Towards an Ecological Perspective on the Evolution of Online Communities of Practice

In the era of knowledge economy, more and more people view online communities of practice (CoPs) as wellspring of precious knowledge. Notably, many researchers support the notion that CoPs are not designed or made but grown. However, there is no systematic theory of online community development. Based on the properties of autotrophic and open system of online CoPs, there are several differences between traditional groups and online CoPs. Interestingly, there exists an ideal mapping between the properties of online CoPs and ecological ecosystems. We thus adopt Yin’s analytic strategy of descriptive framework [46] and draw on Odum’s model of ecosystem [25, 26, 27] to develop an online CoP ecosystem model, which serves as our dimensions of describing changes within an ecosystem over time.