Communities of Practice: Powerful Environments for Inter-organizational Knowledge Alliances?

The purpose of this research is to gain understanding about how communities of practice might serve as rich environments for generating knowledge alliances between members of different, and sometimes competing, organizations. Communities of practice (CoPs) are groups of people who come together in order to learn, solve organizational problems and innovate in their field. Knowledge alliances are an important way for organizations to increase their learning in order to innovate and remain competitive. However, knowledge alliances between competing organizations can be difficult to cultivate and are not always productive. This has to do with factors such as mistrust, problems with communication between unlike actors, and an inability to exploit knowledge gained from outside sources. The literature on communities of practice illustrates how these self-directed, practice-based learning environments can help overcome cognitive and motivational barriers to knowledge exchange by raising social capital among participants. However, most work on the subject employs an intra-organizational perspective; there is little research on how communities of practice work when participants come from different organizations. Understanding how CoPs can be used as mechanisms to help overcome specific barriers to inter-organizational knowledge alliances could aid organizations in improving their learning and consequently improve its capabilities.