A conceptual framework for "professional virtual communities"

Abstract

Professional Virtual Communities (PVC) are emerging as human centred new organizational arrangements aimed at leveraging knowledge development, value creation and social welfare. This paper is aimed at defining a conceptual framework for the characterization of PVC, suitable for ascertaining the correlation among PVC constitutive elements and potential stakeholders' expected benefits. Such a theoretical approach leads to the identification of PVC typologies, which would optimally integrate themselves in business ecosystems, while ensuring member's motivation, commitment and welfare. The characterization of an emerging Professional Virtual Community, ESoCE-Net, is reported as a first attempt in characterizing a PVC with reference to the newly established conceptual framework. The results reported in this paper are also based on activities carried out within the ECOLEAD IP project, cofunded by the European Commission under the 6th framework programme. © 2005 by International Federation for Information Processing.