Distributed leadership in Communities of Practice: The Case of United Nations

Communities of Practice (CoPs) have become more popular during last two decades. Despite the fact of usefulness of CoPs for problem solving, collective learning, and knowledge sharing in teams, the literature is still uncertain concerning the manageability of CoPs (Swan et al. 2003) and there is not enough empirical research regarding the role of leaders in them. This research is focusing on a distinctive feature of communities of practice - the absence of a hierarchy among members. We investigate, empirically, the role of leaders in CoPs on the application of United Nations. We have selected a CoP within the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa as the case and we performed a number of interviews with both community' leaders and members. The result proposes an understandable role for leaders in CoPs. Afterwards, based on a systematic review of literature, and particularly the "distributed" form of leadership, which is more applicable on learning environments, we tried to elaborate our framework. From the distributed perspective of leadership, routines, as aspects of the situation, are the key constituting elements of the practice of leadership (Spillane and Diamond 2007); therefore, this article also discusses how routines operate as the direct links between key leadership activities and knowledge creation - learning, and how they enable leaders to influence CoP governance.