Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to design a model to outline the structure of communities of practice (CoPs) corresponding to organizational context. Design/methodology/approach – This research utilizes both descriptive and prescriptive approaches, as the authors are looking for a comprehensive relational model to deal with the problem of selecting suitable CoPs concerning organizational context. Thus, this study applies interviewing and fuzzy Delphi methods to explore the model. Findings – The work provides a new and comprehensive relational model of CoPs and organizational variables affecting CoPs structure. In this model, three basic concepts of the literature were developed. First, the components concerning types of CoPs were identified and then the organizational variables related to CoPs were determined. Finally, the authors extracted the relationships between the organizational variables and the components of CoPs. Practical implications – From a practical perspective, the relationships among the components concerning types of CoPs and the organizational variables may provide a model which can effectively guide firms how to promote, design and manage CoPs within organizational contexts. Originality/value – The results of this study contribute to CoPs literature in terms of identification of two variables (CoPs components and organizational variables) to produce a matrix for the construction of a holistic CoPs model. The significant finding of this research is the guidance it provides for designing a relational model involving relations between organizational variables and CoPs components.

PurposeThis paper experimentally examines the concept of intellectual capital in the Iranian space industries. The first objective of this study is to validate a model for assessing the relationships among some factors of intellectual capital and knowledge management; and organizational performance. The second objective is to evaluate the mediating role of some of them in the relationship between the intangible assets and organizational performance.Design/methodology/approachThe research is designed to utilize a systematic sampling and survey method. Intellectual capital here is decided to be four items of human, structural, innovation and cultural capital while two items of “knowledge development and sharing” and “learning and knowledge application” are considered for knowledge management. The structural equation modeling approach is used to validate the research model.FindingsThese analyses suggest that human capital and structural capital are positively associated with organizational performance. The findings also indicate that both cultural capital and knowledge management practices fully mediate the effects of intangible assets on organizational performance while the latter does more.Originality/valueThis study adds to the literature in two valuable ways. First, it validates a model for assessing the associations among organizational performance and adoption of knowledge management and intellectual capital. Second, it offers important results on the identification of mediating role of cultural capital and knowledge management practices.

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Purpose This paper aims to present a specific model and method for analyzing the knowledge domains and organization knowledge map. One of the functions of the organizational knowledge map is the possibility of extracting the risk of the organization's knowledge domains and thus the ability to define knowledge-based strategies in the organization. So far, various software tools have been designed to support the process of creating, analyzing knowledge domains and structure knowledge map. However, software companies have less detail and methodology of their software analysis and less research has been addressed. Design/methodology/approach This model calculates the risk of knowledge domains using the recursive algorithm approach, assuming there is one-way communication between the knowledge domains and using specific factors. Findings The prominence of this model is to calculate knowledge domains risk, dynamic updating of knowledge domains risk after any changes in knowledge domain risk in the organization's knowledge map. The model can also be used as a simulation model and prioritize corrective actions. Originality/value This is a recursive model that by assuming one-way relations among knowledge domain computes the risk of each domain knowledge by considering the risk of its related domains, relations among different domains and pre-requisites and post-requisites. This model has no limitation in determining the number of knots and communications. Despite of simplicity, it is too efficient and any organization can localize it based on its own needs.