Identifying the success factors of Communities of Practice (CoPs): How do they affect on students to create knowledge?

Purpose -- Today educational organizations are faced with constant changes in their environment. These changes have forced organizations to view their human capital as knowledge capital in order to survive and thrive. Communities of practice can be one of the most important factors to achieve these goals and it should be considered by educational organizations. This paper identifies the success factors of communities of practice that will improve knowledge creation in educational organizations. Design/methodology/approach -- The present paper tries to identify the success factors of communities of practice and examine the impact of the success factors of CoPs in knowledge creation. The research method is descriptive. The population of the research consists of students of Payame Noor University as a case study. We designed a questionnaire based on experts’ opinion and reviewed more than 35 articles. We used factor analysis to categorize and examine the correlation between success factors of CoPs and knowledge creation and finally formed the regression equation based on correlation’ result.Finding -- The results showed six success factors. These factors are “Organization”, “Optimizing Interactions”, “Infrastructure”, “Supporting Tools”, “Strategy and Goals” and “Organizational Support”. These factors reflect the effective factors in educational organizations attempting to progress in knowledge creation should focus. Among these success factors, “strategy and goals” and “organization” have the highest effect on communities of practice in our case.Research limitations/implications -- The paper discusses how the success factors of CoPs improve knowledge creation in universities as educational organization and how an organization will benefit from these factors. It can help the development of guidelines for educational organizations to increase their community knowledge information. They can also apply the findings of this research in order to promote the scientific level of their related organizations through reinforcement of CoP practices. In this study we faced with some problems to collect expert’s opinion and also gather the questionnaires. Originality/value -- This paper may have great value to researchers as well as practitioners involved in knowledge creation programs in organizations about CoPs and the knowledge creation field. This research can establish guidelines for PNU Tehran-North as a case study with using the right policies and make changes to the traditional structures of the university, improve and develop the knowledge creation process and the formation of communities of practice. This study can guide Managers and especially the university managers to provide suitable base to shape COPs, help them emerge and enhance them effectively.