Multiple Inclusion and Community Networks

There are two urgent questions in academic research on Communities of Practice. The first is how to safeguard the sustainability of a Community of Practice (CoP). The second is how to motivate people in order to participate in and to contribute to such a community. In this paper we try to answer these questions by assuming networked individualism. This notion refers to the observation that individuals in modern society are inclined to participate in several communities simultaneously. We discuss the consequences of this notion for membership in a community. The unit of analysis in this paper is not a ‘stand-alone’ community of practice but the multiple included individual as a node of various networks. Taking this idea into account our analyses reveals the need to redefine the concept of ‘legitimacy’ in a community. Our underlying assumption is that broadening legitimacies facilitates multiple inclusion of an individual and, in this way, supports the sustainability of a community of practice.