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Knowledge Boundary Spanning Mechanisms in a Shared Services Centre Context

  • Conference paper
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Digital Services and Platforms. Considerations for Sourcing (Global Sourcing 2018)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Business Information Processing ((LNBIP,volume 344))

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Abstract

This study focuses on the roles of knowledge boundary spanning mechanisms and intellectual capital (human, structural, and relational) in managing knowledge sharing in an IT-specialized shared services centre (IT-SSC) context. Although the literature stresses the growing utilization of the SSC as an outsourcing model, there is a lack of studies that examine the dynamic process of knowledge sharing across the organizational boundaries in this specific business model. Drawing on the literatures on SSC and on cross-boundary knowledge sharing we propose a conceptual framework based on four research propositions that were validated with primary and secondary data. The results suggest that IT-SSCs present high human capital, but encounter challenges developing relational and structural capitals. It also appears that IT-SSC management tends to prefer the utilization of boundary spanners and boundary objects instead of boundary discourses and boundary practices as mechanisms for efficient boundary spanning.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    The authors conducted a systematic review of the literature on SSCs and IT-SSCs in the Elsevier and ABI/INFORMS databases following Templier and Paré’s [32] recommendations. The review focused on peer-review articles on the topics of SSCs and IT-SSCs. A total of 52 articles (30 journal articles, 18 conference papers and 4 book chapters) were identified. Seventeen articles focused on IT-SSCs and none of them were in the AIS basket of eight. Only five articles cover the topic of knowledge management in SSCs and one slightly touches on this topic in relation to IT-SSCs [35].

  2. 2.

    One respondent was an IT vice-president with 15 years of IT-SSC experience and the other one was an assistant vice-president with 20 years of experience in IT-SSC.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. TÉLUQ University of Québec, 5800 rue Saint-Denis, Montréal, QC, H2S 3L5, Canada

    Dragos Vieru & Mélissa Bourdeau

  2. Université du Québec à Montréal, 405 rue Sainte-Catherine Est, Montréal, QC, H2L 2C4, Canada

    Simon Bourdeau

Authors
  1. Dragos Vieru
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  2. Simon Bourdeau
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  3. Mélissa Bourdeau
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Correspondence to Dragos Vieru .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. University of Auckland, Auckland, New Zealand

    Julia Kotlarsky

  2. University of Auckland, Auckland, New Zealand

    Ilan Oshri

  3. London School of Economics and Political Science, London, UK

    Leslie Willcocks

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Vieru, D., Bourdeau, S., Bourdeau, M. (2019). Knowledge Boundary Spanning Mechanisms in a Shared Services Centre Context. In: Kotlarsky, J., Oshri, I., Willcocks, L. (eds) Digital Services and Platforms. Considerations for Sourcing. Global Sourcing 2018. Lecture Notes in Business Information Processing, vol 344. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-15850-7_5

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-15850-7_5

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  • Online ISBN: 978-3-030-15850-7

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