Knowledge Acquisition and Integration in Virtual Teams - A Practice-based Perspective

Although virtual teams have become increasingly important for managing knowledge work in present organizations, the extant literature suggests that they are faced with significant hurdles to knowledge acquisition and integration. On the other hand, research focusing on knowledge management in virtual teams is yet to be enriched. This dissertation aims to add to the understanding of the mechanisms by which virtual teams acquire and integrate knowledge to achieve favorable individual and team performance, and of the role of information and communication technology (ICT) in the process. Based on a practice-based perspective of learning that suggests learning is situated in individuals’ work practice in relation to its surrounding physical and social context, a three-phased study is designed. The first phase attempts to define and measure shared practice – the key construct in the practice-based learning theory, and examine the relationship between shared practice, learning outcomes and use of ICT. The second phase adopts a process-oriented approach and focuses on explaining how knowledge acquisition and integration occurs through ICT-enabled work practice. The third phase works as a substantial extension of the first two phases by replicating them in a second organization with different settings, with the aim to examine the generalizability of the findings from the first organization. This study is expected to contribute to the growing body of the virtual team literature, its aspect of knowledge management in particular, by looking into the construct of shared practice, its relationship with learning outcomes, and the process of practice-based learning in virtual teams

UNDERSTANDING PARTICIPATION BEHAVIOR AND STATUS ATTAINMENT OF OPEN SOURCE SOFTWARE DEVELOPERS – A LATENT CLASS GROWTH MODELING APPROACH

The success of open source software (OSS) projects heavily depends on voluntary participation by a large number of developers. Developers new to an OSS community must participate by engaging in community interactions before they are qualified by the community as core developers. This exploratory study examines new peripheral developers’ temporal participation behavior and its impacts on the time taken to attain core developer status. Using the novel latent class growth modeling approach on 133 peripheral developers across 40 OSS projects, we found that these peripheral developers differed in the initial levels and growth trajectories of participation, and distinct classes of participation behavior were identified. We also found that different classes of developers differ in their time taken to attain core developer status. Implications to research and practice are discussed

International Diversification, Knowledge Capabilities, Corporate Performance, and the Paradox of Resource Mobility

This study examines the link between international diversification, organizational knowledge capabilities and corporate performance. The success or failure of international corporate diversification depends to a large extent on the capability of parent firms to transfer knowledge to subsidiaries, and for those local subsidiaries to effectively utilize that knowledge. However, according to the resource-based view of the firm, knowledge capabilities are likely to be rare, valuable and resistant to imitation and substitution. Thus, parent firms may find it difficult to transfer knowledge to subsidiaries, leading to a paradox. This paper explores the effect of four knowledge capabilities on the performance of diversified firms. Data were analyzed on 5,000 Japanese subsidiaries over a period of 12 years. The results suggest that knowledge that is valuable, but not rare, positively affects subsidiary performance in the short-term, but not the long-term. By contrast, knowledge that is valuable and rare affects subsidiary performance in the long-term, but not the short-term. Implications of these findings are explored and discussed

Explaining Organizational Virtuality: Insights from the Knowledge Based View

Despite a sizable body of literature on virtual organization, little attention has been paid to defining organizational virtuality and identifying organizational factors that influence degree of virtuality of virtual organizations. Based on the virtual organization literature and the knowledge-based view, we develop a working definition of organizational virtuality by conducting a review on the existing definitions of virtual organization, and identify knowledge-related organizational factors that influence organizational virtuality. More specifically, we propose that 1) an organization’s need for knowledge exchange and ability to engage in knowledge exchange jointly determine the level of organizational virtuality that exists in the firm; 2) The higher the need for and ability to engage in knowledge exchange, the higher the level of organizational virtuality of the firm. The contribution the study makes to the academia and the practitioners are also discussed

Following the Sun: Temporal Dispersion and Performance in Open Source Software Project Teams

Dispersion in working teams has been addressed by extant research mostly in terms of the physical distance that separates team members. Recently, the focus has shifted toward an examination of a newer construct –temporal dispersion (TD). The study of TD so far has been constrained mostly to conceptual work. This study furthers the understanding of TD through an empirical investigation of its relationship with open source software (OSS) team performance. In this paper, hypotheses are developed based on coordination theory, and analyses are performed using data collected from multiple archival sources comprising 100 OSS development teams. Results indicate that TD positively affects development speed and quality and that software complexity moderates the relation between TD and software quality. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed. *Both authors contributed equally to the paper

Searching Unanswered Questions A Review of Knowledge Management Processes in Virtual Teams

This article provides a review of the empirical literature on knowledge management processes in virtual teams in an effort to keep the stock of the current state of knowledge. The review is organized according to the four basic knowledge management processes outlined by Alavi and Leidner (2001) (i.e., creation/acquisition, sharing/transferring, storage/retrieval and application). Factors influencing the effectiveness of knowledge management processes studied in the existing literature are examined and discussed. Building on this review, we critically evaluate this stream of research and propose avenues for future work on knowledge management in virtual teams

The Sales Impact of Storytelling in Live Streaming E-Commerce

Live streaming e-commerce (LSE) has emerged as a popular third-party service for improving product sales. It persuades consumers through streamers’ storytelling or narratives, which encompass descriptions and depictions of their own product experiences. However, the sales impact of a story or narrative in LSEs has been overlooked in the literature. Extending the narrative transportation theory to the LSE context, we posit that the dual landscapes of narrative—the landscapes of action and the landscape of consciousness—can improve product sales through their influence on consumers’ imagination of story plotline and empathy for streamers’ product experiences. We also propose that the efficacy of the dual landscapes is contingent on streamers’ interaction response to consumer query. By collecting LSE data from the Taobao Live platform, we manually and algorithmically measured these variables and proposed to empirically examine their effects