In carrying out a theoretical review into communities of practice we saw a certain weakness in the literature that assumes that these social structures arise spontaneously within the organizational context, regardless of the cultural, social relation and labor-law variables. Using this omission as its starting point this article aims to examine how communities of practice spring up within the organizational context. To achieve our research purpose we used the qualitative approach with a multiple case-study as our methodology strategy. We saw there were few communities of practice in the cases we studied. We noticed that there are certain elements that inhibit the generation of fertile conditions for the development of these communities. We propose, therefore, the notion of the "organizational culture of social practice learning" in order to better understand the creation of the conditions necessary for the appearance of communities of practice.
Practice communities; organizational learning; organizational culture of social practice learning; social practice organizational learning; experimental knowledge
