Capturing the Communication Context of Virtual Communities of Practice

This paper reports a case study focusing on the challenges in the communication context of these virtual communities of practice. The study was carried out in a globally operating telecommunications company and it comprises 19 semi-structured interviews with employees working in distributed organisations. The interview data was analysed with qualitative content analysis after which interaction diagrams were generated. In addition, the appropriateness of using interaction diagrams as a research method is evaluated. The results indicate that the challenges of communicating and sharing knowledge in virtual CoPs are related to the communication artifacts, to the ICT mediated ways to interact, and to the current work processes and practices.