The literature has progressively identified several other types of communities: epistemic communities (Cowan et al., 2000; Haas, 1992), communities of interest (Fisher, 2001), communities of innovation (Sawhney & Prandelli, 2000), virtual communities (Faraj et al., 2011; Wellman & Gulia, 1999, pp. 167–194), users' communities (Dahlander & Frederiksen, 2012; Parmentier, 2015; Ruiz et al., 2021), brand communities (Cova et al., 2021, Muniz and O'Guinn, 2001), collaborative communities (Heckscher & Adler, 2006), creative collectives (Hargadon & Bechky, 2006), social collectives (Paraponaris & Rohr, 2015), etc. Each of these is characterized by a specific cognitive activity. A very rich series of academic works has thus highlighted since the mid-1990s, the properties of such communities and the specific modes of learning of their respective members.

Despite several works acknowledging a link between the communities and the organization ( Brown & Duguid, 1991; Kogut & Zander, 1993), most literature on communities remained for a long time loosely connected to the analysis of the strategy and dynamics of formal organizations. Until recently, very little research focused on a thorough analysis of the interactions and modes of articulations between these formal and the informal structures, as if two streams of literature on management were running in parallel.

On the one hand, one stream focuses on the traditional management of formal organizational structures and all organizational components (e.g., procedures, rules, norms, organizational chart, information channels) that have been consciously and intentionally elaborated by the hierarchy of the firm to achieve the main objectives of the firm (e.g., Adler et al., 1999; Arrow, 1974; Diefenbach & Sillince, 2011; Gulati & Puranam, 2009; Hahn et al., 2016; McEvily et al., 2014; Mintzberg, 1979; Rank, 2008; Soda & Zaheer, 2012; Stevenson & Harmeling, 1990; Tushman & Nadler, 1986). In a formal organization, behavior is standardized, that is, it is predetermined and predictable. The main advantage of formal structures is that they enable the coordination of heterogeneous bodies of knowledge supported by individuals and groups with different interests, goals, and representations (March & Simon, 1958). Formal structure is regularly associated with the specification of authority and decision-making power, with the codification of procedures and the definition of communication channels, and finally with the existence of legal devices to frame the relations between agents (Adler, 2015; Arrow, 1974; Adler & Borys, 1996; Mintzberg, 1979; Nickerson & Zenger, 2004; Williamson, 1985). The formal structure then ensures that the structure of authority does not change inappropriately.

On the other hand, the other stream of literature focuses on the informal structures, which are those that emerge from the continuous interactions between different agents. These interactions are mostly spontaneous on a daily basis and are not supposed to follow any specific conscious plan or rule. Some regularities may gradually emerge from these interactions. An example is the progressive cognitive construction (e.g., codebook, grammar of usage) that can result from the ongoing interactions among members of a given informal community within the firm ( Brown & Duguid, 2001; Orr, 1996). In an informal structure, voluntary work is important and trust between participants is important. Unlike formal structures, informal structures are not the result of intelligent design, but emerge from repeated interactions between agents. Information is exchanged without explicit rules that would specify the content or modalities of the exchange. Thanks to information technology, this information exchange takes place both physically and virtually as exemplified by the increasing emergence of online communities in various domains (Barret et al., 2004). Similarly, informal work coordination relies on mutual accommodation ( Mintzberg, 1979; Hutchins, 1991), which is not explicitly regulated. Informal structures are thus characterized by their organic nature (Burns & Stalker, 1961) and the absence of a plan that directs their construction ( McEvily et al., 2014).

This separation between the management of the formal organization and the analysis of the learning processes of the different communities is increasingly being questioned for several significant reasons. The first is the growing recognition in literature that the interaction between the formal and the informal feeds value creation practices and processes. Communities and formal structures do not simply coexist, they are mutually enriching. Although hierarchy and formal procedures seem best adapted to the management of stabilized knowledge and processes, communities are deemed to best support the construction of dynamic bodies of knowledge relying on the questioning and reconfiguration of existing processes for innovation purposes. For example, the main risk associated with formal structures is rigidity. Over time, as the company invests in standardization, it may become increasingly difficult to change the organization. Routinization or competence traps (Leonard-Barton & Swap, 1999) are often identified as a major cause of organizational failure. Another risk is the silo effect. Defining precise roles and functions and specifying communication channels also means defining what is communicated and what is not. This can lead to high-opportunity costs or difficulties in coordination, further stifling the organization. In such circumstances, communities could help ensure a fluid transition to a more agile type of organization. On the other hand, formal organization could facilitate the functioning of communities by preparing a “fertile ground” for a particular community to emerge and develop within a given organization (Cohendet et al., 2021), by orchestrating the interaction between different communities through management tools and devices such as modularity (Bechky, 2003, Brusoni et al., 2023, Carlile, 2004), or facilitating the exploitation of communities’ productions through various boundary roles, mechanisms, or structures (Probst & Borzillo, 2008; Schulte et al., 2020; Crespin-Mazet et al., 2023, Goglio-Primard & Crespin-Mazet, 2011; Goglio-Primard & Crespin-Mazet, 2015). The objective is to ensure that the formal organization benefits from the dispersed knowledge of its communities and can exploit their productions without restraining or even killing their explorative and creative capacity (Goglio-Primard, 2020).

Second, the potential transformation of the informal into the formal and vice versa could be an important source of value creation for the dynamics of an economic system. On the one hand, in the lifecycle of communities, once the repetitive exchange of knowledge has led to a solid formalization of procedures, codebooks, and grammar of use of the domain of knowledge at stake, it may be the moment to institutionalize the productions of the community or even the community itself into a formal entity. There are numerous examples of such dynamics in the literature, such as the transformation of communities into startups in Silicon Valley (Barès et al., 2011), the formation of new divisions in IBM's global networks from communities (Gongla & Rizzuto, 2001), or the formal branding of partnering solutions developed by internal communities of practice in the construction industry (Crespin-Mazet, Havenvid, & Linne A, 2019, chap. 10). On the other hand, in the lifecycle of organizations, when they go bankrupt or face a major crisis, numerous cases in the literature highlight the potential of resilience of communities of organizational members who develop new projects, new departments, even new companies from the bottom up. As examples of creative resilience, Spigel (2011) and Spigel and Vinodrai (2021) have analyzed the formation of new companies from communities comprising former members of Nortel and Blackberry, respectively, after the fall of these organizations.

Third, there is growing evidence in the literature that communities play an active role in the innovation process by contributing at different levels: capitalizing on best practices, solving problems, or generating new ideas. Innovation in organizations has undergone profound changes in recent decades (Cohendet et al., 2006; Goglio-Primard et al., 2017, Goglio-Primard & Soulier, 2018; Crespin-Mazet et al., 2019, Crespin-Mazet et al., 2019). For a long time, innovation was mainly generated by formal company departments (e.g., research and development, integrated design and engineering departments), which carried out the innovation processes according to well-formalized methods that ensured the framing and formatting of new ideas from the research and development laboratory to the market. These well-established methods regulated in a coordinated manner the activities of formal groups within the company (functional departments such as method offices, engineering, production management, or marketing) involved in innovation processes structured in project teams and driven by a strict sequence of activities. As technological and business challenges become more complex, these traditional forms of innovation are no longer sufficient to provide the organization with the knowledge and ideas needed to develop new and appropriate solutions. Innovation processes are increasingly enriched by ideas from different innovation communities: internal communities (employees), external communities (e.g., customers, partners), or mixed communities (Füller et al., 2008; Sarazin, Cohendet, & Simon, 2017, Goglio-Primard, Cohendet, Cova, & Simon, 2020). These informal communities act as different active units with potentially different roles at different stages of the innovation process. The contribution of knowledge communities to the innovation dynamics of organizations is particularly critical in the context of open innovation, which requires a permanent interaction between formal entities and informal collectives built on societal projects aimed at new proposals and changes (Paraponaris et al., 2013; Paraponaris & Rohr, 2015; Crespin-Mazet et al., 2017, Simon, 2009). These collectives are forward-looking communities that defend “a society open to new values, broader interests, and open access to knowledge” ( Paraponaris et al., 2013, p. 10). Given the source of creativity provided by these new organizational forms, companies increasingly need to establish a strong yet respectful relationship with them to harvest their creative output and nurture the organization's formal innovation processes ( Sarazin et al., 2017).

Finally, the role of both communities and social collectives seems even more important in times of crisis to provide rapid responses to complex problems and to foster collective resilience through innovation, change and adaptation (Woodward & Shaffakat, 2017; Lough, 2021). Thanks to their local organic leadership emerging voluntarily and collectively in response to adverse events, their action often proved to respond better to local needs than top-down forms of formal leadership ( Lough, 2021). Among such crises, the COVID-19 pandemic has been devastating populations and disrupting our societies, economies, and organizations. During this crisis, the resilience of companies has been particularly dependent on their ability to mobilize and harness the collective “human intelligence” available within organizations to source, qualify, design, engineer, and manufacture solutions. Several works highlight that an open COVID-19 community emerged to consolidate a global list of projects and connect them with people seeking solutions or willing to help. Unprecedented collaborative impulses and spontaneous community gatherings developed in all areas, providing diverse and powerful responses: help for careers, support for families, a consortium of companies to respond to the shortage of resuscitation equipment, etc.

Rethinking social learning processes: bridging the formal and the informal

This increasing need to “manage with” communities raises the question of how to combine the formal logic of the organization with the informal logic of communities. In other words, how new knowledge produced by communities can be aligned with the strategy of their parent organization and integrated in the formal activities and procedures of organizations to create value ( Schulte et al., 2020). The combination of these apparently contradictory logics involves managing the delicate balance between self-organization and control (Agterberg, Van Den Hooff, Huysman, & Soekijad, 2010; Harvey et al., 2013) to avoid the risk of killing the newness of knowledge production and devitalize the innovation (Durisin & Todorova, 2012). To refer to the various levels of control exerted by formal management on communities, some authors introduced the notion of piloted communities of practice (PCoPs), whose creation may be stimulated by top management and that are steered toward their firm's strategic goals or interests while keeping their self-organization principles (Bootz, 2015; Borzillo et al., 2008, p. 1; Dupouët & Barlatier, 2011).

At the level of an organization, this integration lies on boundary work and on boundary actors who facilitate the diffusion of new knowledge toward decision-makers ( Schulte et al., 2020; Wenger, 1998). In this boundary work, the community literature stresses the pivotal role played by the leader-sponsor dyad with a sponsor in charge of validating the communities' added value to the firm, and a leader in charge of orchestrating the community's activities (McDermott & Archibald, 2010; Probst & Borzillo, 2008; Wenger and Snyder, 2002). But it can also include other actors who simultaneously participate in several communities and use this legitimacy (expertise) to more easily transfer knowledge from one community to another. Boundary actors can also be located at the periphery of a community as in the case of knowledge brokers, whose role is to “enable other organizations to innovate” (Winch & Courtney, 2007, p. 751) and to develop access or trust between two parties (Marsden, 1982). For instance, the literature on open innovation identifies the key boundary work played by individuals (Obstfeld, 2005) or organizational intermediaries in innovation such Knowledge Intensive Business Services firms Koch and Strotmann (2008) that innovate on behalf of their clients through cooperative and trusting relationships. Finally, recent contributions highlight the role of internal boundary structures in aligning the communities' outputs with the firms' strategy and negotiating their acceptance by top managers. Their role goes beyond a mere diffusion process and includes combining and adapting the managerial and communitarian logics while preserving the autonomy and internal functioning of communities ( Crespin-Mazet et al., 2023).

Beyond the organization, the issue of integrating community knowledge has also been addressed at the level of a territory. In a series of papers exploring the flow of knowledge and ideas that feed innovation in a localized context ( Simon, 2009; Cohendet, Roberts, & Simon, 2010, Grandadam, Cohendet, & Simon, 2013), the authors suggest that the dynamic of an innovative territory relies on the interactions between the upperground (e.g., the formal layer of firms, research departments, administrative units) and the underground (the informal layer of communities, individual talents, and other informal collectives). In between the upperground and the underground, a key role is played in an innovative territory by the middleground, which is the level of common platforms necessary for the exchange, transmission, and learning of knowledge that enables innovative ideas to be actualized, translated into value propositions, and to reach the market. According to Grandadam et al. (2013), the dynamic of the middleground as a platform of interactions relies on the following mechanisms: “place,” “space,” “events,” and “projects.” Each one of these components intervenes with specific characteristics in the creative process and enables the actualization of ideas into innovative endeavors.

The intention of the Knowledge Communities Observatory symposium, which gave rise to this Management Focus section, was precisely to analyze the dynamics of knowledge communities (communities of practice, external communities [customers, partners, etc.], mixed communities, and collectives) in relation to innovation, agility, and resilience of organizations.1 To provide insights on this essential point, this Management Focus section offers a selection of nine papers. Five of them were presented at the 2021 Knowledge Communities Observatory Symposium, held at the Kedge Business School (June).

The first conceptual article entitled “The Community of Practice CoP-Based Management Model” explores the potential of the concept of CoPs for grounding a specific management model defined as a distinct way of setting objectives, coordinating activities, motivating efforts, and allocating resources (Birkinshaw & Goddard, 2009). Based on an extensive literature review and the analysis of the CoPs-based management model implemented by two firms (FAVI and Buurtzorg), Ludmila Mladkova reviews its distinctive features: the creation of a stable human-centred environment supporting self-management, employees’ empowerment (autonomous decision-making), and free knowledge sharing and creation across and within teams. Through the creation of a common identity and tight bonds, the model develops the feeling of belonging among employees. The author concludes that the model is particularly adapted to our current turbulent environments because it promotes flexibility, innovativeness, and competitiveness. However, it requires managerial support to accept giving extended freedom and responsibility to employees (looser control) and may therefore be difficult to implement and maintain over time.

In the second article, Jean-Philippe Bootz and Pascal Lievre focus on PCoPs and provide details of how their piloting is implemented over the long term. Their article titled, “From a spontaneous community of practice to a piloted community of practice - A longitudinal study of resilience construction,” analyzes the sound engineers of Radio France. In this original contribution, the piloting of a spontaneous CoP is not viewed as a change but rather as the continuation of an ongoing reification/participation process within the spontaneous CoP. The results highlight that the conciliation of self-organization and control does not necessarily require a sponsor but can be achieved through the simultaneous construction of an ad hoc structure that provides links with the hierarchy and the management. The paper also illustrates that some PCoPs, such as the sound engineer PCoP, can constitute hybrid forms of both exploration and exploitation. Developing this ambidexterity then requires their piloting by both an intrapreneur and an expert for exploitation and ground the conditions of their resilience.

In the third contribution titled, “The key role of the event in combining business and community-based logics for managing an ecosystem: empirical evidence from Lyon e-Sport,” Emilie Ruiz and Romain Gandia study the spatiotemporal management of ecosystems. They discuss the key role played by events in ecosystem management. The authors identify how an event providing a space allows the combination of both business and community logics to provide a simultaneous but discontinuous ecosystem management. The case of a major French e-sport event (Lyon e-Sport) highlights some trajectories for structuring an ecosystem. In their article, they identify the development of an advanced service dynamic, with various spatial and digital mechanisms, creating value for the communities, thus stimulating and motivating member's engagement in the ecosystem. The Lyon e-Sport case points out interdependence and integration between the business and community-based logics. The successful combination of these two logics depends on the involvement and commitment of the communities and the alignment of communities' interests with the central value proposition of the ecosystem.

The fourth original contribution of Catherine Thévenard-Puthod, Anne Berthinier-Poncet, Sandra Dubouloz, and Emilie Ruiz titled, “Innovation communities' contributions throughout firms' innovation,” analyzes how firms leverage innovation communities during the four phases of the innovation processes: opportunity recognition, search for solutions, development, and diffusion. Based on a multi-case study design in the outdoor sports industry (Salomon Group, Decathlon Group, and Raidlight), they highlight and confirm the crucial importance of various communities (user, practice, and epistemic) in the firm's open innovation strategies. The paper shows that communities help overcome some of the firm's open innovation barriers by allowing for “selective openness strategies” involving differentiated degrees of openness, depending on the type of innovation community and the phase of the innovation process. They can, for example, play a boundary spanner role, providing translations and an interface between the firm and other communities such as user communities. Although identifying some of the tensions resulting from communities' involvement, the article stresses the importance for management of leveraging the interplay and complementary effects of the different types of innovation communities to reduce the time to market. This can rely on a “cross-community manager” in charge of selectively integrating each type of community depending on the current phase of the innovation process.

Although online communities play an increasingly central role in our daily lives as acknowledged during the COVID-pandemic crisis, there is a lack of global vision on the factors stimulating their dynamism and capacity to reach their objectives. In this fifth paper of the Management Focus section entitled, “Drivers and mechanisms for online communities’ performance,” Guy Parmentier and Zoe Masson propose a comprehensive vision of this important issue. Based on an extensive review of 178 articles, they identify five performance mechanisms of online communities – socialization, structuration, engagement, participation, and common motivation – as well as 24 drivers that affect them. These drivers relate to the digital support, the organization, the participants, and the contributions. Among these 24 drivers, 10 seem particularly important as they impact at least three performance mechanisms: a powerful technical platform, means of interaction, profile customization, well-defined objectives and values, defined roles and evolving statuses, community facilitation, identification of members, reputation of certain members, quality and quantity of contributions, and physical events. The authors review the frequency of occurrence of these drivers in current research and conclude by recommending community managers to more specifically direct their attention on four main drivers: means of interaction, quality and quantity of contributions, a powerful technical platform, and identification of members.

Véronique Sanguinetti, Vincent Chauvet, and Kiane Goudarzi in their article titled, “Interactions between formal structures and knowing communities: What does open-source community involvement mean?” investigate how IT formal structures (IT editors and service providers) can provide support to open-source communities and profit from them in return to feed their innovation endeavors. Mobilizing a mixed method approach of a series of qualitative and quantitative studies, they propose a framework where the modes of involvement of organizations with knowing communities can unfold in three different, complementary, and balanced perspectives. If organizations (1) engage with clear strategic intentions to learn and connect, (2) within well-established set of rules for their employees, they will also want (3) to participate in and contribute to knowledge sharing and building, to ensure their acceptance and legitimacy. Furthermore, the authors show that the more organizations use open-source knowledge (methods, tools, and components), the more they get involved with the open-source communities beyond the organization's needs for short-term results. This involvement is not limited to engaging with community members on knowledge exploration. It also extends to helping the community organize through tools, platforms, and events. The authors then suggest that the formalization of relationships between organizations and knowing communities can support mutual benefits for both parties. However, this requires acknowledging the co-existence of different modes of functioning and to strike a “delicate balance” between facilitation through tools and methods and orientation through weak prescriptions.

In the seventh article titled, “From strangers to social collectives? Sensemaking and organizing in response to a pandemic,” Andreas Georgiou and David Murillo study the spontaneous formation of social collectives in neighborhoods during the initial global lockdown. The authors reveal how individuals without preexisting ties, and in physical and social isolation, re-create meaning and order, prevent the collapse of sensemaking, and develop new social collectives. They analyze the mechanisms of widely shared and accepted cues and frames, which enable the actors to focus their attention on resolving the crisis. They also demonstrate that the simultaneous enactment of practices, embeddedness, visibility of actions, and sense of community enable social collectives to emerge and build resilience in times of crisis. They explore distributed processes of sensemaking in cases in which there were no organizational structures and social relationships before the crisis. Their contribution shows that social collectives are promising forms for building resilience, facilitating distributed sensemaking, and developing respectful interaction when individuals engage in sensemaking.

In the article, “How makers responded to the personal protective equipment shortage during the COVID-19 pandemic: an analysis focused on the Hauts-de-France region,” Robert Viseur, Amel Charleux, and Bérengère Fally analyze a community of makers located in the Hauts-de-France region who gathered in a collaborative room to produce face shields during the first COVID-19 pandemic. Based on a quantitative analysis of the collaborating messaging room and interviews of active makers, the authors define a typology of makers collaborating towards a common goal and analyze the intensity of their contribution as well as the nature of the innovation implemented. The authors evaluate the type of collaboration developed with local public and private actors via a common online space and discuss the potential of exploiting the makers’ open-source practices in collaborative and innovative territory dynamics with an interest in sharing the knowledge commons. They describe the makers' movement as “underground” and the institutions, as the “upperground.” The resilience allowed by this maker organization relies on the shared repertoire (practices, tools, machines, and artifacts) available within the “middleground” located in these institutions as well as on the informal relationships between the “upperground” and the “middleground.”

In this last article titled, “A rainbow of colors: The value of embeddedness for understanding actor entrepreneurship in organizational LGBTQ + communities,” Elio Shijaku and Patricia Elgoibar explore the generativity of communities and their potential for fostering and supporting entrepreneurial endeavors. Investigating the context of LGBTQ + communities, they focus on the conditions of embeddedness that facilitate the emergence and development of actor entrepreneurship. They aim at providing a more robust conceptual framework for understanding the embeddedness-entrepreneurship linkage. Through a systematic review, the authors show that specific ways of belonging—that is, engaging with dynamic interactions with community members—associated with the development of recognition and reputation can lead to a reinforced engagement with the different phases of an entrepreneurial project. Furthermore, they add three dimensions to the framework. They emphasize the significance of positive personality traits, through which easier socialization leads to reinforced connections and fosters creativity. They also discuss the moderating effect of a supportive environment as opposed to a discriminating one. Finally, they point to the fact that organizational embeddedness acts as a prerequisite for resources acquisition. This pioneering study opens stimulating perspectives on the understanding of entrepreneurial dynamics in minority communities.

Although the pioneering work on communities dates back to the early 1990s, the articles selected for this Management Focus section highlight how relevant the community model remains in an increasingly complex, uncertain, and turbulent world. They illustrate the variety of community forms that flourish in both the private and public spheres and their potential to create value within an organization, an ecosystem or even society at large.

Although highlighting the characteristics of “a new management model,” the articles explore new ways of orchestrating the links between the community and the formal structure and of aligning its interests with those of the organization or its ecosystem (e.g., creation of hybrid structures, organizing events). With the increasing importance of online communities, some authors also question their performance (mechanisms, levers) and highlight the important role of their access to technological means (tools, platforms) to achieve their objectives.

At a societal level, two contributions emphasize the contribution of specific forms of communities (social collectives, minority communities) to the development of collective resilience supporting both sensemaking and entrepreneurial endeavors.

We thank the reviewers who contributed their valuable time and talent to develop this Management Focus section and who have ensured the articles’ quality through their constructive comments and suggestions to the authors. The reviewers for the European Management Journal Management Focus section include Bentolhoda Abdollahbeigi, Divine Q. Agozie Mphil, Lirios Alos-Simo, Juan Bustamante, Bella Butler, Fabrizio Cesaroni, Chantal Fuhrer, Lynn Harland, Aurore Haas, Yanghong Hu, Rocío López Cabrera, Reshmi Manna, Alexander Martin, Luz Maria Rivas, Noemi Sinkovics, Philip B. Whyman, and Celia Zárraga-Oberty.

Finally, we are very grateful to Joannah Duncan and Sarah Robinson who have provided us with valuable assistance, help, and support in the processes of the EMJ platform and in the follow-up of the various papers.

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