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Knowledge Governance in Virtual Corporations

Christoph Lattemann, Stefan Stieglitz, and Sören Kupke

1 Introduction

Today corporations are confronted with fundamental changes of their economic

environment. Corporations have to face new opportunities and risks. The

competitive situation changes from local to global markets. The dynamics in

respect to innovations become increasingly faster and product-life-cycles are as

short as never before (Picot et al. 2003): As a result new forms of collaboration

among business partners are emerging. Since the 1990s a special form of

partnership which becomes increasingly important has been discussed in the

scientific literature: the virtual corporation. The partners in these organizations

share risks, get access to new knowledge and add new competencies (Prahalad

& Hamel 1994): On this way tight collaborations among partners become a

fundamental principle and lead to competitive advantages for virtual

organizations. These developments are supported by innovations in information

and communication technology (ICT) which enable new forms of inter- and

intra-organizational partnerships. Gallivan (2001) argues that since 2000 virtual

corporations have become very important as an organizational form for open

source projects. This trend reflects the economic forces of an ever increasing

number of partnerships and electronic markets. In the following we will discuss

governance of knowledge and experiences in virtual corporations from a

theoretical perspective. After an introduction, we will provide definitions and

descriptions of the term of virtual corporation. The following section deals with

learning processes from a resource based perspective. As an important problem

in virtual corporations an experience lack caused by participants‟ fluctuations is

identified. Approaches to close this experience gap are presented and supported

by an analysis of governance in open source projects.

2 The Concept of the Virtual Corporation

The first concept of a virtual corporation was outlined by Miles and Snow

(1984): They described an electronically linked partnership as a future form of

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corporations, which they called “dynamic network organization”. Due to the

intensive use of ICT this form of organization was named virtual corporation in

later publications. Especially Davidow and Malone (1992) explained this special

form of partnership in their seminal publication “The Virtual Corporation”. As

this form of corporation is more flexible than traditional types of organizations

(Mowshowitz 1994) virtual corporations promise to be an appropriate solution

for the threats of fierce competition in a globalized and fast changing

environment.

A general definition of virtual corporations has been pointed out by Byrne: „The

virtual corporation is a temporary network of independent companies, suppliers,

customers, even erstwhile rivals - linked by information technology to share

skills, costs and access to one another‟s markets. It will have neither central

office nor organization chart. It will have no hierarchy, no vertical integration.”

(Byrne 1993, p. 37):

In addition to this definition Byrne characterized five key elements of virtual

corporations. First key element is the intensive use of ICT which links the

partners and replaces contracts by mechanisms of social control and loose

arrangements. The second element is opportunistic behaviour of network

members. The temporary character of cooperation and the absence of contracts

enforce this opportunism. At third virtual corporations feature excellence which

can be realized by the combination of the partner‟s core competencies. This

“best-of-everything” organization creates economies of scale and economies of

scope (Hofmann 2001): A strong trust bases is the fourth key element of a

virtual cooperation. Finally the virtual corporation is a boundless organization

due to the integration of manifold partners such as customers, suppliers, and

competitors. However, in reality there is not only one ideal type of a virtual

corporation. Four ideal types of virtual corporations can be identified (Bickhoff

et al. 2003): The first type describes a cooperation of partners which is governed

by a central corporation and operates as a network leader. This can be described

as a centralized network structure. In fact there exists a hierarchical structure

and there are no equal partners in this network, thus this type differs from the

Davidow‟s and Malone‟s concept of a virtual corporation, but in reality this

occurs quite frequently (Child & Faulkner 1998): The second type describes a

virtual corporation which is coordinated by one focal partner. This partner acts

as a primus inter pares with same rights. In the third type of virtual corporation,

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an independent coordinator, which is not directly integrated into the value

creation process, the so called “broker”, offers central services. In this concept

the broker is not involved in the production process. The fourth type is

determined by a common coordination of all partners. This case characterizes

the idealistic type of a virtual corporation without central control.

In conclusion there exist not only one type of virtual corporation in practice.

Because of the project character of the work, cooperation in virtual corporations

is temporary limited (Gray & Igbaria 2000): This limitation is an important

element of cooperation in virtual corporations. On this account Rhode and Won

(2001) described it as a fluid organization which links partners, changes their

structure, adds and removes partners. Virtual corporations never exist for a long

time. The result is a life-cycle of virtual corporation, which can be divided into

four phases (Mertens & Faisst 1995): At first the preparation phase, second the

linkage of partners, third the essential work and finally the fade of the virtual

corporation.

3 Learning, Knowledge and the Perspective of the Resource Based View

Parallel to the competitive based view (Porter 1985), which is most popular in

strategic management research, the concept of the resource based view (Hamel

& Prahalad 1990) is emerging since the 1990s. The resource based view

promises to improve the understanding of strategy formulation in corporations

which are dependent on intangible resources, especially knowledge. The

discussion about the importance of resources in corporations is mainly

influenced by the approach of the resource based view. Promoters of this

approach point out that resources are the main driving forces to gain a

competitive advantage. Teece et al. (1997, p. 512) define resources “as firm-

specific assets that are difficult if not impossible to imitate.”

Besides the resource based view there is the capabilities based view and the

knowledge based view. The capabilities based view has mainly been influenced

by Amit and Shoemaker (1993), who focus on capabilities instead of resources

and introduced a process perspective. “Capabilities, in contrast, refer to a firm‟s

capacity to deploy resources, usually in combination, using organizational

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processes, to affect a desired end” (Amit & Shoemaker 1993, p. 35): Nonaka

and Takeuchi (1995) studied the importance of knowledge at the development of

Japanese corporations in the early 1990s and established the knowledge based

view. They depicted that the success of Japanese corporations was driven by the

ability of using their knowledge effectively. These corporations have been more

efficient in generating and saving knowledge than their European and American

competitors.

According to Nonaka and Takeuchi organizational learning contains the

management of explicit and implicit knowledge and the process of knowledge

creation. The process of knowledge creation contains the combination of

knowledge, socialization, the transfer of implicit to explicit knowledge and vice

versa. At first organizational learning takes place at the individual level of the

employee before it expands to the team level and finally to the level of

corporation. The high influence of knowledge in corporations has been proven

empirically by the experience curve (Henderson 1993):

4 The Effect of the Experience Curve in Virtual Corporations

The concept of the experience curve was developed by the Boston Consulting

Group in 1966 (Henderson 1993): The concept describes the coherence between

costs and experiences in corporations. The working time of a special business

process decreases with increasing experience which leads to decreasing

(transaction and production) costs. This coherence is proved by several

empirical studies (Henderson 1993): The experience curve consists of the

following four effects (1) learning, (2) specializing, (3) investments, and (4)

economies of scale (Henderson 1993): We assume that these effects also act in

virtual corporations, but with different intensity and meaning:

Learning

Learning effects on employee‟s level have high impact to the progression of the

experience curve. The explicit and implicit knowledge owned by employees is

increasing in the course of every repeated business process. This knowledge can

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be used in current and future projects. Individual learning as well as learning in

teams are important factors in decreasing the experience curve (Henderson

1993): These effects are relevant in virtual corporations too. However, the skills

of employees in virtual corporations are different from employees in traditional

corporations (Manhart 1998): Employees have high specialized knowledge on

the one hand and high competence in managing projects and using ICT on the

other hand. Because of these special skills, employees in virtual corporations

learn faster and work closely in teams (Hofman 2003): In addition to the usual

professional skills, the characteristic of temporal limitation of virtual

corporations demands employees to be flexible and to work on a highly self

organized level. This results in a faster decrease of the experience curve

compared to traditional corporations. But after ending a project the virtual

corporation looses experience in cause of the natural fluctuations and

retirements of partners or employees. The number of retirements and

fluctuations of partners exceeds the number of normal retirements of employees

in traditional corporations.

Specializing

Virtual corporations combine temporary core competencies and offer specific

solutions to their customers. This individual combination enables partners to

concentrate on their core competencies. Specialization on core competences

causes increasing experience and thus comparative advantages in special fields.

Moreover experience and therefore efficiency will increase (Werther 1999):

This concept also leads to lower fix costs (Hofmann 2003):

Investments

Investments influence the progression of the experience curve favourably.

Traditional corporations invest in facilities and information technology to save

costs. Benefits of these investments cause decreasing costs. In virtual

corporations it is important to invest in ICT which is not bound to a specific

project. Virtual corporations are able to generate benefits especially with regard

to investments in sustainable ICT, which can be used in multitude projects.

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Economies of Scale

The increase of production capacity leads to economies of scale, meaning that

increasing output correlates with decreasing costs per item. Even if virtual

corporations rarely produce bulk goods this effect is still working in virtual

organizations (Hofmann 2003): Virtual corporations are able to extend their

project capacity by using standardized business processes.

In conclusion it can be stated, that a virtual corporation becomes more efficient

from project to project. As described, the four effects of the experience curve

apply to virtual as well as to traditional corporations. But there are differences

between traditional and virtual organizations, which determine the performance

of the experience curve in virtual corporations (table 6-1):

Virtual corporations Traditional

corporations

(1) Learning Learning in inter-

organizational teams

Learning in intra-

organizational teams

(2) Specializing “best-in-class” Partners

to build a “best-of-

everything”

organization

Specializing in

traditional structures

through division of labor

(3) Investment Investments in ICT Investments in

production technology

and saving of costs

(4) Economies of

scale

Virtual size through

temporary cooperation

Economies of scale

through mass production

Table 6-1: Effects of the Experience Curve in Virtual- and Traditional

Corporations

The main differences between virtual corporations and traditional corporations

are the temporal cooperation on the one hand and the configuration of

autonomous partners on the other hand. In virtual corporations there are no

stable relations existing over a long period. This characteristic causes a loss of

experience, when terminating a project. Reasons are the loss of project partners

and the involvement of new partners in the new project. Implicit and explicit

knowledge is shared among the partners and no partner has entire knowledge

within the project. As no individual partner has the whole implicit and explicit

knowledge, a retirement of partners/workers leads to a knowledge drain

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(Mertens & Faisst 1995): Thus, lost knowledge has to be generated again from

scratch.

Nevertheless, there are specific threats in virtual corporations which affect the

degression of the experience curve. So the described strengths of the concept of

virtual corporation often contain the risks which have to be minimized. Four

main threats can be outlined (Behrens 2000):

Information and Communication Technology (ICT)

ICT in corporations is cost-intensive and difficult to change because of high

investments and firm specific configurations. Often virtual corporations work

with incompatible and inefficient ICT which do not support the cooperation in

an ideal way. There are complex data interfaces and no standardized data types

(Mertens et al. 2003): These problems cause high investments because new

partners have to invest in new ICT and gain knowledge about these new

solutions.

Trust among Partners

The second problem concerns trust among the partners in virtual corporations.

Handy (1995) pointed out that trust in virtual corporations is an essential

element which is necessary for a successful cooperation. Weibler and Deeg

(1998) pointed out that the emergence of trust in virtual corporations is difficult,

especially because of the temporary limited cooperation. Changing partners and

the absence of central coordination make this process difficult (Hofmann 2003):

Coordination of Partners

The third problem deals with the absence of hierarchical control and

coordination. Often there are unclear instructions and contact persons (Behrens

2000): The element of self control in virtual corporations needs predefined

interfaces among the partners and efficient project management.

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Human Resource Management (HRM)

Similar problems can be found in human resource management of virtual

corporations and often there are ambiguous relations among the employees. The

absence of central coordination demands highly motivated employees who

organize their work and trainings themselves (Davidow & Malone 1992):

All these aspects together complicate the work in virtual corporations and lead

to an experience gap. But if there are specific management and governance

elements it is possible to eliminate these problems and to make virtual

corporations successful. Because of the lack of a central organizational anchor

and an integrated knowledge management (Hofmann 2003), it is usually the case

in virtual organizations that explicit and implicit knowledge remains

decentralized in the partner corporations. Thus, unlike traditional corporations

virtual corporations cannot save this knowledge in higher hierarchical levels.

Figure 6-1: Progression of the Experience Curve in Virtual Corporations

The advantage of the “best-of-everything” organization turns to a disadvantage

in this aspect. Every reconfiguration causes a loss of experience. Another

disadvantage is the loss of investments caused by the withdrawal of partners.

New partners have to make investments which might be sunk costs in case they

leave the virtual corporation. This also occurs in projects of traditional

corporations. However, in traditional organizations it is easier to keep explicit

knowledge within the organization, because of a higher developed knowledge

management based on ICT and because of a lower fluctuation of staff.

Additionally the lower fluctuation of staff goes along with a lower fluctuation of

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implicit knowledge. Follow-up projects may be based upon the knowledge that

has been created prior. Figure 6-1 depicts the described aspects by comparing

traditional corporations with virtual corporations in the context of the experience

curve. The experience curve in virtual corporations shows a gap between the end

and the start of a project. The succeeding project can‟t make use of the whole

experience and has to regain the lost experience. This progression is similar to

traditional corporations and will trend to an optimum (Henderson 1993):

5 Knowledge Governance and Experience Gap

The loss of experience in virtual corporations indicates a need for knowledge

governance. Knowledge governance covers controlling of internal as well as

external knowledge flows within an organization (Mahnke & Pedersen 2004;

Foss 2007): An important aspect is the identification of knowledge in the virtual

corporation and its measurement (Schreyögg & Geiger 2007): As a consequence

virtual corporations have to develop strategies to minimize the drain of

experience within the time between the projects. To do so, they firstly have to

build up an efficient knowledge management infrastructure to save explicit and

implicit knowledge. In practice virtual corporations are sometimes coordinated

by a focal corporation or by a special broker and these two possible

constellations may help to minimize the gap. In particular a broker can support a

virtual corporation and can offer knowledge management services.

Regarding the four effects of the experience curve and the four threats there are

four possible strategies for virtual corporations to minimize the gap in the

experience curve, referring to knowledge management.

The concept of “knowledge governance” by Mahnke and Pedersen (2004) seems

to be feasible to manage the transfer of knowledge in case of fluctuation of

partners/workers. According to Mahnke and Pedersen (2004) knowledge

governance is based on an appropriate mix of incentives and sanction

mechanisms to “motivate” employees to share their knowledge and to build up a

special knowledge culture. There are two characteristics of virtual corporations

which implicitly support an efficient knowledge management: the lean

hierarchical structure and the skills of the employees.

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Governance aspects

(1) Learning - Creating of knowledge culture

- Introducing IT based knowledge

management system

(3) Specializing - Partners have to constraint on core

competences

(3) Investment - Coordination of investments

among involved partners

- Definition of ICT standards

(4) Size - Process standardization

- Use of partner‟s capacities

Table 6-2: Governance Aspects in Minimizing the Experience Gap

The continuous change of partners within a virtual organization requires an

efficient procedure for the transformation of implicit to explicit knowledge (as

far as it is possible), because in contrast to traditional corporations implicit

knowledge does not remain in the corporation due to the drain of employees at

the end of every project. An important solution is the development of ICT to

support the knowledge governance in virtual corporations (Gibson 2002; Oshri

et al. 2005; Perrin & Rolland 2007): Innovative ICT, e.g. based on innovative

knowledge management systems, may help to retain knowledge. Investments in

virtual corporations are crucial and it should be possible to use investments in

several projects. For this reason standardized ICT with flexible interfaces is

supposed to be applied in order to avoid lock-in effects and sunk costs for the

network partners (Shapiro & Varian 1999) and to guarantee a maximum of

openness and scalability. Groupware solutions for communication purposes,

content management systems for information- and knowledge-management, as

well as workflow-management and monitoring and controlling systems should

be applied for the collaboration among dispersed partners according the life

cycle stages of the virtual organization (Mertens et al. 2003): The critical issues

for virtual organizations are costs for the reconfiguration of data, e.g.

administration of user accounts, or maintenance of documents (Mowshowitz

1997): Obstacles in the usage of groupware systems stem from heterogeneous

infrastructures, different corporate cultures concerning the usage of ICT, and the

fact, that cooperating partners in a virtual organization may act as competitors in

other projects. The acceptance of the implementation and use of a groupware

system is limited by social and political factors in comparison to a single work

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place. Therefore, Grundin (1994) points out the necessity to adapt and to

integrate groupware solutions to existing technical and organizational structures.

According to Rittenbruch et al. (1999), the following functions of a groupware

system are essential for virtual organizations:

Provision of information concerning internal and organisational aspects

(responsibilities, contacts, profiles) as well as internal and external

communication systems.

Document based communication and document sharing; documentation

of former and planned activities and their changes

Foundation of a team structure for the coordination of activities and to

support changing structures.

An important aspect for the inter-organizational collaboration is a balance

between expectations concerning functionalities of a system, and (resulting from

the complexity of the tasks and network) the technical complexity of the ICT

infrastructure (Bensaou & Venkatraman 1995): User interfaces and

functionalities need to be adapted to already known systems (Ruth et al. 2005):

The partners who concentrate on their core competencies should define

interfaces to enable a continuous business process. Thus, the creation of efficient

and sustainable economies of scale requires standardized software and

standardized processes. This is the prerequisite for a reduction of overhead

costs.

6 Governance in Open Source Projects

According to Gallivan open source projects can be categorized as a type of

virtual corporation (Gallivan 2001): Communication of members and groups of

participants is based on ICT, most commonly web based applications such as

content management systems, concurrent version systems, emails, or social

software. Open source projects involve heterogeneous participants to reach a

common goal. However, governance of individuals and groups within these

projects is influenced by several parameters: e.g. (a) (voluntary) acceptance of a

hierarchy, (b) implementation of a common system of interaction, (c) widely

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accepted social norms are crucial aspects to successfully managed open source

project as a virtual corporation. To assess the adequate application of

governance tools to control participants, it is not enough to consider different

member groups. Because of changes in the composition of participants caused

by different stages of project life cycles, it is possible that motivational attitudes

of member groups diverge or clash, which may lead to stagnation of project

development (Shah 2003):

The effectiveness of knowledge governance tools is influenced by several

aspects, such as the number of members and the complexity of software, which

are determined by life cycle stage. Therefore there is an interaction between

these factors and the motivation and participation objectives of members (table

6-3): Schweik and Semenov (2003) and Wynn (2003) described different life

cycle stages but they do not explicitly discuss knowledge governance aspects

within these stages.

Motivation Bug fixer Programmer Manager

Introduction intrinsic

Growth extrinsic intrinsic /

extrinsic

mainly

intrinsic

Maturity extrinsic intrinsic /

extrinsic

mainly

extrinsic

Decline or

Revival

extrinsic intrinsic /

extrinsic

Revival: intrinsic

Decline: mainly

extrinsic

Table 6-3: Motivation of member groups in different life cycle stages

The adequacy of governance tools relies on motivation of participating

individuals. Traditional control mechanisms can hardly be used in systems based

on voluntary contributions since there is no possibility to penalize or reward

members financially. The efficiency of implemented governance instruments is

linked to a large extent to the motivational attitudes of the involved individuals.

Furthermore, motivation is related to different member groups and life cycle

stages. That is why an expedient enlargement of governance tools must account

for the motivational basis of all member groups. On the other hand, to neglect

the implementation of further coordination tools lead to inefficiencies and

economic declines. Furthermore, divergent objectives probably cause stagnation

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or the decline of the whole project because of increasing information and

transaction costs connected with a growing number of members (Achtenhagen et

al. 2003, Lawrence & Lorsch 1967): But implementing inappropriate control

mechanisms or too many of them may lead to a decreased feeling of self-

determination, which causes people to leave the project (Wynn 2003):

The reduction of asymmetric information and an increase of transparency are

essential objectives of knowledge governance in virtual corporations. By using

high developed technological communication tools, e.g. chat rooms, mailing

lists, wikis and concurrent version systems, asymmetric or redundant

information can be avoided. Additionally, these tools support transparency

within the open source projects, help to increase trust between members, and lay

open their motivational attitudes.

The Apache Software Foundation as an example of a virtual corporation,

operates several open source projects with thousand of volunteer workers and

developers. A meritocratic structure, in which authorities are elected by the

Apache members, assures to build a hierarchy that is accepted by most of the

Apache members (figure 6-2):

Figure 6-2: Organization of Apache Software Foundation

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Other popular open source projects such as Linux use a model of a “benevolent

dictator” who concentrates most of the formal power on one person. In

conclusion it can be stated that virtual corporations in general and therefore open

source projects show different knowledge governance structures to optimize the

networks efficiency. Management of explicit and implicit knowledge relies on

the communication infrastructure of the organization. Key elements of

organizational governance have to set adequate incentives to motivate

participants and to prevent opportunistic behavior.

7 Synopsis and Outlook

Until now, there has been a lack in academic research concerning different

effects of experience curves in virtual organizations as well as in traditional

corporations. In this contribution the authors analytically described differences

and consequences of varying intensity and sustainability of the accumulating of

knowledge in two forms of organization. Due to specific characteristics of

virtual enterprises (project orientated, limited time-frame, etc.) and their

employees (flexible, open-minded, etc.) knowledge drain is an eminent threat to

these organizations. As depicted in the paper this effect might be more

significant in virtual enterprises than in traditional companies and as a result this

may lead to the emergence of an “experience gap”. Thus, the governance of

knowledge increasingly becomes an important issue in virtual organizations.

Starting with these insights, further studies need to concentrate on empirical

analysis of the experience gap and strategies for a specific knowledge

management in virtual organization have to be worked out.

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