Carsten Østerlund and Paul Carlile
We examine practice theories concerned with knowledge sharing in complex organizations
to distinguish common trends and variations in this complex body of work. We
suggest that an analytical framework highlighting the relational thinking in
practice theories can serve as a tool to sort through the literature on knowledge
sharing. First, we delineate a relational framework consisting of seven attributes
associated with a practice theory. Second, we use this framework to analyze
a narrow set of practice theories represented by three seminal works on communities
of practice. Third, we compare and contrast the relational dynamics found in
the three seminal works in regard to how they conceptualize knowledge sharing
within and across communal boundaries.