Knowledge processes in virtual teams: consolidating the evidence

Abstract

Alavi and Leidner (2001) (i.e., creation, transferring, storage/retrieval and application) INTRODUCTIONThe globalization of business competition and a growing need for customer responsiveness in the past few decades have caused an increasing number of firms to undergo dramatic organizational changes (Miles & Snow, 1992). Organizations transform to networks by flattening organizational structure and establishing inter-organizational links (Davidow & Malone, 1992). This change has promoted contemporary firms to coordinate activities that span geographical and organizational boundaries (Townsend et al., 1998). It has also increased the need for utilizing decentralized, specialized knowledge and expertise (Alavi & Tiwana, 2002;Boutellier, 1998;Penrose, 1959). Virtual teams have emerged to allow organizations to overcome these geographical boundaries and to address the emerging knowledge needs (Powell et al., 2004;Workman, 2007).Virtual teams constitute essential structures in today's organizations (Siebdrat et al., 2009). An internal virtual workforce survey of twelve hundred employees in Intel Corporationreveals that approximately 70 percent of the Intel workforce collaborates with people in different time zones without meeting face to face (Intel Corporation, 2004). Accenture, an international IT systems consulting firm, rests its viability on the performance of "customerintimate" project teams coordinated among dispersed sites (Accenture., 2005 ). Virtual teams form an essential part of today's organizations with important implications for teamwork and collaboration.A crucial aspect of virtual teams is the knowledge process among the team members. In fact, the main driver for building virtual teams is the prospect of integrating the dispersed knowledge and expertise of the team members (Alavi & Tiwana, 2002;Boutellier, 1998).However, while virtual teams are established to support knowledge integration it has been recognized that the virtual collaboration environment inhibits the team's knowledge 3 processes. The geographic dispersion and the reliance on information technologies hinder team members to create, transfer, store and apply knowledge (Alavi & Tiwana, 2002;Cramton, 2001;Griffith et al., 2003). Studies in innovation management (Ahuja, 2000) and organizational learning (Walsh, 1995) highlight how the distributed nature of cognition and the diversity of knowledge in team settings creates challenges for team learning and knowledge processes. These challenges become even more pronounced when the interaction among teams are virtual (Alavi & Tiwana, 2002).Virtual teams are in a "catch-22" situation: the opportunities of integrating dispersed knowledge promotes the emergence of virtual teams; at the same time virtual teams are arguably less capable of identifying and leveraging the collective knowledge of their members than traditional teams are. Recognizing this paradox is highly important for virtual team members as effective knowledge exchange and utilization is not achieved until the team has id...

Knowledge domain and innovation behaviour

“…In order to reach the goal of the present research, this paper uses a framework based on the view of organizations as “knowledge systems” which include four “knowledge processes” (Holzner and Marx, 1979): creation and acquisition, storage and retrieval, transfer, and application. This model dates back to the late 1970s, yet it is still considered a valid reference and a starting point in the analysis of knowledge and its management (Alavi and Leidner, 2001; Raisinghani and Meade, 2005; Fang and Kwok, 2007; Martínez Soto et al , 2010). Knowledge creation and/or acquisition refer to the process of generating knowledge internally and/or acquiring it from external sources.…”

Exploring the impact of empowering leadership on knowledge sharing, absorptive capacity and team performance in IT service

“…Knowledge processes such as knowledge sharing and knowledge transfer are an important component of knowledge management, as they help in codifying the repository of available knowledge in the team and expanding this repository over time (Fang et al, 2012). When team members are empowered to make job-related decisions on their own, they need to possess adequate information to ensure that the decisions are reasonable and justifiable given the decision contexts.…”

Successful knowledge exchange in virtual teams—how important is social presence?

“…Die Relevanz von Wissensaustausch für die erfolgreiche Zusammenarbeit in virtuellen Teams wird sowohl in der Forschung (Fang et al. 2014 ) als auch in der organisationalen Praxis immer deutlicher hervorgehoben. Insbesondere die Frage, wie Wissensaustausch in virtuellen Teams gefördert werden kann, ist in den letzten Jahren in den Fokus gerückt (Shah-Nelson et al.…”

“…Der Erfolg virtueller Teamarbeit hängt maßgeblich von der Befähigung der Teammitglieder ab, das vorhandene, zumeist verteilte, Fach- und Erfahrungswissen für gemeinsame Problemlösungen und Entscheidungsprozesse zu nutzen (Fang et al. 2014 ; Shah-Nelson et al. 2020 ; Singh 2020 ).…”