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Communities of practice (CoPs) have been found to support knowledge creation by enabling knowledge sharing among experts in firms. However, some perform better than others. This paper seeks to explore what incentivizes employees to share knowledge in intra‐firm CoPs.

The paper presents a longitudinal case study in a large automotive company that introduced 82 cross‐functional CoPs into its engineering department. Using extensive qualitative data, two sets of communities: best and worst performing were analyzed.

It was found that perceived benefits and the employees' willingness to invest individual efforts into community work are stronger in better performing communities. Members of the better performing CoPs drew most benefits from participating in organizational decision processes, as they were able to influence the agenda and create relevant …