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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. Knowledge management (KM) claims to tackle these issues. This paper looks at an area where KM does not offer sufficient support, that is, the sharing of knowledge that is not easy to articulate. The focus in this paper is on communities of practice in commercial organisations. We do this by exploring knowledge sharing in Lave and Wenger’s (1991) theory of communities of practice and investigating how communities of practice may translate to a distributed international environment. The paper reports on two case studies that explore the functioning of communities of practice across international boundaries.

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 maintained.

The relationship between KM and CoPs is explored using theoretical constructs, the notion of a duality, and data from a case study. The article reports on a case study of a “virtual” CoP and highlights two key aspects of virtual working. The article demonstrates how these key aspects map on to Wenger's participation‐reification duality and, in turn, on to the soft‐hard duality described by Hildreth and Kimble.

The case study of a “virtual” CoP was based in three geographically separate locations (the UK, the USA, and Japan). The case study reports on the activities of the UK part of the CoP both at their UK base and during one of their regular trips to the USA. It highlights the importance of two particular aspects or virtual working: social relationships and the use of shared artefacts.

Some general conclusions are drawn from the analysis concerning the facilitation of virtual CoPs and the broader implications of dualities for KM.

The main contribution of the article is in making an explicit link between KM and CoPs through the use of the notion of the duality of knowledge.

The overarching theme of this article is the importance of innovations that are created within the emerging economies. More specifically, the article aims to focus on the development of various alternatives to vehicles powered by the internal combustion engine, new energy vehicles (NEVs), within China.

The broad strategic approach of two sectors within the NEV sector in China, the pure electric vehicle (EV) and the low‐speed electric vehicle (LSEV) sectors, are compared using recent data and conclusions are drawn.

The EV sector is viewed by central government as a key sector for China's future industrial growth and is heavily supported. In contrast, the LSEV sector receives no support from central government and yet clearly outstrips the sales of EVs. The article argues that the latter's success is a reflection of the LSEV sector's focus on business model rather than technological innovation.

The article highlights the importance of monitoring innovations that come from within emerging economies and also illustrates the benefits that can come from commercially focused innovations rather than those based on technology.

Finding alternatives to vehicles powered by fossil fuels is one of the most important challenges facing the world today. This article looks at the search for one alternative and examines its implications.

The article examines a business sector that is peculiarly Chinese and yet has potential implications far beyond China. It also contains recent sales figures and other data collected directly from sources in China.

The purpose of this paper was to gain a better understanding of the nature of online communities, the relationships within them and the relationship between such communities and the host organization. Knowledge sharing via participation in online communities is a central part of many multinational organizations’ business strategies; however, the task is not always straightforward.

The research focused on power relationships in online communities. The approach was inductive and consisted of an exploratory case study using semi-structured interviews, augmented with direct observation and documentary sources, within a framework provided by the French sociologists Crozier and Friedberg.

The findings identify the various reasons for participating in the community and aspects of both the relationships within the community and between the community and the host company.

The research shows that online communities are not easy to categorize and that attempting to use a single solution for the management of such communities risks oversimplifying a complex situation. It also shows that Crozier and Friedberg’s framework is useful in highlighting issues that otherwise might not have been noticed.

Issues of power are often neglected in studies of online communities. The use of Crozier and Friedberg’s framework offers a novel way to examine power relationships, which can offer new insights into how such communities function.

The goal of the article is to use the concepts of catching‐up and leapfrogging that are most often found in the literature on developmental economics to explore the process by which newcomers overturn an established market leader.

The article uses two case studies, one of the initial development of the transistor radio by the Japanese and the other of the development of electric vehicles in China, to illustrate the application of these concepts to concrete examples.

The way in which Sony caught up with, and jumped ahead of, American radio manufacturers is explained using the concepts of catching‐up and leapfrogging to emphasize the different phases in the process. This is contrasted with the development of electric vehicles in China which is a process that is still unfolding. The potential importance of one particular development, the low speed electric vehicle, is highlighted.

The concepts of catching‐up and leapfrogging provide a simple method to visualize the ways in which a newcomer might overtake an incumbent. Their application to the case studies also highlights the crucial importance of a sound business model in this process.

Although the case of Sony and the transistor radio is relatively well known, this article places it in a new conceptual framework. The case of the development of electric vehicles in general, and the example of the low speed electric vehicle in particular, is new and has not been widely explored.

The goal of this paper is to re‐evaluate the role of knowledge‐based systems (KBS) in knowledge management (KM). While knowledge‐based systems and expert systems were widely used in the past, they have now fallen from favor and are largely ignored in the knowledge management literature. This paper aims to argue that several factors have changed and it is now time to re‐evaluate the contribution that such systems can make to knowledge management.

The role of KBS in KM is explored through a comprehensive analysis of both the management and the technical literature on knowledge. The literature on KBS and expert systems is reviewed and some of the problems faced by them are highlighted. Some of the probable causes of these problems and some of the solutions that might be used to overcome them are indicated. The paper describes how knowledge systems (KS) could be used as an effective tool for managing knowledge.

The lack of success of KBS technologies for managing knowledge is mainly due to organizational and managerial issues. These problems can be solved through feasibility studies before system development activities. KS technology is now being successfully applied in a variety of newer domains that exploit its capabilities.

Some conclusions are drawn concerning integration of knowledge systems with knowledge management, problems of the early implementation of knowledge systems technology, and possible solution to overcome these problems.

The main contribution of the article is in re‐evaluating the role of knowledge‐based systems as a tool for knowledge management.

The article shows how changes in product architecture have become the driving force behind a breakthrough strategy that has enabled Chinese carmakers to produce vehicles that are broadly equivalent to the products of western carmakers but at a fraction of the price.

The article presents an analysis of the development of a strategy based in an innovative product architecture used by a Chinese carmaker. The analysis covers the period between 1998 and 2006 and presents the results of a longitudinal study carried out by one of the authors in China between 2002 and 2007.

The article uses the literature on product architecture and breakthrough strategy to describe a quasi‐open modular product architecture used by Chinese carmakers. It provides an historical account of one company's approach to car making using this strategy and describes how it has allowed it to move from being a manufacturer of refrigerators to the ninth largest carmaker in China in period of ten years.

The article highlights the strategic potential of innovations in product architecture in general and that of quasi‐open modular architectures in particular. It also highlights the role of the emerging markets in China as the source of potential drivers for breakthrough strategies and as a threat to the current position of western carmakers.

This article uses evidence based on direct observation to describe a novel approach to product architecture that has been pioneered in the emergent markets in China.

Data from social media (SM) has grown exponentially and created new opportunities for businesses to supplement their business intelligence (BI). However, there are many different platforms all of which are in a constant state of evolution. The purpose of this paper is to describe a generic methodology for the gathering of data from SM and transforming it into valuable BI.

The approach taken is termed virtual excavation and builds on the similarities between the manipulation of technological artefacts virtual communities using various forms of SM and the excavation and analysis of physical artefacts found in archaeological settlements.

The paper reports on a case study using this technique that looks at the Facebook fan pages of three mobile telecommunications service providers in Greece. The paper identifies many of the standard BI indicators as well as demonstrating that additional information relating to cross-page use can be collected by looking at how users manipulate artefact such as the “like” button in Facebook.

Although the methodology is widely applicable, the paper only reports on the analysis of one platform, Facebook, and is heavily reliant on visualization tools. Future work will examine different platforms and different tools for analysis.

The paper discusses some of the ways in which this approach could be used and suggests some areas in which it might be applied.

The approach of using virtual excavations to extract BI from virtual communities in online SM offers a systematic approach for dealing with a variety of information from a variety of different media that is not found in techniques based on information systems or management science.

The purpose of this study is to investigate the impact of some organizational culture attributes, including: openness to change, innovation, trust, teamwork, morale, information flow, employees' involvement, supervision, customer service and reward orientation on the knowledge exchange (KE) process within the context of the Saudi Telecom Company (STC) as a representation of the Saudi context.

A descriptive correlation design was used. A web survey was used to collect data from 378 employees working on STC using Random Number Generator 0.2 software. The sample was selected using an e‐mailing list.

The findings revealed that the cultural attributes of trust, innovation, information flow, supervision, and reward have an impact on KE within the context of the STC. Additionally, the study revealed a statistically significant correlation between organizational culture and KE as a whole (0.75), which emphasizes the effective role of organizational culture factors on exchanging knowledge within the context of the study.

This study presents only preliminary results from limited data. Additional quantitative data are needed to employ more superior statistical analysis. Moreover, the current study is exploratory in nature with a relatively small number of respondents from the STC.

The originality of this study is derived from the importance of KM as a strategic organizational tool as well as the importance of culture as an influential factor. The STC, one of the biggest companies in the Middle East, is trying to implement aspects of KM. Towards this end, the company has created a new division of KM which is suffering from a lack of research studies that explore issues relating to KM in Arab countries in general and the Saudi context in particular, which makes the topic of this research not only unique but also of high practical significance.