Modern commercial organisations are facing pressures which have caused them to lose personnel. When they lose people, they also lose their knowledge. Organisations also have to cope with the internationalisation of business forcing collaboration and knowledge sharing across time and distance....

Purpose – This main aim of this article is to explore the relationship between knowledge management (KM) and communities of practice (CoPs) in general and virtual CoPs in particular. A subsidiary aim is to provide some practical guidelines about how virtual CoPs can be facilitated and...

In the late 1990s, Knowledge Management (KM) and Communities of Practice (CoPs) seemed inseparable. CoPs appeared to offer the key to reversing the failure of some of the earlier technologically based attempts to manage knowledge. However, the original CoP concept was built around a very...

"This book contributes to the understanding of how more subtle kinds of knowledge can be managed in a distributed international environment. It describes academic work in the field of Knowledge Management, with a specific focus on the management of knowledge which cannot be managed by the normal...

This book draws on the experience of people who have worked with CoPs and presents their combined wisdom in a form that is accessible to a wide audience. CoPs are examined from a practica view. The book also examines the benefits that CoPs can bring to an organization, provides a number of case...