Dynamics of inter‐organizational knowledge creation and information technology use across object worlds: the case of an innovative construction project

Abstract

Organizational research argues that under relational forms of governance a high degree of both information pooling and physical interaction are necessary for inter‐organizational knowledge creation. Yet, recent studies of information and communication technologies (ICTs) suggest that both practices at the same time are sometimes unnecessary. We address this discrepancy by developing a framework whereby the intensity and proportion of these inter‐organizational practices are affected by the object world congruence between designers within and across partnering firms, and the level to which a common information technology platform is embedded in their activity. Through a multi‐level case study of a Frank Gehry construction project we illustrate how designers with highly congruent object worlds, due to a strongly embedded common information technology platform, could jointly create knowledge despite decreased physical interaction. Conversely, designers from firms with incongruent object worlds or with congruent object worlds lacking a strongly embedded common ICT platform demanded a higher degree of physical interaction for effective knowledge creation. Our research suggests a dynamic, evolutionary model of inter‐organizational knowledge creation influenced by variation in object world congruence and the levels of embedding a common ICT platform.

Keywords:

• Inter‐organizational systems
• information pooling
• information technology
• knowledge creation
• project governance

Acknowledgements

We appreciate the helpful comments of Chris Harty on an earlier version of this document, and we acknowledge the substantial contributions of our collaborators on the Path Creation project, including Dick Boland, Jessica Carlo, Uri Gal and Youngjin Yoo. This research was funded in part by the US National Science Foundation (NSF grant number IIS‐0208963).

Notes

1. See for example: Airbus’s design troubles with CATIA™ v4 and v5 (Prawel, 2008).

2. Up to the point of the analysis conducted for this study we drew on over 100 interviews in over 20 firms involved with Gehry Partners’ projects. These cover the following finished or ongoing Gehry projects: Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain, the Experience Music Project (EMP) in Seattle, the Millennium Bandshell in Chicago, the Bard College Center for the Performing Arts, the MIT Stata Center, and the Princeton Science Library. During the period of data analysis our research group consisting at the time of three professors and four PhD students engaged in weekly meetings to compare and analyse the data. These meetings took place over the course of 2002 to 2007.

3. The ‘promise’ of ICTs refers to expectations in line with the contention of Malone and associates (1987) that complex and highly interactive activities such as joint knowledge creation might behave more like arm’s length market transactions with the help of ICT.