Communities of practice, knowledge creation, and corporate sustainability : a study of Bahrain service industry

The Kingdom of Bahrain is a service-based economy in which the service industry is a highly competitive market environment. Therefore, organisations require employing strategies to compete and sustain their competitive advantage in order to survive. The knowledge-based view of the firm argues that knowledge is a critical source for sustainable competitive advantage. Communities of Practice (CoPs) provide a suitable environment for knowledge exchange and creation. This study defined CoPs as emergent informal networks of people who are located inside and outside the organisation, through which members of these communities share or are interested in the same practice and knowledge. It is noticed from the literature that there is no empirical study investigating the impact of knowledge created in CoPs on corporate sustainability. Moreover, the influence of social capital on quantity and type of knowledge received from different CoPs members is scarce. This research attempts to address this research gap.