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Gamification is an emerging area in research and practice that has sparked considerable interest in management studies. The attention to gamification is amplified by the ubiquitous nature of digital technologies and augmented reality which touches on how people work and learn socially. Consequently, gamified tools’ affordances affect situated learning in working environments through their implications on human relations in practice. However, the dynamics between gamification and situated learning have not been considered in the literature. Thus, drawing on the synthesis of gamification and situated learning literatures, we offer a model of gamifying situated learning in organisations. Thereby, our discussion explains the role of gamified affordances and their socio-material characteristics, which blend with situated learning as people indwell on such tools in their work. Moreover, gamified tools can afford the technological support of community-building and networking in organisations. Such gamified communities and networks, in turn, can be seen to existing within a gamified altered reality as part of which the physical distance and proximity of situated learning activities become inevitably bridged and joined together.

The original formulation of communities of practice primarily focused on describing how learning, meaning, and identity within a community can translate into a sustained practice. Wenger-Trayner et al. elaborated the concept of landscapes of practice to describe how different communities of practice may interact, and belong to broader landscapes of practice, rather than rely exclusively on their own local situated practices. In this conceptual article, we apply the perspective of landscapes of practice to organizations. The first part of our argument is descriptive, and is aimed at developing a model of landscapes of practice in organizations. With regard to this model, we propose that practices can be seen as multilevel, including local situated practices, generic practices, and cultural fields. This, in turn, helps to clarify and organize a number of central concepts within the practice literature. The second part of our argument is prescriptive, as we suggest that landscapes of practice call for triple-legitimization of situated learning, meaning that legitimization is not only needed at the level of community and organization, but also by attending to the dynamically changing epistemic texture of the landscapes.

In this paper we systemize Eden and Ackermann’s approach to causal mapping as a technique for analyzing semi-structured interviews. By doing so, we aim to popularize causal mapping as an accessible, yet structured and formalized, method that can be used in a variety of studies within the broad organization and management research. In our discussion we characterize this approach to causal mapping as being grounded in Kelly’s ‘Theory of Personal Constructs’. Following Kelly’s work, causal mapping seeks to represent some aspects of a person’s thoughts about a given problem in question. On this basis, causal mapping, which is employed to work with different interviewees’ individual maps carefully merged together, helps to enable an intersubjective position from where the interrelationships, and feedback dynamics, between elements of interview material can be explored. Thereby, while causal mapping can be a good way of surfacing aspects of the available interview material which could not be accessed by other methods, it can be used in combination with more traditional methods such as thematic analysis or narrative analysis. As a result, we argue, not only does causal mapping offer a structured approach to qualitative coding, but it lends itself well to adaptation in new areas of study where it has not been applied so far.

In this article, we develop the founding elements of the concept of Communities of Practice by elaborating on the learning processes happening at the heart of such communities. In particular, we provide a consistent perspective on the notions of knowledge, knowing and knowledge sharing that is compatible with the essence of this concept – that learning entails an investment of identity and a social formation of a person. We do so by drawing richly from the work of Michael Polanyi and his conception of personal knowledge, and thereby we clarify the scope of Communities of Practice and offer a number of new insights into how to make such social structures perform well in professional settings. The conceptual discussion is substantiated by findings of a qualitative empirical study in the UK National Health Service. As a result, the process of ‘thinking together’ is conceptualized as a key part of meaningful Communities of Practice where people mutually guide each other through their understandings of the same problems in their area of mutual interest, and this way indirectly share tacit knowledge. The collaborative learning process of ‘thinking together’, we argue, is what essentially brings Communities of Practice to life and not the other way round.

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to introduce a new workshop format concerned with the facilitation of Communities of Practice (CoPs). The introduced workshop format is based on a method of causal mapping, and it is aimed at helping the CoP members to understand better the possibilities of ‘making most’ of their community’s potential, as well as identify and address the possible problems and challenges which the community may be facing. Design/methodology/approach – Through theorizing, grounded in the literature on CoPs and causal mapping as well as personal experience with using causal mapping in a number of organisations, this paper contributes a new formalised way of facilitating CoPs using of causal mapping, a facilitated workshop that helps organisations to bring into action the process of ‘thinking together’, creating a sense of mutual engagement, shared repertoire, and joint enterprise that is at the very core of cultivating CoPs. Originality/value – In this paper is introduced a formalised approach for facilitating CoPs with causal mapping. We contribute to both the literature on cultivating CoPs in organisations and the literature on causal mapping. The CoP literature is in great need of formalised and practical approaches that appreciate the complexity of the CoP concept and the contextual sensitivity required for cultivating CoPs in practice. Practical implications – The formalised CoP workshop facilitated by causal mapping we introduce in this paper offers a significant help for organisations in cultivating CoPs. More generally, this type of facilitation process can be very useful whenever thinking together matters.

This paper reports on research which explores a typology of roles which participants undertake ‘in practice’ during the course of strategy making workshops facilitated with the use of a Group Support System (GSS). The reported research draws on a series of data logs generated in a number of strategy workshops with senior management teams in both public and private organizations. The data logs enable detailed tracking of the participants’ contributions over time. This level of richness and detail of analysis, in turn, is used to build the foundations for the proposed typology. The typology may contribute to a better understanding of how GSS can be used effectively to conduct productive strategy making meetings. The typology provides guidance to facilitators of GSS, and especially those who are new to the facilitation practice.

This paper reports on a project in which a Group Support System (GSS) was used to ‘acquire knowledge’ from seven European cities with respect to the interactions between risk events faced by the cities. The aim of the project was to develop a Risk Systemicity Questionnaire (RSQ) which is an interactive tool designed to support cities in improving their resilience. A series of GSS workshops was organized in which participants co-created the risk scenarios that formed the main content of the tool. This paper presents an approach to using a GSS to inform specific research questions rather than to develop new solutions which participants can take ownership of and implement immediately in their work. In turn, the use of GSS in such non-traditional context poses a number of important methodological considerations of which GSS facilitators should be aware.

Group Decision Support Systems (GSS) have been used extensively to support groups in working together in organizations. This paper focuses on the particular type of GSS, called Group Explorer, which during the course of facilitated sessions generates data logs in the form of Excel spreadsheets. Data logs can be of high interest to researchers and GSS facilitators because they may possibly contain rich and valuable data such as about the detailed time of entry and the authorship of all contributions, or the results of voting activities conducted by participants. However, data logs may at first look complicated and difficult to read and follow. Thus the purpose of this paper is to provide a number of instructions and explanations for anyone interested in making good use of data logs, and to popularize similar analysis as a good opportunity to bet-ter understand the outcomes of GSS sessions.

We present the journey of one of the authors throughout his learning of SODA-style cognitive mapping for analysing semi-structured interviews. Our aim is to share the ‘lessons learned’ with the academic community interested in finding a suitable tool for formalised analysis of rich qualitative data. The technical side of cognitive mapping is emphasised focusing on the analytical capabilities of this approach rather than simply on drawing the initial cognitive maps. The purpose of the project is twofold: on the one hand we want to make this research method more accessible to those who may need it; on the other hand we want to put an end on some popular misconceptions about cognitive mapping being a simple (less often simplistic) but not very effective tool. We support our argument by drawing from the relevant literature and from the maps coming from empirical research conducted in the context of the NHS Scotland.

In this paper we look at the ‘4I framework’ introduced by Crossan, Maurer, & White in the context of social learning, i.e. the type of learning that is by large informal, negotiated in practice, and identity-based. Reviewing literature from five broad areas, namely personal knowledge, organizational knowledge, organizational learning, sensemaking, and communities of practice, suggested that the 4I framework in its current form does not account for knowledge sharing taking place in social learning spaces, such as communities of practice. The reason for this anomaly is that knowledge sharing in such networks does not respect organizational boundaries. Having synthesized this literature, we suggest augmenting the 4I framework by adding a new level of analysis: the trans-organisational level. At this level the typical process of the 4I framework change, interpretation becomes reinterpretation, integration becomes dis- and reintegration and institutionalisation becomes deinstitutionalisation.