The purpose of this qualitative study is to explore how national (Chinese) cultural factors influence knowledge sharing behavior in virtual communities of practice at a large U.S.-based multinational organization. The data in this study come from interviews with the company’s employees in China, and managers who are involved in managing knowledge-sharing initiatives. The study results suggest t...

The article presents a model of the structural properties of virtual communities and the information they can access. It argues that a large part of the information – and actually knowledge – present in virtual communities can be identified by a graph structure that consists of three node types – actors, media and qualities – as well as the relations that connect them. Based on these relations,...

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We examined the influence of meme consistency (vs. inconsistency) and intragroup status on the spread of memes in virtual communities. Prior research suggests that information consistent with the theme of the group is remembered better and that ideas threatening to the group identity are rejected. In addition, previous research shows that low-status group members mimic high-status members and c...

Participation is a key aspect of success of virtual communities. Participation is dependent on the members’ motivation that is driven by individual and environmental characteristics. This article investigates the individual and environmental factors that contribute to motivation and discusses mechanisms to improve motivation in virtual communities. The study is based on the Hersey and Blanchard...

Despite the optimism surrounding the business potential of virtual communities (VCs), our knowledge of how VCs can be nurtured and leveraged to create value for the organizations that sponsor them is limited. To address this knowledge gap, a twodimensional process model of the development and leverage of a VC is inductively derived from a case study of one of the most commercially successful VC...

A virtual community is a group of people whose shared needs and/or interests are largely communicated within, and mediated by Webenabled interactions, e.g., within a Website. While some virtual communities (e.g., Motley Fool) have flourished, many sites designed for online collaboration have failed to succeed as virtual communities, places for people to hang out and collaborate online. In order...

INTRODUCTION A great deal of the literature on virtual communities evolves around classifying the phenomenon1 while much empirically constructive work on the topic has not been conducted yet. Therefore, the research discussed in this paper proposes to explore the actual field of the virtual community (VC). By means of a comparative ethnographic research, virtual communities are to be defined in...

Virtual communities of patients provide health-related information and mutual support for members. This paper presents an analysis of the demand of virtual communities of patients for novel electronic services. Results include the success factors of virtual communities of patients, the demand for electronic services for new and experienced community members and the demand for electronic service...

This article considers the current problem of investigation the specific of specialized catalog of educational virtual communities. Peculiarities of catalogs of virtual communities are formed. This study provides a method of organization of catalog of virtual communities of educational direction. This method is based on a formal model of virtual communities as an environment of information acti...