From Team to Organizational Knowledge: The Creation of a Digital Option

Much of the research in the area of knowledge management has been at the individual level. Knowledge management literature, on the other hand, argues for the building up of knowledge processing capacity at an organizational level to enhance organization performance. This study is an effort to address this research gap. It looks at the ability of the organizations to collect knowledge at subunit level and integrate the knowledge for use at the organizational level to achieve organizational effectiveness. Drawing from three theoretical foundations (behavioral theory of the firm, decision-making paradigm and theory of organizational agility), I develop a conceptual research model, which focuses on how knowledge management systems (KMS) impact organizational decision-making, agility and adaptive behavior. Two key components of KMS are focused on, the knowledge reach and knowledge richness of information systems. I propose to investigate the research model by conducting a 14 week business simulation game. To analyze the results of the data, I will use a statistical technique called latent growth modeling, which allows analysis of the dependent variables in this repeated measures experimental design.