The Consistency of Virtual Organizations Enabling Capabilities and Improvements in Knowledge Management Performance

The success of a virtual organization (VO) largely depends on the effective collaboration of its members in orchestrating their knowledge, skills, core competences and resources. It enables the VOs to enhance competitive capabilities and respond better to business opportunities. Most previous studies have focused on the influence of some contingent factors on Knowledge Management (KM) process/ outcome and neglect the interacting relationships among these contingent factors. The objective of this study is to explore the interacting patterns among a VO enabling capabilities from a covariation perspective on Knowledge Management Performance (KMP). The authors introduce the concept of “consistency” which helps them investigate the impact of the VO enabling capabilities on KMP. The results from a field survey of 95 Iranian IT/ engineering firms which implement KM processes show that the “consistency” among these enabling capabilities has a significant positive impact on KMP. The novel point in this paper is to consider the following factors in a virtual context simultaneously: focus on core competence, network cooperation, integration, trust in the network, and ICT usage. The results of this study have provided a very useful reference for scholars and managers to identify the relevant issues of KM projects in VOs.