T HEORETICAL CONTRIBUTION

Knowledge-intensive firms could be considered sets of social communities (Kogut & Zander, 1996). However, the current literature often equates ‘community’ with business units, functions or teams (Boland & Tenkasi, 1995; Wenger, 2000). This study provides a different perspective:

the underlying shared interest is a common denominator for the community to exist.

Communities are thus not exclusively formed by knowledge workers specialising in a certain domain (ibid.), but increasingly involve contributions by leading users and hobbyists, customers and business partners. In order to provide access to external knowledge and expertise, firms also need to open themselves up to an array of Internet-based conversations, and to consider the relevance of virtual communities to their businesses. The core promise – and distinction – in virtual communities lies in their informal and voluntary nature. They empower those carrying expertise and increase transparency across traditional organisational boundaries.

Secondly, the study links knowledge sharing and virtual communities with social capital. There has been some preliminary work published in this field in recent years (Wasko & Faraj, 2005;

Chiu et al., 2006; Wiertz & de Ruyter, 2007), but despite the focus on social capital it mainly represents the individual view of knowledge and the related motivations to share. This study contributes to the current literature by establishing that both individual and collective knowledge types are inherent in virtual communities, and this should be investigated in further research on knowledge sharing. Conceptually, this study contributes to current research in terms of highlightingimpersonal trust, referring to trust relationships that are not based on direct personal contact and are of particular importance in the early stages of virtual-community membership.

Thirdly, the study conjoins virtual communities with thesocio-technical perspective on the use of communication technology. The latter sheds light on the interplay between the broader social context and the channels supporting interaction (Zack & McKenney, 1995; Orlikowski et al., 1995), and the role of social capital in their appropriation (Huysman & Wulf, 2006). A common mistake in prior research on knowledge sharing and communication technology has been an over-reliance on technical solutions, which is manifested in the tendency to de-contextualise knowledge as mere information and to perceive technology as independent from its social environment (Zack, 1999; Huysman & Wulf, 2006). In addition, the demand for high levels of explicitness and formality within technologies may disrupt the more productive informal relations within and across communities – limiting informality is likely to limit importance (Brown & Duguid, 1998). Belonging to a community and knowledge sharing inherently need and breed each other (Wenger, 1998; Huysman & Wulf, 2006). Hence, this study provides insights into how communication technology could support spaces for informal interactions through VCs oriented towards social relations among people engaged in the same practice. Perhaps due to its roots in the field of communication technology, research on VCs was also found to suffer slightly from the burden of technological determinism and over-emphasis on the availability of tools rather than on communities and the surrounding social context. In particular, incorporating Web 2.0 channels into organisational use requires a socio-technical perspective in which the technology and social context continuously and iteratively interact.

Fourthly, this study illustrates how much of the prior work investigating knowledge processes in virtual communities adopted the SECI model developed by Nonaka and his collaborators (Nonaka, 1991, 1994; Nonaka & Takeuchi, 1995; Nonaka & Konno, 1998). These studies treat

knowledge as if it were first necessary to distinguish the tacit from the explicit, and then members could share explicit knowledge online by simply relying on the ability of communication technology to bridge individual knowledge. This, it is argued here, is a misunderstanding: the question of what ‘explicit knowledge’ is without interpretation and tacit knowing prevails, and it remains unclear how the latter could even be extracted from the minds of those who are capable of knowing and interpreting simply by means of computerised tools. The tacit remains hidden (Gourlay, 2006). It is suggested that trying to separate types of knowledge may not be the best way to facilitate online knowledge sharing and creation: more attention should be given to the processes of establishing a shared context within which members interact, developing norms that provide structure for interactions, and manifesting a shared culture representing collective tacit knowledge acquired through on-going socialisation within the virtual community. As indicated in prior research, this is the key for bridging individual and collective knowledge.

All in all, the key role of virtual communities is to provide complementary spaces for conversation around a shared practice. According to Tsoukas (2005, p. 158), “we need not so much to operationalize tacit knowledge as to find new ways of talking, fresh forms of interacting, and novel ways of distinguishing and connecting”. In this, communication technologies with a special focus on supporting social relations may play a complementary role, and it is of particular interest to understand how to make our actions more conscious by engaging in the processes of sharing experiences and emotions with others engaged in the same practice both online and offline (see Wilson, 2002). On the basis of her seminal work on a virtual community of soap-opera fans, Baym (1997, 1998) notes how the external subculture – in this case the soap-opera fandom – is of fundamental importance to online interactions, providing members with a wealth of resources and practices that enable them to organise conversations.

Fifthly, the study contributes to the literature on virtual communities in reviewing different conceptualisations and categorising them based on the perspective ofknowledge sharing. This differs from prior definitions in terms of emphasising the shared practice underlying community formation, and the role of conversational technology in supporting the social interaction that is essential for sharing knowledge. The categorisation provided may be worth further investigation

as it covers the most prominent business-related VC types: customer- and consumption-based, user-based, and those related to a specific practice.

Finally, the study broadens the theoretical understanding of virtual communities by identifying the overall levels of factors that affect the interactions and, consequently, knowledge sharing.

These factors are categorised as individual, technological and social, complemented with the broader social context within which organisation-hosted VCs interact. The study also enhances understanding of how technology may mediate the existence of social communities by bridging VCs and the so-called Web 2.0 generation of conversational technologies.

In sum, it is argued in this study that virtual communities play a complementary role in promoting interaction and extending existing practices with the support of conversational technologies. These communities are inherently social in nature, and the results of the study suggest that a strong focus on the individual level may not be the most fruitful approach to understanding knowledge-sharing processes, even if it is a dominant perspective in prior research. VCs may enable knowledge sharing by providing a social structure with certain boundaries and norms, thus helping to overcome some pitfalls typically associated with CMC and the knowledge activities of distributed organisations in general.