Innovation through virtual communities of practice: motivation and constraints in the knowledge-creation process

Communities of Practice are places which provide a sound basis for organizational learning, enabling knowledge creation and acquisition thus improving organizational performance, leveraging innovation and consequently increasing competitively. Virtual Communities of Practice (VCoP"s) can perform a central role in promoting communication and collaboration between members who are dispersed in both time and space. The ongoing case study, described here, aims to identify both the motivations and the constraints that members of an organization experience when taking part in the knowledge creating processes of the VCoP"s to which they belong. Based on a literature review, we have identified several factors that influence such processes; they will be used to analyse the results of interviews carried out with the leaders of VCoP"s in four multinationals. As future work, a questionnaire will be developed and administered to the other members of these VCoP"s