THE PHENOMENON Communities-of-practice (CoPs) have been acknowledged as a fruitful area for research, spanning several fields, ranging from knowledge management at one end and strategy-as-practice at the other. CoPs are characterized by a shared identity and values, apart from building on a common body of knowledge (Wenger and Snyder, 2000). Understood as informal and interstitial groups of people working together towards a common goal or endeavor, CoPs could be conceptualized as communities within an organization/ firm or transcending organizational boundaries. Yet, the latter conceptualization is scarce in comparison to the former. THE MOTIVATION A search for papers on CoPs on Google Scholar throws up several empirical studies that deal with inter-organizational CoPs. This is not surprising, since at least three different types of inter-organizational CoPs can be found thriving: (a) via self-interest communities; (b) through industry bodies and (c) as part of an organization's network with its suppliers, customers and the like. While (c) has been prominent over a period of time and (b) so, in the context of standard setting and lobbying, there have been increasing examples of (a) as well of late, with communities hosted on the likes of Kaggle and GitHub. Yet, each of these types of inter-organizational CoPs is very different from any intra-firm or intra-organizational CoP due to factors such as lower levels of hierarchy and lesser pressures of immediacy. Arguably, these differences are more a matter of distinction than a degree. This calls for theorization of and conceptualization for inter-organizational CoPs. THE CONTOURS OF THE THEORY Apart from the above conceptualization of inter-organizational CoPs that deals with issues such as hierarchy, urgency of decision-making and types of inter-organizational CoPs, the extant literature on CoPs itself provides us contours for a theory on inter-organizational CoPs. Brown and Duguid (1991) suggest that canonical practices should not impede emergence of CoPs their weakened state in an inter-organizational or extra-organizational setting is an indicator for emergence of inter-organizational CoPs. However, there still remains a coordination challenge in such CoPs; yet, availability of ICTs such as discussion boards and groupware can double up as knowledge management systems, thus alleviating this concern (cf. Alavi & Leidner, 2001). Wenger and Snyder (2000) suggest that CoPs emerge due to passionate members committed towards a particular area coming and working together in informal ways - in a world increasingly dominated by professionals and white collar workers, it is not unconceivable that professionals with common interests can be found outside the organization as well. Further, as knowledge is embedded in practice, it stands to reason that professionals engaging in similar technologies may view themselves as members of an interstitial community (cf. Brown and Duguid, 1991). The lack of immediacy in the context of most inter-organizational CoPs may play a beneficial role in the sustenance of the CoP as well. Becoming a member of a CoP takes time due to the process of socialization - LPP (legitimate peripheral participation), a term suggested by Lave and Wenger (1991) indicates that participants become central to a CoP by starting at the periphery but gradually increasing participation. Finally, building on Granovetter (1977), one could believe that inter-organizational CoPs maybe most suitable for information (and by extension, knowledge) transfer due to the weak ties that abound as opposed to much stronger ties in a firm-specific CoP. Going further in this conceptual study, an attempt would be made to also differentiate between the different types of inter-organizational CoPs: (a) via self-interest communities; (b) through industry bodies and (c) as part of an organization's network with its suppliers, customers and the like. Terming them as extra-organizational, supra-organizational and multi-organizational CoPs respectively, we look at differences within these different types of inter-firm CoPs and what drives these differences professionalism, industry structure and goal congruence. A key objective in this paper would be to develop the inter-firm CoPs as a distinctive class of CoPs and to propose a typology of different inter-firm CoPs. It is believed that this would lead to an overall better understanding of CoPs, especially those of the inter-firm variety, apart from clarifying the conceptualization of CoPs itself.
