Mind over machine: the power of human intuition and expertise in the era of the computer
Mind over machine: the power of human intuition and expertise in the era of the computer
The interdisciplinary study of coordination
ACM Computing Surveys (CSUR)
Steps toward artificial intelligence
Computers & thought
Global disaggregation of information-intensive services
Management Science
Global Information Technology Outsourcing: In Search of Business Advantage
Global Information Technology Outsourcing: In Search of Business Advantage
Formalizing Commonsense: Papers by John McCarthy
Formalizing Commonsense: Papers by John McCarthy
Working Knowledge: How Organizations Manage What They Know
Working Knowledge: How Organizations Manage What They Know
Knowledge integration in virtual teams: the potential role of KMS
Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology
The Mutual Knowledge Problem and Its Consequences for Dispersed Collaboration
Organization Science
Organization Science
Information Systems Research
Beyond Opportunism: A Resource-based View of Outsourcing Risk
HICSS '98 Proceedings of the Thirty-First Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences-Volume 6 - Volume 6
Outsourcing Application Software: A Knowledge Management Perspective
HICSS '98 Proceedings of the Thirty-First Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences-Volume 6 - Volume 6
Offshore Ready: Strategies to Plan and Profit from Offshore IT-Enabled Services
Offshore Ready: Strategies to Plan and Profit from Offshore IT-Enabled Services
Virtual teams: a review of current literature and directions for future research
ACM SIGMIS Database
Out of Sight, Out of Sync: Understanding Conflict in Distributed Teams
Organization Science
Information systems outsourcing: a survey and analysis of the literature
ACM SIGMIS Database
An investigation of factors that influence the duration of IT outsourcing relationships
Decision Support Systems
Enacting Integrated Information Technology: A Human Agency Perspective
Organization Science
Representations and actions: the transformation of work practices with IT use
Information and Organization
Materiality and change: Challenges to building better theory about technology and organizing
Information and Organization
ICT and an NGO: Difficulties in attempting to be extremely transparent
Ethics and Information Technology
A review of the IT outsourcing literature: Insights for practice
The Journal of Strategic Information Systems
A knowledge management perspective on Art Education
International Journal of Information Management: The Journal for Information Professionals
Journal of Global Information Management
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Studies have shown the knowledge transfer problems that arise when communication and storage technologies are employed to accomplish work across time and space. Much less is known about knowledge transfer problems associated with transformational technologies, which afford the creation, modification, and manipulation of digital artifacts. Yet, these technologies play a critical role in offshoring by allowing the distribution of work at the task level, what we call task-based offshoring. For example, computer-aided engineering applications transform input like physical dimensions, location coordinates, and material properties into computational models that can be shared electronically among engineers around the world as they work together on analysis tasks. Digital artifacts created via transformational technologies often embody implicit knowledge that must be correctly interpreted to successfully act upon the artifacts. To explore what problems might arise in interpreting this implicit knowledge across time and space, and how individuals might remedy these problems, we studied a firm that sent engineering tasks from home sites in Mexico and the United States to an offshore site in India. Despite having proper formal education and ample tool skills, the Indian engineers had difficulty interpreting the implicit knowledge embodied in artifacts sent to them from Mexico and the United States. To resolve and prevent the problems that subsequently arose, individuals from the home sites developed five new work practices to transfer occupational knowledge to the offshore site. The five practices were defining requirements, monitoring progress, fixing returns, routing tasks strategically, and filtering quality. The extent to which sending engineers in our study were free from having to enact these new work practices because on-site coordinators acted on their behalf predicted their perceptions of the effectiveness of the offshoring arrangement, but Indian engineers preferred learning from sending engineers, not on-site coordinators. Our study contributes to theories of knowledge transfer and has practical implications for managing task-based offshoring arrangements.