Knowledge sharing in ISD projects: role of task interdependence and social capital [2020/SSCI]

 

Knowledge sharing in ISD projects: role of task interdependence and social capital

Hyejung Lee, Jun-Gi Park, Jungwoo Lee 

International Journal of Managing Projects in Business

ISSN: 1753-8378

Article publication date: 14 September 2020 

Issue publication date: 6 April 2021

 

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Abstract

Purpose

Extant literature on design theory has little empirical evidence about how work characteristics affect team interaction processes. This paper examines the knowledge-sharing process in information systems development (ISD) projects.

Design/methodology/approach

Task interdependence from work design theory was used as an antecedent of knowledge sharing for collaboration for the empirical analysis. Data were collected from 203 ISD project teams in South Korea to examine team social capital and knowledge sharing among team members.

Findings

The results indicate that task interdependence has a statistically significant impact on the knowledge-sharing process. The mediating roles of social capital and knowledge sharing are critical. Additionally, the effects of social capital change over time as long-term projects have different mechanisms than short-term ones.

Originality/value

The paper introduces a novel perspective (i.e. the adoption of task interdependence from work design theory) and integrates it with the research constructs that play important roles in ISD projects: knowledge sharing and teams’ social capital. In an ISD project team, which represents knowledge-intensive collaboration and has heterogeneous team characteristics, task interdependence has a positive impact on the team as predicted by work design theory. It verifies the mediating effect of social capital, particularly the changing influence of social capital with time.

Keywords

• Task interdependence
• Team social capital
• Knowledge sharing
• Work design theory
• ISD project
• Performance

Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the Ministry of Education of the Republic of Korea and the National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF-2016S1A5B5A02025240).

Citation

Lee, H., Park, J.-G. and Lee, J. (2021), "Knowledge sharing in ISD projects: role of task interdependence and social capital", International Journal of Managing Projects in Business, Vol. 14 No. 3, pp. 580-599. https://doi.org/10.1108/IJMPB-12-2019-0307