Knowledge integration and individual expertise development in e-business project teams: prom the pod to the peas

ABSTRACT

The use of a knowledge-based logic for organizing project teams has received increasing attention from information systems scholars. This view contends that successful knowledge integration positively contributes to IS project success, especially when the necessary expertise for a project is distributed among individuals from different functional areas. Proponents of this view argue that knowledge integration is effective because it minimizes the need for learning and maximizes the sharing of individual expertise within the context of a projec.Two recent IS studies have found that sharing individual expertise across traditionally disparate knowledge domains is a critical ingredient of team effectiveness. This on-going study raises the question of whether knowledge integration at the team level also contributes to individual expertise development (as a result of participation in a project).We hypothesize two sets of relationships. First, we hypothesize that knowledge integration curvilinearly influences individual expertise development. Second, we hypothesize that individual expertise development is a more significant predictor of individual team members' satisfaction with team processes (a mediation effect). Individual expertise development is conceptualized as a second-order construct that is composed of two first-order variables, individual learning and professional growth. The former adds directly to domain-specific individual knowledge bases while the latter involves systemic learning.A multi-level model is developed to test these relationships. Data collection methods, using a sample of 142 individuals in 42 zero-history e-business project teams, are described along with scale development and validation procedures.Knowledge integration at the team level has a potential dark side at the individual level. The key contribution of this study is development and testing of a multilevel model linking expertise development at the individual level to knowledge integration at the team level. Clearly, balancing short-term gains in terms of increased project success versus long-term gains in terms of individual expertise development raises some puzzling challenges for e-business project managers. Managers cannot forsake successful execution of e-business software projects at "Internet speed," especially when the future competitiveness of their firm hinges on their success. Nonetheless, inattention to individual's expertise development will contribute to the rapid obsolesce of IT personnel's expertise and potentially trigger their attrition. By testing the relationships between these variables, our findings can guide managers in assembling temporary project teams that might create win-win scenarios for both a project that demands innovative integration of expertise and for the individuals who execute that project.

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INDEX TERMS

Keywords:
IT skills, e-business, expertise reconstruction, knowledge integration, technical expertise