ABSTRACT
This chapter argues that the success of organizations depends on their ability to design themselves as social learning systems and also to participate in broader learning systems such as an industry, a region, or a consortium. It explores the structure of these social learning systems. The chapter proposes a social definition of learning and distinguishes between three “modes of belonging” by which we participate in social learning systems. It utilizes this framework to look at three constitutive elements of these systems: communities of practice, boundary processes among these communities, and identities as shaped by our participation in these systems. Communities of practice then are collectives which have a shared set joint enterprise, feature mutual engagement and will have produced a shared repertoire of resources such as language, artefacts, narratives and have ready access to these.
