Designing and managing business communities of practice

The purpose of this paper is to put forward a model to map the evolution of a business Community of Practice (CoP) in terms of learning and knowledge management processes.

Empirical evidence is based on seven case studies and the analyses of three best practices from secondary sources. Two of those cases are analyzed longitudinally from inception, while the others are retrospective. Cases were chosen in order to cover different kinds of industries and, especially, to analyze sharing of different kinds of knowledge (from call‐centre operators to complex new products knowledge).

The article sheds light on the different evolutionary paths that business CoPs follow and the role of the dynamics of the organizational commitment and the people involvement. It was noticed that a high level of commitment from both the organization and its members is related to the effectiveness of the Community in supporting learning and knowledge management processes.

The case studies and best practice examples reported are all based on the experiences of Western companies – although some, if not all, may have global operations. It is possible that some of the conclusions (e.g, levels of organizational commitment and individual participation, evolutionary stages and drivers), may not be valid for Asian‐headquartered companies.

This article aims to develop actionable knowledge to support management in understanding how to manage a business CoP, in order to create value for both the organization and its members. The proposed model can be used for mapping the CoP evolution, while identifying the appropriate governance tools to cultivate, stimulate and drive the Community evolution.

In the model, the evolution of a Community has been assessed in terms of its vitality – i.e. its effectiveness in supporting knowledge management and learning. This vitality depends on the combination of the organization's commitment and members' involvement. Therefore, supporting a Community in its evolution means stimulating and maintaining the commitment (animation and promotions levers) of these two parties.