2001 Copyright © 2011, IGI Global. Copying or distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of IGI Global is prohibited. Chapter 6.8 Sharing Knowledge in Virtual Communities Iris Reychav Bar-Ilan University, Israel & Holon Acadmic Institute, Israel Jacob Weisberg Bar-Ilan University, Israel INtrODUctION The ongoing expansion of organizations’ interna- tional activities has led to a search for solutions to assist in the creation and transfer of knowledge among them, in an attempt to increase their profits (Laurie, 2002). Knowledge sharing solutions describe three frameworks where knowledge sharing occurs: virtual communities, knowledge communities, and virtual knowledge communities. A virtual community is defined as “a group of people with common interests who communi- cate via the Internet and perceive themselves as a defined group” (Jarvenpaa, Knoll, & Leidner, 1998). Knowledge sharing solutions focus on the concentrated approach, which involves the creation of a central information base for storing information. However, this has been found to be ineffective for knowledge sharing among virtual organizations (Fahey & Prusak, 1998; Markus, 2001), mostly as a result of the fact that information is oftentimes inaccurate and frequently contains errors. A possible explanation for this phenom- enon relates to the employees’ tacit knowledge, known to be necessary in order to achieve effective knowledge transfer (Grover & Davenport, 2001). Global organizations often utilize a decentralized network supported by “peer-to-peer” (P2P) tech- nology, which is a computer network that relies on the computing power of and the participants in the network. Such networks are useful for sharing audio and video data or anything in digital format. P2P technology serves as an infrastructure for DOI: 10.4018/978-1-59904-885-7.ch190