Communities of Practice and the Challenge of Management Support

Communities of Practice (CoP) are a strategic asset for innovative organisations. However, managers have problems to manage and facilitate CoPs, and therewith to harvest the benefits of these communities for the organisation. The goal of this research is to supply managers with a support framework to facilitate the development of CoPs, the CoP activities, and their contribution to the organisation. A design science study is conducted, which comprises of a literature research to develop a knowledge base and a study of cases to develop an environment base. Combined these sources are used to create a support tool, which was then evaluated by an expert panel.