Proceedings of the International Association for Business and Society

Volume 31, 2020

Proceedings of the Thirty-First Annual Meeting

Communities in Management
A Literature Review and a Typology

Communities are discussed frequently in the business and management literature, but their main characteristics are not commonly agreed upon. This multiplicity of meanings results in vagueness, which hinders both scholarly research and practice. Building on a sample of 142 papers published in highly ranked business and management journals, this literature review aims to provide clarity on the concept by identifying its main underlying meanings. After conducting qualitative and cluster analysis Keyon the abovementioned sample, we suggest the following four types of communities: of Proximity, of Practice, of Users and of Firms. Their main characteristics are discussed, along with their relationship with business and management.