Successful Interorganizational Collaboration through Structured Wikis: : A Case Study from a German Knowledge Transfer Project

Abstract

Interorganizational projects are challenging because of their distributed and virtual teamwork, lack of transparency and common goals, difficult communication and more. Different knowledge and information management tools, such as wikis, could provide useful support. Good experiences with wikis in individual organizations have been documented but less is known about them in interorganizational collaboration. With our case study, we intended to ascertain whether the use of a wiki has a positive impact on an interorganizational project’s outcome. We triangulate different researchers, methods and theories. Our data prove that a structured wiki has a positive impact on interorganizational collaboration. Wikis are a widely accepted and helpful tool, which is often the first pool of information in a project.