  With the current trends towards downsizing, outsourcing and globalisation,
modern organisations are reducing the numbers of people they employ. In
addition, organisations now have to cope with the increasing
internationalisation of business forcing collaboration and knowledge sharing
across time and distance simultaneously. There is a need for new ways of
thinking about how knowledge is shared in distributed groups. In this paper we
explore a relatively new approach to knowledge sharing using Lave and Wenger's
(1991) theory of Communities of Practice (CoPs). We investigate whether CoPs
might translate to a geographically distributed international environment
through a case study that explores the functioning of a CoP across national
boundaries.
