Environmental and Business Communities of Practice: Graduate Students Comparing Community‐Relevant Language

Abstract

The theory of communities of practice has found much acceptance in the organizational and social sciences literature. Although applied frequently to assess or explain phenomena, it has seen little research to identify the presence of barriers between communities of practice, or even just differences between such entities. Using members of the environmental and business communities, the following study identifies different communities of practice based on their linguistic repertoire. It also shows that members of one community can identify the linguistic content of another community's linguistic repertoire, with attention to business and environmental management. The research not only offers credence to the theory of communities of practice based on their linguistic repertoire, but it also offers avenues for further research in the use of language as a means of identity and segregation in various forms of institutional contexts. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment.

Understanding Communities of Practice: Taking Stock and Moving Forward

“…For example, CoPs with strong identities may frustrate rather than facilitate learning and knowledge sharing (see Pyrko et al, 2019). Creating and maintaining a strong identity is linked to the creation of specific tools and linguistic repertoires, which build boundaries around practice and demarcate it from other CoPs -potentially creating a barrier to knowledge sharing (Carlile, 2002;Perron & Duffy, 2012). For example, outsiders to the practice are considered "others" (Heizmann, 2011).…”

Exploring Legitimate Peripheral Participation of Students in a College Mathematics Course

“…People with similar concerns, interests, sets of problems, or passions form the COP to deal with matters, solve issues, or strengthen their expertise in this practice area with regular interaction (Jacobs & Renandya, 2019;Samimy et al, 2011;Sherbert et al, 2017). COPs are situations where members realize and enhance their skills in a specific practice or field (Perron & Duffy, 2011). COPs assume that students' engagement is the core means of learning (i.e., objectively via practice and subjectively via changes in the individual themselves) and attribute learning to participation (O'Donnell & Tobbell, 2007;Safran, 2009).…”

“…The shared repertoire involves the routines, words, gestures, symbols, and concepts that the community has generated that turn out to be part of the COP (Johnston, 2016;Moule, 2006;Peercy et al, 2013). Members need to recognize each other, work together, and exchange information (Janardhanan et al, 2020) participants legitimately pay close attention to each other or work on a shared problem, new meanings and perspectives can be unlocked (Perron & Duffy, 2011). Conceiving mathematics as a COP with its own language (Sfard, 2007), learning is described by extending and modifying its shared repertoire, such as routines and discourse, oral or written, indicating legitimate peripheral participation (Lavie et al, 2019;Lu et al, 2022;Mpofu & Mudaly, 2020;Viirman, 2015).…”

Organizational roles in a sustainability alliance network

“…While prior research on interorganizational roles and the implications for knowledge sharing within sustainability alliances is relatively scarce, there exists a body of research studying knowledge sharing networks in other contexts. In particular, researchers have explored strategic knowledge management networks and the enablement of knowledge sharing through use of information systems (Carlsson, 2003), the role of language, information sharing, and decision making across sustainability communities of practice (Perron & Duffy, 2012; Wenger, McDermott, & Snyder, 2002), linking social capital to knowledge transfer across “intracorporate networks,” strategic business alliances, and industrial alliances (Inkpen & Tsang, 2005; Tsang, 1998) and balancing exploration and exploitation across supply chain networks (Lavie & Rosenkopf, 2006).…”