The present study aimed to examine the influence of facilitating conditions on the effectiveness of a Virtual Community of Practice. To do so, we first analysed the influence of facilitating conditions on the effectiveness of a Virtual Community of Practice. Second, we examined the mediating role of a sense of virtual community between facilitating conditions and effectiveness. Finally, we tested the moderating role of perceived usefulness and perceived ease of use in this relationship. The sample was composed of 110 employees of an NGO who used an intranet platform to create, share, store, and use knowledge about their practice. Results showed that facilitating conditions had a positive influence on effectiveness, and that a sense of virtual community partially mediated this relationship. We also found that perceived usefulness and perceived ease of use moderated the effects of facilitating conditions on effectiveness through a sense of virtual community. The manuscript concludes with theoretical and practical implications of the study.

Virtuality is noticeably present in organisations and influences the way people interact within teams. This study involved 104 organisational teams with some degree of virtuality and intends to analyze a moderated-mediation model in which virtuality moderates the indirect effect of team conflict on team effectiveness and innovation through team trust. First, results reveal that the negative association between conflict and team trust was significant for task conflict only in teams with low virtuality, and for relationship conflict was significant under low and moderate levels of virtuality. Finally, findings indicate that virtuality moderated the negative mediated relationship between both task and relationship team conflict and team effectiveness only through cognitive trust. Overall, the findings suggest that virtuality may protect team trust from the negative effects of conflict, and they point to the key role of cognitive trust as an antecedent of team effectiveness in hybrid teams.

Virtual communities (VCs) have become essential in current organizations and society, and so their sustainability is a topic of interest for researchers and practitioners. We focus on the sense of virtual community (SoVC) and commitment as relevant antecedents in achieving the success and maintenance of different types of VCs (communities of interest, virtual learning communities, and VCs of practice). Specifically, this study examines a moderated mediation model in which the type of VC moderates the indirect effect of a SoVC on the intention to continue through the perceived commitment of the users of the VC. The sample consists of 299 members of VCs. The results showed that SoVC influenced the intention to continue via commitment to VCs. Additionally, the relationship between SoVC and commitment was higher for communities of interest and virtual learning communities than for VCs of practice. This article contributes to previous literature by identifying the importance of participants’ engagement and the contingent effect of the type of community. Implications of the study and directions for future research are discussed.