As commercial organisations face up to modern pressures to downsize and outsource they have begun to realise that they have lost knowledge as people leave and take with them what they know. This knowledge is increasingly being recognised as an important resource and organisations are now taking...

Within the Knowledge Management context, there is growing interest in computer support for group knowledge sharing and the role that Communities of Practice play in this. Communities of Practice are groups of individuals with a common purpose and who share some background, language or...

Family businesses carry the weight of economic wealth creation in most economies. In the U.S. alone, family businesses account for 80 to 90 percent of the 18-million business enterprises in the United States, and 50 percent of the employment and GNP. In many ways, the family business is...

n 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 paper assesses the use of information and communication technologies (ICTs) and their impact on the economic performance of small- and medium-scale enterprises (SMEs) of three East African countries: Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda. Findings of the paper suggest that the diffusion of ICT among...

In this paper we analyze whether a firm’s return to its R&D stock is affected by seller-buyer interactions. We suggest that firms that are in close contact with their customers will be relatively more sensitive to their customers’ needs, and therefore adjust their R&D activities accordingly....