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CONCLUSION

Franchising is being reported as an effective growth strategy for e-commerce in the global market.  Building the franchisor/franchisee “family” relationship is believed to be the most important factor for the success of a franchise system.  For the franchisor, the biggest challenge in building the “family” relationship is to help the franchisee to progress from one stage of the franchisee life cycle learning process to the next, especially turning the franchisee from the “Rebel” stage into the Renewal stage.  Based on their experiences with many successful franchises, Justis and Judd [1] identified five crucial elements of influencing others in the “family” relationship: Knowledge, Attitude, Motivation, Individual Behavior, and Group Behavior.  Using the five elements as the foundation, we proposed in this paper an Intranet-based Working Knowledge Repository for franchise organizations.  We also discussed how the franchise working knowledge is organized and learned.  Examples of dynamic capabilities and value-creating strategies leveraged from the working knowledge profiles are shown.  The roles of information technology enabling the Repository to work are illustrated.  Finally, implications of the study for global e-commerce are briefly discussed.