Communities of Practice: Enhancing Collective Effectiveness

The objective of this chapter is to explore the social dynamics and the effectiveness benefits that a community of practice creates for its members in a knowledge-intensive IT industry. Social dynamics is examined in terms of informal and organised forms of socialisation processes. Effectiveness benefits were evaluated in terms of commitment, friendship, community satisfaction, process satisfaction, and trust. The results of the study indicate that organised socialisation had a significant positive impact on all aspects of community effectiveness, but no particularly outstanding effect. The results further indicate that informal socialisation had a stronger positive impact on community effectiveness than organised socialisation, except for process satisfaction. These findings confirm the value of socialisation for effective knowledge organisations, and suggest the need for strategies that would provide encouragement without overformalisation.