Boundaries and Knowledge Contribution in Interorganizational Relationships: A Social Capital Perspective

Recent work on the social nature of transferring knowledge has identified knowledge sharing as a complex process, going beyond the simple relocation of bundles of knowledge. This increase in the number of knowledge sharing studies has also led to new insights regarding boundaries; however, more questions have been left opened than answered. Particularly, we know little about the role boundary conditions play in assisting information technology with knowledge sharing. We propose a framework for understanding the role communal boundaries play in information sharing between organizations. In essence, because of the social nature of information sharing, the topic of boundaries will be reexamined from a social capital perspective. We develop a theoretical model to examine the moderating effect of boundary conditions on the relationship between IT-facilitated social capital and knowledge contribution. We define a set of testable propositions based on our model to further our understanding of how organizations can facilitate knowledge sharing across organizational boundaries.