Becoming Virtual: Knowledge Management and Transformation of the Distributed Organization

Examines the capabilities needed to transform a globally distributed organization into a virtual organization (an organization that exists and operates across time and distance with the support of global communications technologies such as the Internet). It introduces techniques for monitoring progress toward virtualization and for studying the impact of virtualization on social uncertainty, knowledge sharing and knowledge transfer, organizational memory, transactive memory, communities of practice and organizational commitment, power and control. These techniques are applied in an extended case study of a development aid organization's attempts to use knowledge management for virtualization over a two year period.