Engagement in virtual communities of practice in professional associations: The role of discretionary effort, emotional connectedness and domain interest

The intent of this three-phase, exploratory, sequential mixed-methods study was to better understand the forces that build engagement within virtual communities of practice (VCPS) facilitated by professional occupation associations (POAs).; The first phase was a qualitative and quantitative exploration of a year's worth of electronic communications of a nationwide virtual community. This community was established for the purpose of improving the health of a population of persons experiencing a tragic disease. The members represented acute care hospitals of various sizes and ownership models, including academic centers, community hospitals, and system-owned hospitals. This inductive approach was undertaken to find patterns in the communications that could lead to a more complete understanding of successful constructs for VCPS. This phase of the study led to questions concerning the facilitation role of the association for VCPS.; In the second phase, interviews were conducted with coordinators of POAs responsible for facilitating the VCP initiative of the association. The purpose of the interviews was to explore a theoretical framework proposed by Dhanaraj and Parkhe on hub organizations. The framework proposed three key factors for hub success: (a) knowledge transfer, (b) knowledge appropriation, and (c) network sustainability. The association sampling was criterion based to include those POAs marketing the use of VCPs. The interviews raised the concept of engagement as a key success factor. Engagement , as defined in this study, is the enactment of a commitment to support an aim.; The third phase of this study was a quantitative analysis of surveys sent to over 8000 members of VCPs in three different POAs to test a theoretical model of engagement. There were over 600 respondents. Multiple regression analysis was used to determine the effect that discretionary effort, mediated by two variables---emotional connectedness and domain interest---had on engagement. The outcome showed the most significant factor influencing discretionary effort resulting in engagement was not, as had been expected, social networking but rather the domain interest related to the participants' roles. This study provides practitioners and scholars with empirical evidence concerning the constructs of engagement in virtual communities of practice.