Communities of practice and practice preservation: A case study

Abstract

Several studies stressed that communities of practice support organizational learning, innovation, and the development of members' capabilities. People engaged in a technology-based community of practice do not just "use" a specific technology and its artefacts in order to achieve a given purpose or exploit a function. They recognise themselves as community members and share common values, ideas, knowledge, and opinions about the technological artefacts around which their community is built. The literature agrees that technological change might produce innovative dynamics within these communities by affecting the routines and practices of their members. However, technology change could encourage some people to build a community of practice in order to preserve the practice that took place before technological substitution. In this regard, people community as an instrument to preserve knowledge, rather than to create new. This study offers a preliminary delimitation of the concept of "practice preservation" and reports a study based on inductive approach in order to investigate this phenomenon: the case of MAME community.