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Article Excerpt
Abstract
This interpretive case study examines knowledge brokering as an aspect of the work of information technology professionals. The purpose of this exploratory study is to understand knowledge brokering from the perspective of IT professionals as they reflect upon their work practice. As knowledge brokers, IT professionals see themselves as facilitating the flow of knowledge about both IT and business practices across the boundaries that separate work units within organizations. A qualitative analysis of interviews conducted with 23 IT professionals and business users in a large manufacturing and distribution company is summarized in a conceptual framework showing the conditions, practices, and consequences of knowledge brokering by IT professionals. The framework suggests that brokering practices are conditioned by structural conditions, including decentralization and a federated IT management organization, and by technical conditions, specifically shared IT systems that serve as boundary objects. Brokering practices include gaining permission to cross organizational boundaries, surfacing and challenging assumptions made by IT users, translation and interpretation, and relinquishing ownership of knowledge. Consequences of brokering are the transfer of both business and IT knowledge across units in the organization.
Keywords: Boundary spanning, organizational communication, organizational learning, IS skill requirements, IT professionals, knowledge broker, internal knowledge transfer
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Introduction
What these people don't necessarily realize is Information Resources sees across this organization. I see way across this organization. I don't have the boundaries of their department. In this company we're decentralized. We don't communicate well, and we work in silos. Information Resources has ultimate responsibility and the ability to communicate across those department boundaries.... That's my responsibility. At least that's the way I see it. (Manager, Information Systems Development--Informant #3)
This comment introduces the research topic investigated in this paper: the role of information technology professionals as knowledge brokers in organizations. Knowledge brokers facilitate the transfer of knowledge among organizational units, thereby contributing to organizational learning. Although organizational learning, knowledge management, and knowledge transfer have become significant topics of academic discourse, IT professionals' roles in such activities have not been fully investigated. Typically, IT professionals are assumed to play a limited role by designing and maintaining technologies that promote knowledge transfer. Yet the comment above suggests a broader role. IT professionals may be positioned in an organization to broker organizational knowledge and may view this function as their responsibility. Moreover, their responsibilities increasingly include the design, implementation, and maintenance of information systems that are shared across enterprises. In a sense, such shared IT systems become boundary objects linking organizational units. The purpose of this research is to examine IT professionals' understanding of the conditions, activities, and consequences of their role as knowledge brokers.
The benefits of internal knowledge transfer have been articulated from various perspectives. For example, transferring knowledge between organizational units potentially prevents units from turning core competencies into core rigidities (Leonard-Barton 1995), extends a firm's core competences by disseminating local knowledge to globally distributed sites (Cohendet et al. 1999), and generates organizational knowledge by creating new meanings, linguistic routines, and understandings (Boland and Tenkasi 1995). Cross-unit knowledge transfer can promote organizational learning by bringing different perspectives into juxtaposition, producing what Leonard-Barton (1995) called creative abrasion. Similarly, Brown and Duguid observed that the local perspectives of different organizational collectives can be modified by interchanges among them: "Out of this friction of competing ideas can come the sort of improvisational sparks necessary for igniting organizational innovation" (1991, p. 54). Internal knowledge transfer can also create new ideas by rearranging information already in use and by incorporating information that has been previously neglected (Isabella 1990; Macdonald 1995).
Research on internal knowledge transfer has also focused on its challenges. Szulanski (1996) found that the internal "stickiness" of knowledge was primarily due to three knowledge-related factors. First the recipient's inability to value, assimilate, and apply outside sources of knowledge reflects a lack of absorptive capacity (Cohen and Levinthal 1990; Zahra and George 2002). Second, Szulanski identified causal ambiguity as the inability to identify the precise reasons for success or failure in replicating a capability in a new setting. Difficulties in replication, for example, can emanate from a lack of understanding of what the factors of production are and how they interact to produce a capability (Lippman and Rummelt 1982) or imperfect understanding of the idiosyncratic features of the new context in which knowledge is put to use (Tyre and von Hippel 1997). Third, difficulty of communication (e.g., laborious, distant) and lack of intimacy in the relationship between the source and recipient defines the arduousness of the relationship. The transfer of knowledge within an organization may be arduous partly because much of what must be transferred is tacit rather than explicit (Carlile 2002; Nonaka 1994; Spender 1996).
These benefits and challenges motivate our inquiry into the role that IT professionals might play in internal knowledge transfer, particularly their roles as knowledge brokers. Our central research questions are (1) in what ways do the work practices of IT professionals reflect a knowledge broker role and (2) what are the conditions and consequences of knowledge brokering by IT professionals?
Recent developments in the IT strategies of organizations suggest reasons why IT professionals might play a significant role in transferring knowledge within an organization. Beginning in the 1990s, two dominant aspects of the information systems strategies of organizations have been integration and standardization. The integration of isolated "islands" of systems and data (Tapscott and Caston 1993) is manifest in large-scale technology initiatives such as enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems and data warehouses (Davenport 2000). In addition, local versions of systems such as general ledger and human resources have been replaced by standard, enterprise-wide applications. As systems have increasingly crossed business unit boundaries, so also have the technology infrastructures upon which these systems are built. Consequently, both large and mid-sized organizations have standardized firm-wide data and communication networks, data management systems, and IT architectures (Broadbent et al. 1999). These shifts have not only transformed the landscape of systems, data, and supporting infrastructures, but have also created opportunities for changes in the work of IT professionals. Rather than merely fulfilling the needs of individual business areas, IT professionals potentially assume a larger role in an enterprise's strategic and operational activities by transferring knowledge across the enterprise.
We investigate this phenomenon in an interpretive case study of IT professionals in a large, decentralized manufacturing and distribution company. Given the lack of prior research on the knowledge broker role, our primary purpose is to provide a detailed interpretation of brokering practices from the perspective of IT professionals. Those interpretations are reflected in the subjective accounts of IT professionals regarding their work practices and relationships with other organizational units. Our research, therefore, purposively privileges the subjective understandings that IT professionals have about their own roles. However, an investigation of social roles typically begins with actors' self-definition of their responsibilities and relationships (Turner 1968). In the absence of existing theory on broker roles in organizations, our analysis is guided by prior literature on boundary spanning roles and situated learning. The results are presented as a conceptual framework including the conditions, practices, and consequences associated with knowledge brokering by IT professionals.
Related Research
In the absence of a specific theory of knowledge brokering, we searched for related studies in organization science. As noted in our introduction, research on internal knowledge transfer helped to frame the opportunities and challenges involved in knowledge brokering by IT professionals. However, this literature is relatively silent on the description of roles and practices that contribute to effective knowledge transfer among organizational units. The literature on intraorganizational boundary spanning was judged to be more helpful in describing boundary spanning roles, yet a specific focus on the role of knowledge broker is missing in this stream of research. However, discussions of knowledge brokering do appear in theories of situated learning within communities of practice. This literature also includes consideration of boundary objects.
Boundary Spanning
Based on an open systems view of organizations, the concept of boundary spanning describes activities that occur at organizational boundaries, including internal boundaries that separate organizational subunits. The literature identifies specific practices associated with boundary-spanning roles (Adams 1976, 1980; Katz and Kahn 1978). Boundary spanners provide the communicative linkages that organizational members maintain to "monitor, exchange with, or represent the organization to its environment" (Monge and Eisenberg 1987, p. 313). For example, Aldrich and Herker (1977) identified the search for and collection of external information as primary functions performed by boundary-spanning roles. Boundary spanners serve as both filters and facilitators in information transmittal between the organization and its environment (Adams 1980; Ancona and Caldwell 1988). Boundary spanners, therefore, play an important role in the diffusion of ideas within organizations (Schwab et al. 1985).
The boundary-spanning literature focuses on internal organizational boundaries and roles related to knowledge transfer across internal boundaries. For example, studies of the gatekeeper role in research and development teams highlight the importance of individuals who gather and translate information from other departments and disperse it to fellow team members (Katz and Allen 1985; Katz and Tushman 1981; Tushman and Katz 1980). Ancona and Caldwell (1988, 1990, 1992) articulate the additional boundary roles of scout, ambassador, sentry, and guard. Scouting involves bringing information and/or resources into a group; ambassadors engage in political activities such as lobbying for support and resources, impression management, and buffering a group from outside pressure; sentries police the boundary by controlling the information and resources that external agents send into the group; and guards monitor external requests for information and resources and determine how the group will respond. In more recent research, Yan and Louis' (1999) typology of work unit boundary roles includes spanning (importing critical resources), buffering (protecting the unit from external disturbances), and bringing up boundaries (enabling perceptions of a common task and group climate).
The boundary spanning literature is helpful in identifying and understanding the experiences and challenges encountered by individuals in boundary spanning roles. For example, boundary spanners may face issues related to loyalty and trust because boundary spanning involves interactions with multiple constituencies (Adams 1976). Impression management is also an important issue, requiring boundary spanners to adhere to the (possibly conflicting) norms and expectations of multiple organizational units (Caldwell and O'Reilly 1982). As such, individuals in boundary spanning roles may experience role conflict and stress (Katz and Kahn 1978). Boundary spanning may also require special skills, such as bargaining and negotiation (Adams 1980). Boundary spanners in gatekeeper roles have the potential to acquire power and influence (Aldrich and Herker 1977; Tushman and Scanlan 1981).
Boundary-spanning activities have been identified as an important part of IT jobs, particularly in systems analysis and design (Farwell et al. 1992; Keen 1988). IS research on boundary-spanning has focused primarily on the degree to which IT professionals interact and communicate with people outside of the IT organization and the consequences of these activities for job satisfaction, organizational commitment, and career progression (e.g., Baroudi 1985; Igbaria and Chidambaram 1997; Igbaria et al. 1994). The literature also notes that increased participation of IT professionals in business units requires them to acquire business functional, interpersonal, and managerial skills in addition to technical skills (Byrd and Turner 2001; Lee et al. 1995; Peppard 2001; Rockart et al. 1996).
Although the boundary spanning literature defines many specific roles, it has not explicitly addressed the broker role. Considering Ancona and Caldwell's (1988, 1992) role descriptions, it is likely that brokers perform an amalgam of roles, including those of scout and ambassador. Perhaps neglect of the broker role is due to the fact that brokers perform their roles not as members of a group but as external agents. Hence, a knowledge broker might simultaneously perform a variety of roles for different groups in an organization. Because brokers typically operate as third parties, rather than as members of source or recipient organizational units, their roles in knowledge transfer differ from those of boundary spanners within those units. Our search for further theoretical guidance in understanding the broker role led to an investigation of the literature on situated learning in communities of practice.
Situated Learning
Theories of situated learning in communities of practice (e.g., Brown and Duguid 1991; Lave and Wenger 1991; Wenger 1998) provide a second source of concepts for the investigation of knowledge brokering by IT professionals. Situated learning is philosophically based in the pragmatist's position that knowledge is defined in relation to specific social contexts rather than absolute (Dewey 1938). Lave and Wenger (1991) and Brown and Duguid (1991) conceptualized the social context of learning as a community of practice, defined as an informal aggregation of individuals engaged in common enterprise and distinguished by the manner in which its members interact and share interpretations (see also Wenger 1998). Within communities of practice, learning is viewed as a process of social participation in which members interact with more experienced members who convey both tacit and explicit knowledge through personal contact (Lave and Wenger 1991). Each community of practice develops a world view local to that particular community which reflects its shared knowledge, values, meanings, assumptions, beliefs, and practices (Brown and Duguid 1991; Dougherty 1992).
Although communities-of-practice theory emphasizes relationships within communities, it also addresses relationships across communities. As Brown and Duguid observed, knowledge in organizations "is as divided as the labor that produced it. Moreover, what separates divided knowledge is not only its explicit content but the implicit shared practices and knowhow that help produce...
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