Knowledge networks as part of an integrated knowledge management approach

Immersed in a global industry consolidation process, corporate managers are witnessing, in recent years, the proliferation of inter‐organizational collaborative agreements, which aim to develop, manufacture and commercialize knowledge intensive products. The decision within a knowledge management (KM) framework to collaborate in knowledge sharing networks becomes a complicated issue, since such a decision needs to be made often under conditions of uncertainty and irreversibility. The present study deals with questions such as why, how, and when to be a member of a knowledge network and provides some empirical evidence about the formation of inter‐organizational networks in knowledge intensive industries.