What is Community Of Practice

In spite of its recognition as a field of research and practice with a lineage of several decades of prolific development (Kock & Nosek, 2005), virtual collaboration is still a domain where mixed results occur and failure crops up without warning (DeSanctis, Poole, Dickson, & Jackson, 1993; Blythin, Hughes, Kristoffersen, Rodden, & Rouncefield, 1997; Kock, 2004; Kock & Nosek, 2005). Even as its theoretical, technical, operational, and conceptual boundaries expand (Kock & Nosek, 2005), we still feel powerless when a promising experience of e-collaboration, which we could swear would last for a long time, suddenly collapses. In this article we discuss some fundamental conditions for sustainable e-collaboration. We start by introducing the concept of value proposal, the common ground of compatible interests required to make collaboration last, and we distill from it what we call the principle of sustainable e-collaboration. We then move to a discussion of the variable levels of collaboration and their relationship to group development, leadership and purpose. Finally, we briefly expound five groups of theories that we view as promising candidates for the future establishment of the theoretical foundations of sustainable e-collaboration. Figure 1 summarizes the key concepts of the article.