Web-based Learning Solutions for Communities of Practice

318
Conditions and Key Success Factors for the Management of Communities of Practice
Table 1. Main features of the experiences analyzed
purpose which are the conditions that distinguish
a CoP from just a group or a network. This is
not an issue of being purists, but in order to advance
in any field – and this one is no exception
– concepts should be used with rigor. There is a
certain respect that must be afforded to the term
“community of practice,” and the fact is that not
every group is one, as some other authors have
indicated (Roberts 2006) 12 (Lindkvist 2005) 13 and
more recently (Amin and Roberts 2008) 14 .
The three dimensions model established by
McDermott (1999b) helps us to understand the diversity
of CoP’s that can emerge, and the diversity
of mechanisms, artifacts and operating systems
they can use, depending on the knowledge objec-
tives they pursue and the contextual variables in
which they operate. However, McDermott’s model
also gives the possibility of getting conscious
that cultivating communities can be a failure
option, depending on the chosen combination
of dimensions. For instance, if the group shares
explicit knowledge through e-mails and sporadically
without any type of identity regarding the
group, it is better to consider the promotion of
an informal network, rather than a community
of practice.
To include an experience in our study of CoP’s
we have gone to the origins, and analyzed the
meaning of each word according to Wenger (1998),
establishing that the critical characteristics in a