Community of practice

The concept of a community of practice (often abbreviated as CoP) refers to the process of social learning that occurs when people who have a common interest in some subject or problem collaborate over an extended period to share ideas, find solutions, and build innovations.

The term was first used in 1991 by Jean Lave and Etienne Wenger who used it in relation to situated learning as part of an attempt to "rethink learning" at the Institute for Research on Learning. In 1998, the theorist Etienne Wenger extended the concept and applied it to other contexts, including organizational settings. More recently Communities of Practice have become associated with knowledge management as people have begun to see them as ways of developing social capital, nurturing new knowledge, stimulating innovation or sharing existing tacit knowledge within an organization. It is now an accepted part of organizational development (OD).

Key CoP concepts are: periphery & core membership, participation, domain, practice, boundaries, reification, making meaning, legitimate peripheral participation.


 * A brief history of the concept of Communities of Practice can be found here.


 * The relationship between CoPs and Knowledge Management is discussed in the article: The Duality of Knowledge.


 * The relationship between CoPs and organizational knowledge strategy is discussed in the article: Knowledge management as a doughnut: Shaping your knowledge strategy through communities of practice.

Related to
The term Communities of Practice - though because of the words chosen for it, the term seems as though it stands just for shared practice - was created to refer to a larger whole. It is a common misconception that other types of communities are needed to refer to a different philosophical foundation. The theoretical foundation for the below mentioned 'community types' all root in what has been described for Communities of Practice (see discussion of this article). However, it might serve as specific practical purpose to refer to a specific type of Community of Practice using more illustrative expressions such as:


 * Communities of Action
 * Communities of Circumstance
 * Communities of Interest
 * Communities of Position
 * Communities of Purpose