Introduction

Abstract

This dissertation explores the tension-ridden and paradoxical interrelation between informal and self-organized communities of practice (CoPs) with their managerial shaped, formal-hierarchical context. Based on qualitative data gathered from three different communities of practice within the German Federal Armed Forces, the dissertation provides a comprehensive, data-grounded theoretical model that explicates the embeddedness of CoPs as shaped through cultural and leadership processes. Taking both a practice lens and a complexity leadership theory perspective, the model theorizes the emergence and embeddedness of CoPs as a process of self-organized resourcing enabled through leadership. Notably, it uncovers that CoPs evolve as practitioners self-organize and begin to generate new resources as they sense adaptive pressures in practice. It further highlights how these practitioners simultaneously reproduce and adapt cultural elements from the broader cultural repertoire within their local social interactions, and in doing so, shape new hybrid community cultures. Finally, the model illustrates how these dynamics in communities of practice are enabled, energized, and transformed by enabling leadership that navigates the tension between the self-organized nature of CoPs and top-down managerial control. Altogether, this dissertation's findings highlight the tension-laden relation between CoPs and formal organizational context and how it can be engaged and managed for organizational adaptability.

Organizations (…) have counteracting forces at play. Some forces push the system toward stability and order (…). Some other forces push the system toward instability and disorder (…). The coupling of these forces can lead to a highly complex situation.

Thietart & Forgues 1995