View source for Communities of practice

A '''community of practice''' is a group of people who share a concern or passion for something they do, and who learn how to do it better through regular interaction. The concept, developed by [[Etienne Wenger]] in collaboration with [[Jean Lave]], identifies three constitutive dimensions: '''joint enterprise''' (what the group is about), '''mutual engagement''' (how members interact), and '''shared repertoire''' (the resources produced over time). Unlike formal organizations, communities of practice are not designed; they emerge organically around shared practice and persist because they serve a learning function that no formal structure can replicate.

The concept has been applied to understand how expertise propagates through organizations, how open-source software projects sustain collaboration without hierarchical management, and how [[social network]] structures shape the diffusion of innovation. A community of practice can be seen as a [[complex adaptive system]] in which individual learning and collective knowledge co-evolve.

[[Category:Systems]]
[[Category:Culture]]