Identifying and extracting critical success factors of communities of practice in Iran’s technology based organizations by using fuzzy Delphi

Abstract In thelast two decades, communities of practice (CoPs), are increasingly considered by knowledge management researchers. As for the evidence, representing theapplicability of this issue, the large number of international scientific published papers and their implementation in organizations and companies should be mentioned. CoPs are groups of people who share a concern or a passion for something they do and learn how to do it better as they interact regularly. CoPs were developed because they represented that learning is a social experience. Accordingly, organizational staffs can learn a practice on the best while having regular contact with those who have the best skill and knowledge in that field. Identifying the critical success factors (CSFs) of CoPs can have a significant effect on improving organizational learning and knowledge sharing. Having the main purpose on investigating and recognizing the CSFs of CoPs in Iran’s technology based organizations, this research is trying to develop and localize knowledge management literature. In order to investigate these factors, a panel of thirteen experts and fuzzy Delphi is used. The results show that CSFs of CoPs in Iran’s technology based Companies are divided into two parts named internal and external success factorsrespectively including ten and eleven factors.