This thesis uses McDermott and Snyder's (2002) definition of communities of practice (CoP). This definition is relevant and consistently useful for this research because the authors define communities of practice as groups of people who share a concern, set of problems, or passion about a topic and who deepen their knowledge and expertise in this area by interacting on an ongoing basis. On the other hand, Lesser and Storck (2001) define that these communities could meet in a physical location or could be virtually connected through various means of communication such as email and Internet applications. A group of CoP people informally tied together by shared skills and passion for, for example, joint venture engineers engaged in deep-water drilling, consultants specializing in strategic marketing, or front-line managers in charge of check processing at a large bank commercial. Although the primary outcome of communities of practice is knowledge, they have been found to improve organizational performance by driving strategy, generating new lines of business, solving problems,...