A Social Network Analysis of a Virtual Community of Practice

This paper investigates the relationship between the structural characteristics of a virtual CoP and the measures of social network analysis. Several implications were developed by the results of the study First, the study, based on reviews of both the CoP and SNA literature, identified specific structural measures of SNA; connectedness, geodesic distance, and density. Second, the formal CoP investigated in this study showed greater development that the classic, informal CoP in terms of the structural dimension of a CoP. The results show that those measures of social network analysis provide an illuminating way to better understand the structural properties of CoP's. Implications of the study with some suggestions for future research are provided.