Title
How Do Entrepreneurs Learn And Engage In An Online Community-Of-Practice? A Case Study Approach
Abstract
This paper investigates the ways in which entrepreneurs use communities of practice (CoPs) to express themselves, using narrative theory and rhetorical analysis, to gain insight into an electronic social network medium, namely, YoungEntrepreneur.com. In particular, the study focuses on CoPs themes, including why entrepreneurs engage in CoPs, what role the moderators and resident entrepreneurs can play in managing online CoPs, on communication rituals of the knowledge sharing through interactivity, and on how to develop an intervention' to maintain and stimulate entrepreneurs for engaging in an online community. Findings reveal that the topic title plays a major role in attracting people. Successful topics with successful conclusions (in terms of the original query that was answered) will not necessarily get high responses and vice versa. It is observed that the domain expert does not play a big role in keeping the discussion going. Finally, the study also discovered that entrepreneurs like to communicate in a story telling genre. A comprehensive set of engagement measurement tools are introduced to effectively measure the engagement in a virtual CoP, along with a classification to define and categorise discourse of messages in terms of content and context, which allow practitioners to understand the effectiveness of a social networking site.
Year
DOI
Venue
2018
10.1080/0144929X.2018.1474255
BEHAVIOUR & INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY
Keywords
Field
DocType
Entrepreneurial learning, engagement, knowledge sharing, community of practice, social network
Interactivity,Social network,Online community,Knowledge sharing,Subject-matter expert,Computer science,Knowledge management,Rhetorical question,Community of practice,Narratology
Journal
Volume
Issue
ISSN
37
7
0144-929X
Citations 
PageRank 
References 
0
0.34
15
Authors
5
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
Khalid Hafeez111.05
Pantea Foroudi241.94
Bang Nguyen3428.23
Suraksha Gupta441.94
Fathalla Alghatas500.34