| The practice of knowledge management was initiated to leverage an organization's collective knowledge by managing the processes of creating, preserving, using, and sharing knowledge (Warkentin et al., 2001). When internally created knowledge is insufficient for organizations to stay competitive, organizations seek to obtain critical knowledge from the environment, often through partnership arrangements. Such arrangements are widespread in information system implementation where technology-related capabilities are vital to the success of the implementation.; When knowledge is a crucial resource transferred between organizations, interorganizational knowledge sharing becomes critical to successful cooperation (e.g. Charles et al., 2002; Gebrekidan & Awuah, 2002). Nevertheless, research studies on management of knowledge that is transferred between organizations are relatively infrequent and less developed (Paris & Henderson, 2001). This study addresses this research gap by exploring the dynamics of interorganizational knowledge sharing in information systems development and implementation projects and identifying the factors that influence knowledge sharing effectiveness.; The study follows a qualitative research methodology by conducting an in depth case study to answer the research questions. The case study is a software implementation project where the client is a major university in the Midwestern part of the US and the major vendor is one of the largest technology vendors in the technology industry. Data which was collected at the client's location came from five sources: semi-structured interviews, documentation, archival records, direct observation, and physical artifacts. Data analysis was done during and after data collection.; Interorganizational knowledge sharing was found to be critical to the implementation of the system. It was found to involve the flows of knowledge at the individual, group, and organizational levels. While interorganizational knowledge sharing could be observed from the knowledge that flows from one level to another, such sharing was considered to be effective when learning occurs at each level, starting from the individual, to group, to organizational levels. This finding is congruent with the rationale of organizational learning theory. The factors, which are information technology, organizational culture, interorganizational routine, and knowledge domains, were found to have impact on interorganizational knowledge sharing.; The limitations of the study, research implications, and practical implications are drawn from the findings respectively. |
