From a spontaneous community of practice to a piloted community of practice: A longitudinal study of resilience construction

The article focuses on piloted communities of practice (PCoPs), which have evolved significantly in recent years in the knowledge-based economy. These social structures represent real difficulties in terms of management, particularly with regard to the possibility of reconciling two apparently contradictory logics, self-organization and control. Although recent empirical work in the literature provides a general picture of these PCoPs, they do not provide details of how this piloting is implemented over the long term. This paper uses a flexible pattern matching approach on a longitudinal case study to analyze the shift from a spontaneous community to a piloted community. The community studied here is the sound engineers of Radio France. The results highlight that piloting can only be relevant if it is presented as a reification process that makes sense to those involved. The study also emphasizes that self-organization and control can be harmonized through the creation of an ad hoc structure and that some PCoPs can be ambidextrous. In this study, we underline in which conditions the piloted community allows to maintain the resilience of an organization.