The mechanisms of social inclusion and exclusion may operate among professionals within organizations and communities of practice. These mechanisms canbe embedded into formal organizational structures, and exert powerful control over who the members of organizations and communities will deem to be acceptable and unacceptable within their society. Using capital theories as a theoretical lens, we analyze the texts of interviews with knowledge leaders in a software development organization. The analysis reveals how a threshold event operates to bring inclusion of newcomers to a collection of social communities. Until the threshold event, communities of newcomers are socially excluded. The existence of the threshold event, and the nature of the threshold event, is an unspoken and unacknowledged structure used in creating the social fabric of the organization or community. It is collectively, yet implicitly, decided when such an event occurs, and the social inclusion triggered without any explication otherwise.
展开▼
