Date of Award
2006
Degree Type
Thesis
Degree Name
Doctor of Philosophy
Program
Business
Supervisor
Professor Derrick Neufeld
Second Advisor
Professor Neufeld
Third Advisor
Professor Chris Higgins
Abstract
Virtual teams of dispersed workers have become commonplace in today’s organizations. In order to successfully complete their interdependent work objectives within a distributed team structure, team members must rely on information and communication technologies (ICT) to share, integrate, and manage knowledge. Unfortunately, the effectiveness of knowledge management activities may be impeded by complexities in geographic dispersion, organizational difference, and ICT-mediated communication as well as by syntactic, semantic, and pragmatic knowledge boundaries. Although researchers have paid increasing attention to this problem, related studies are still limited. This dissertation addresses the gap by exploring knowledge management challenges facing virtual teams and the mechanisms for overcoming these challenges. This study draws on the practice perspective of knowledge, paying special attention to the concepts of “knowledge boundary” and “boundary object”. It focuses on whether and how knowledge boundaries emerge within virtual teams and how virtual team members span these knowledge boundaries by using technology practices. The research employed an exploratory, theory-building case study to examine five virtual teams in a Global 500 company, with data collected through in-depth subject interviews, review of organization and team archival documentation, direct observation and participation of organizational and team activities, and extensive email exchange over a nine-month period. Data collection, coding, and analysis were conducted in an iterative fashion to allow new, empirically grounded concepts to emerge. The results show that knowledge boundaries exist as barriers to collaborative work in virtual teams that experience dynamic and complex contextual conditions such as geography, time, and iii organization. Virtual team members embrace a repertoire of four sets of technology practices to deal with emergent knowledge boundaries where team coordination heavily centres on ICT-based artifacts. These technology practices constitute the routine, everyday, coordinative activities that move dispersed collaborative teamwork forward. Combined usage of these practices may complicate team effectiveness in relation to performance, member learning, and social collaborative processes (e.g., membership, identity, control, and accessibility). This study takes an early step towards a middle-range theory on knowledge boundary spanning practice specific to the context of ICT-reliant virtual teams. Implications to management and IS theory and practice are discussed.
Recommended Citation
FANG, Yulin, "KNOWLEDGE BOUNDARY SPANNING IN VIRTUAL TEAMS" (2006). Digitized Theses. 4969.
https://ir.lib.uwo.ca/digitizedtheses/4969