Quality of Participation in Community Currency Organizations as a “Community of Practice” and its Effects on their Performance: Case Study of the LETS Organization in Sweden

Abstract

Although the community currency movement flourished until the 1980s, it has been faced with stagnation in recent years. In this paper, we hypothesize that the performance of community currency organizations is affected by each member’s quality of participation in the organizations as a “community of practice” (Lave and Wenger 1991). We conduct a case study (including a field survey, questionnaire survey, and social network analysis for transaction records) of the local exchange trading system (LETS) organization in Sweden in order to examine this hypothesis; the results support the hypothesis. In addition, we also outline some practical implications.