Abstract
This paper examines boundary-spanning knowledge-coordination in the definition of information systems by the e-Commerce systems group for a global service consultancy. We report on the findings of an eighteen-month field study to investigate distributed and virtual knowledge coordination across organizational boundaries. Our study reveals multiple ways in which knowledge is coordinated by means of a web of functional and domain-expert roles, distributed knowledge-resources, and imposed or negotiated procedures. We identify a “problem- coordination distance” that relates to the organizational-span of coordination and the type of problems to be resolved. We observe that different forms of group memory are used to manage boundary-spanning collaboration according to three degrees of problem-coordination-distance. These findings are related to the potential use of knowledge management systems to support boundary-spanning coordination for enterprise managers in virtual organizations.
Recommended Citation
Gasson, Susan and Elrod, Edwin, "Distributed Knowledge Coordination across Virtual Organizational Boundaries" (2006). ICIS 2006 Proceedings. 61.
https://aisel.aisnet.org/icis2006/61