Knowledge Management in Virtual Projects: A Research Agenda

Project teams within organizations have many challenges to overcome in doing their work. As computer and collaboration technologies allow project team members to be increasingly dispersed in time, place, and organizational affiliation, even greater opportunities and challenges arise. This paper explores the issues associated with knowledge management in virtual project teams. The advantage of virtual projects is their flexibility to bring together members from diverse contexts for short-term endeavors. Knowledge, in contrast, is by nature a long-term phenomenon and emerges in stable social and organizational contexts. The paper describes some of the main challenges of bridging these contrasting requirements, especially the transferability of knowledge to and from the project. A typology of projects is presented, along with a framework that focuses on the management of virtual projects in particular. Research questions in the management of virtual projects are presented, and an integrated approach for examining those questions is discussed.