Comunidades de prática e capacidade absortiva: uma análise no contexto de uma empresa de serviços de tecnologia da informação

Abstract

The dynamics of evolving competitive products and services in the information technology industry calls for efficiency and agility in acquiring new knowledge which will lead to innovative solutions. Some companies are adopting the use of communities of practice to reach this goal. Complementarily, organizational absorptive capacity facilitates the incorporation of new knowledge in a company via five central dimensions: communication, processes, acquisition, assimilation, transformation and exploitation of knowledge. Thereby, this study aims to analyze how a community of practice in a company from the information technology services sector contributes to the development of absorptive capacity. The research was carried out through a case study with a Brazilian subsidiary of a global company from the information technology services sector. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with twelve of the most active members of the two communities of practice selected for investigation. The results of this research indicate the presence of the communication, acquisition and exploitation dimensions in the communities investigated. However, there is little to no indication of the presence of the process, assimilation and transformation dimensions. From these findings it is possible to conclude that the individual community members are obtaining new knowledge which can be incorporated into their daily work, leading to new product development and problem solving. On the other hand, it is not possible to assert that the communities are effectively contributing to the development of this organization ́s absorptive capacity.