, for instance, ‘account-meetings’ more
accessible so employees get a better understanding
of the company’s main concerns.
In the second place, managers take the lead by
making an attempt to link potential community
members before any community has been formed.
One successful CoP at the IT consultancy firm was,
in fact, planned by a manager. He engaged potential
members, experienced KM experts and encouraged
members to form a community. However, the way
the CoP subsequently emerged was barely
influenced by the manager.
Stage 2: Building Stage
Managers can influence CoP building by
encouraging employees to store ‘lessons learned’.
Storing lessons learned helps to activate the reuse of
knowledge in later projects. Therefore, by
committing employees to store their lessons learned,
reuse of their knowledge is likely to improve the
knowledge level in similar or related projects.
The idea of engaging ‘energisers’ was well
conceived in the interviews and expert-panel. At the
IT consultancy firm, energisers could overcome
organisational structures by encouraging
collaboration between departments in mini KM task
forces.
Lastly, business managers should be instructed
(by the KM task force) on how to further encourage
CoP building. Managers should utilise intervision as
a method to solve problems thoroughly. Briefly,
intervision is a problem solving technique in which
participants discuss about the context of a problem
and not about the solutions. Intervision enhances
self-reflection and collective capability development
and can therefore encourage CoP forming.
Stage 3: Engaged Stage
In the engaged stage, both managers and CoP
participants have knowledge about how community
effectiveness could be measured. In this stage, a
knowledge-sharing award could further help to
emphasise the importance of knowledge sharing.
Business managers should acknowledge and
eventually reward individuals on the extent they
share their knowledge throughout the company.
Second, because community’s value becomes
more visible, managers should also be assessed on
how their team shares its knowledge throughout the
company. This is of main importance in order to
stimulate cross-departmental knowledge sharing.
Stage 4: Active Stage
The management constituted successful CoP
reemphasised the practices found in the literature
including the need for management to integrate
feedback mechanisms with organisational processes
and report needs. In order to do so, the particular
manager intertwined community outcomes in
strategic decision processes. Members indeed
experienced this as a way to improve self-learning
activities when their community outcomes where
reflected in strategic decisions. Besides the
confirmation of this management practice, no
additional practices were uncovered for this stage.
6.3 Level 3: Operational
On an operational level, a few promising practices
were discovered. First, employees denoted the need
for visualising existing (tacit) knowledge maps in
COMMUNITIES OF PRACTICE AND THE CHALLENGE OF MANAGEMENT SUPPORT
191

order to be able to search for knowledge instead of
information. Therefore, Social Network Analysis
(SNA) functionalities should be extended with a
voting systems.
Second, tools should provide opportunities to
store and utilise lessons learned in an effective way.
6.4 The Support Tool
The objective of the study was to gain insight in
what management interventions to use and in which
context to support CoPs. This is the first issue in a
prospective management support framework that
eventually should deal with the productivity of CoPs
for the organisation. The outcome of this research is
a conceptual management support tool for CoP on
primarily the tactical level. Figure 2 provides an
overview of the practices identified in the literature,
interviews and expert panel. The practices indicated
with ‘new’ were uncovered in the case study.
The support tool provides management guidance
on a tactical level per evolvement stage. However,
CoP support cannot be limited to the static context
of stages. The growth of CoPs through the stages is
required as well and managing this transition
between the stages is therefore of great importance.
The case study found three major influence areas to
guide a CoP through the transition of stages:
1. Roles and responsibilities; when communities
evolve the role of the community initiator can
move from a rather directing to a more
facilitating role. Managers can support in the
transition with coaching members and
uncovering lessons learned from former
communities.
2. Funding and sponsorship; an evolving
community needs (financial) support. Managers
can support in the transition by providing time,
money and freeing up resources.
3. Awareness and visibility; a community needs
interaction with the environment to grow and
evolve. Therefore, managers can support a
transition by promoting CoPs in and outside the
organisation.
A seamless intertwinement of the management
support tool and transition management is essential
for the first issue in a prospective management
support framework.
Stage 1:
Potential
stage
Stage 2: Building stage Stage 3:
Engaged stage
Stage 4:
Active stage
Strategic
Organisation as a community-of-communities
Engage an external KM task force (new)
Reserve a central KM budget (new)
Tactical
•
Engage
“energisers
”
• Stimulate
common
activities
• Stimulate
face-to-
face
meetings
• Allow
natural
community
forming
• Make
‘account-
meetings’
more
accessible
(new)
•
Provide time
• Use non-traditional
methods to measure
value
• Help to plan growth
and operation
• Obligate employees to
store ‘lessons learned’
(new)
• Engage mini task
forces over divisional
boundaries in order to
share knowledge
between departments
(new)
• Make managers and
employees familiar
with ‘intervision
creation’ (new)
• Try to be
engaged in
community’s
processes to
keep on track
• Measure
effectiveness
• Promote self-
learning
• Introduce a
knowledge-
sharing award
(new)
• Assess
business
managers on
how their team
share their
knowledge
(new)
• Integrate
community
feedback
loops with
organisation
al processes
and reports
Operational
Implement easy portals
Directive and non-directive collaboration tools
Utilise tools that enable sharing tacit knowledge
Deploy customisable tools & methods
Utilise Social Network Analysis
Support self-learning activities by tools and methods
Visualise (tacit) knowledge maps (new)
Develop methods & tools to store ‘lessons learned’ (new)
Figure 2: A support tool for managing CoPs.
7 CONCLUSIONS
The goal of this research was to develop a support
tool for managers in facilitating the development of
CoPs. Along the community evolution model of
Gongla and Rizzuto, guidelines from the literature
were added with promising practices from our
knowledge and environment base. The practices
were subsequently evaluated by an expert panel.
Based on the results, a support tool for managing
CoPs was built.
The research is based on a study of several cases
at (or linked to) the large international IT
consultancy firm which makes it on the one hand
extensive, profound and detailed but on the other
hand the research could be extended by more case
studies at other business and in other industries.
Further research should therefore focus on the
management paradox and management practices in
other industries in order to extend this first
framework for management support. Besides the
KMIS 2009 - International Conference on Knowledge Management and Information Sharing
192

transition management concept needs more
elaboration on how to flow through the stages. In
other words, how to select the most appropriate
practices in which stage and context to catalyse the
emergence of a CoP.
Another important area for further research is the
measurement of the effectiveness of different
management styles on CoPs, and the measurement
of CoP’s successfulness in general. Such metrics can
be based on research on knowledge management
effectiveness related to management styles. The
Knowledge Governance Framework might be a
good starting point in this respect (Smits and Moor,
2005). However, the success and impact of CoPs
will remain difficult to measure and assess,
consequently making them vulnerable for the
management paradox. Solving this issue will
therefore require a way to better assess the impact of
CoPs on knowledge activation and use in the
organisation. The more explicit the value of CoPs
the easier it will be to avoid the management
paradox and facilitate the cultivation of CoPs.
REFERENCES
Brown, J.S., Duguid, P., 1991. Organizational Learning
and Communities of Practice: Toward a Unified View
of Working, Learning, and Innovation, Organization
Science 2 (1), pp. 40-57.
Bryan, L., Steve, C., Elayne, C. and Gillian, J., 2004.
Beyond Knowledge Management. Idea Group
Publishing.
Cross, R., Borgatti, S.P., Parker, A., 2004. Making
Invisible Work Visible: Using Social Network
Analysis to Support Strategic Collaboration, Creating
Value with Knowledge, January (22), pp. 82-103.
Hevner, A., March, S., Park, J., and Rahm, S., 2004.
Design Science Research in Information Systems.
Management Information Systems Quarterly, 28, 1,
75-105.
Gongla, P., Rizzuto, C.R., 2001. Evolving Communities of
Practice: IBM Global Services experience, IBM
Systems Journal 40 (4), IBM, California, pp. 842-862.
Lave, J., Wenger, E.C., 1991. Situated Learning:
Legitimate Peripheral Participation, Cambridge
University Press, Cambridge, UK.
Lesser, E.L, Storck, J., 2001. Communities of practice and
organizational performance, IBM Systems Journal 40
(4), 831-841.
Macgregor, G., McCulloch, E., 2006. Collaborative
tagging as a knowledge organisation and resource
discovery tool. Library review 55 (5), pp. 291 – 300.
McDermott, R., 2000. Community Development as a
Natural Step: Five Stages of Community
Development, KM Review 3 (5), pp. 16-19.
Simons, P.R.J., Admiraal, W., Akkerman, S., Groep J. and
Laat, M. D., 2000. How people in virtual groups and
communities (fail to) interact, The biannual
conference of the European Association for Research
on Learning and Instruction, August 26-31, Padua,
Italy, Centre for ICT in Education, Utrecht University.
Smits, M., Moor, A., 2005. Measuring Knowledge
Management Effectiveness in Communities of
Practice, Hawaii International Conference on System
Sciences number 37.
Sunassee, N., Sewry, D., 2002. A Theoretical Framework
for Knowledge Management, Proceedings of SAICSIT.
Tarmizi, H., Vreede, G.J., 2005. A facilitation Task
Taxonomy for Communities of Practice, Eleventh
Americas Conference on Information Systems, Omaha,
August 11th – 14th.
Tremblay, D.G., 2004. Communities of Practice: Are the
conditions for implementation the same as for a virtual
multi organisation community, Canada research chair
on the socio economic challenges of the knowledge
economy, Université du Québec.
Vestal, W., 2003. Ten Traits for a Succesful Community
of Practice. Knowledge Management Review,
January/February (5).
Wenger, E.C., 1998. Communities of Practice: Learning as
a social system, Systems Thinker 9 (5), pp. 2-3.
Wenger, E.C., Snyder, W.M., 2000. Communities of
Practice: The Organizational Frontier, Harvard
Business Review, January/February, pp. 139-145.
Wenger, E.C., McDermott, R., Snyder, W.M., 2002.
Cultivating Communities of Practice, Harvard
Business School Press, Boston.
COMMUNITIES OF PRACTICE AND THE CHALLENGE OF MANAGEMENT SUPPORT
193