Information Quality and Its Interpretative Reconfiguration as a Premise of Knowledge Management in Virtual Organizations

The general objective of this chapter is the attempt to develop solid epistemological foundations for discussions around the subject of knowledge management and virtual organizations. For this purpose the rich and encompassing theoretical complex of the interpretative paradigm in social sciences is adopted and a specific transfer is made from the newer sociology of knowledge, as introduced by Alfred Schutz, Peter L. Berger and Thomas Luckmann. The main thrust of the chapter opens with a discussion of information quality in the context of knowledge management and develops accordingly the concept of common interpretative spaces and a tripartite model of the transformational process, which are both standing at the very heart of any approach to knowledge management in virtual organizations.

Knowledge Acquisition and Management

This chapter provides an integrative review and synthesis of the knowledge acquisition and management literature. As a starting point, the role of the individual in organizational learning processes is discussed and reconciled. This issue is extended and discussed for the virtual setting. In following sections, the author derives three major theoretical principles from the literature synthesis. These include the knowledge types, knowledge acquisition processes, and organizational memory. Again, each of these principles are extended to the virtual setting. Based on the integration of these principles, a number of conceptual refinements are offered and important strategic implications elaborated. Subsequently, the strategic implications are contrasted and developed for the virtual setting. Communication constraints inherent to the virtual organization bring a unique and likely problematic set of issues with regard to the development and management of organizational knowledge.

The Glue That Binds Creative Virtual Teams

This chapter describes an exploratory, qualitative research project that investigated the work environment necessary for virtual teams to be creative. Nine different virtual teams, with a total of 36 virtual team members (33 of which completed the full study), participated in this study. Three teams were organizational consulting firms, two teams were educational consortiums, three teams were on-line service provider teams, and one team was a product design engineering team. One semi-structured, telephone interview was conducted with each participant. Team members also completed a background survey. Grounded theorizing was used to generate an in-depth understanding of the phenomena under investigation. Connection, defined as the elements that need to be in place for a team to develop and maintain identity and a sense of community, emerged as a key category important to the realization of creativity in virtual teams. Connection was further subdivided into task connection (made up of dedication/commitment, and goal clarity); and interpersonal connection (made up of information sharing, trust, and personal bond). Suggestions for how team designers, team leaders, or managers can establish and develop connection in their own virtual teams are offered.

Knowledge Needs of Self-Organized Systems

Self-organized systems are capable of changing their own structure in order to adapt themselves to significant changes in their environment. They are at the top of a hierarchy of systems that arranges systems according to the degree of control they have upon their own actions. Self-directed systems, self-regulated systems and uncontrolled systems are the reminder levels of that hierarchy. The framework developed in this chapter identifies the necessary components at each level of control. These components include operators, coordinators, regulators, directors, organizers and informers. The framework can be described as a model of the general architecture of self-organized systems. It is used to identify and characterize the knowledge needs of self-organized systems by examining the functionality, characteristics and knowledge needs of each of those components.

Knowledge Management and Organizational Design

This chapter examines the relation between organization design and knowledge management. Choosing a certain organization form implies a way of dealing with knowledge. The adopted strategies for knowledge management must concur with this form. Knowledge management should always constitute a good ‘mix’ of strategies applied in the organization form and its information and communication technology (ICT). A model enables organizations to determine their type and implied consequences for their knowledge management. It offers an explanation of why a specific form of knowledge management will or will not work in certain situations, and suggests measures for an appropriate knowledge management.

Computer Mediated Interorganizational Knowledge Sharing

How does a team use a computer-mediated technology to share and reuse knowledge when the team is inter-organizational and virtual, when the team must compete for the attention of team members with collocated teams, and when the task is the creation of a completely new innovation? From a review of the literature on knowledge sharing and reuse using collaborative tools, three propositions are generated about the likely behavior of the team in using the collaborative tool and reusing the knowledge put in the knowledge repository. A multi-method longitudinal research study of this design team was conducted over its tenmonth design effort. Both qualitative and quantitative data were obtained. Results indicated that the propositions from the literature were insufficient to explain the behavior of the team. We found that ambiguity of the task does not determine use of a collaborative tool; that tool use does not increase with experience; and that knowledge that is perceived as transient (whether it really is transient or not) is unlikely to be referenced properly for later search and retrieval. Implications for practice and theory are discussed.

The Knowledge-Based View (KBV) of the Virtual Web, the Virtual Corporation and the Net-Broker

This chapter describes virtual organization from an inter-organization perspective. The virtual web is a network of equal and independent companies from which virtual corporations derive. Virtual corporations are temporary partnerships, which are only established in response to market opportunities or customer needs. The net-broker manages and administrates the virtual web and configures virtual corporations. Since knowledge has been identified as a key resource to gain competitive advantage, the knowledge-based perspective of the virtual web / corporation concept is used to argue why virtual corporations have theoretically the potential to build core know-how and therefore to gain competitive advantage. The chapter finalizes with a discussion of whether virtual corporations might be in a better position to achieve competitive advantage than other forms of inter-organizational partnerships.

Success Factors in Leveraging the Corporate Information and Knowledge Resource Through Intranets

The chapter presents the empirical findings of two large organizations’ attempts at competitively leveraging the knowledge and information sharing capabilities of intranets. The work sought to identify the organization and management requirements that are critical to the realization of business benefits of intranet investments. The qualitative analysis suggests that intranets do provide a communications infrastructure that enables communities to exploit their information and knowledge resources for improved business performance provided a number of enabling changes is implemented. Next to the provision of continual user training, the user community must compile the business case, appoint the content manager, and negotiate guidelines for use. Unless these organizational and management changes constitute an integral part of the implementation strategy, the intranet will fail to deliver its investment objectives.

Beyond Customer Knowledge Management

In the knowledge-based economy, the value of products and services largely depends on the knowledge intangibles they embed (Drucker, 1993). The success of firms is increasingly becoming linked to the intellectual capital they are able to accumulate and re-invest in their markets (Davenport & Prusak, 1998; Nahapiet & Ghoshal, 1998; Sullivan, 1998). In this age of knowledge-based business, it is incumbent upon firms to pay increasing attention to the development of customer knowledge (Balasubramanian et al., 1998; Sawhney & Kotler, 1999). However, researchers in marketing have generally assumed that knowledge creation happens only within the firm’s boundaries or, at the most, within the strategic alliances among firms. We argue that in the knowledge economy we need to move beyond this perspective of the firm as the knowledge creator that learns about customers and creates value for them, to a perspective of the firm as a co-creator of knowledge that learns and creates value with its customers. As already argued only in service marketing literature, customers are a vital source of knowledge and hence competitive advantage. The cooperation with them gives firms the opportunity to renew the source of their competitive advantage constantly. This is significant in a business landscape where unique and lasting competitive advantages are increasingly rare. Through co-operation with their customers, firms can better anticipate market changes (Anderson & Narus, 1991; Nonaka & Takeuchi, 1995), catalyze their innovation processes (von Hippel, 1982, 1986, 1994), and better respond to latent customer needs (Leonard & Rayport, 1997).

Role of Organizational Controls in Knowledge Management

The mainstream concept of information technology enabled knowledge management suffers from the limitations embedded in the traditional organizational control model. Although importance of organization control is acknowledged by many authors as critical to the success of knowledge management implementations, however the concept of ‘control’ is often misinterpreted and misapplied. It is the thesis of this chapter that most such assertions are based on incomplete, and often, fallacious understanding of ‘control’. Several authors have often suggested that knowledge management is an ‘oxymoron,’ however such observations are based upon inadequate and incomplete understanding of ‘control.’ Inadequate and incomplete understanding about organization controls may be often attributed for failure of knowledge management implementations in the new world of business. This chapter sets forth two important goals: first, to develop a richer understanding of organizational controls as they relate to knowledge management; and, second, to propose an organic model of organizational controls that facilitates creation of new knowledge, renewal of existing knowledge and knowledge sharing.