Using structuration theory to analyze knowledge and process management in a consortium: a case study

Abstract

AbstractThrough a case study, this paper attempts to establish an argument that structuration theory is a suitable tool for analyzing the issue of knowledge and process management in a consortium. To do so, we first theoretically demonstrate that structuration theory can be linked with the theory of organizational knowledge creation, assuming that structure is a type of categorization of knowledge, and knowledge creation is a structuration process. We then use structuration theory to dissect a consortium designing mobile commerce services. The case study concludes that the structuration perspective enables researchers to expose the improvisatory mechanism of organizational knowledge creation, in which distributed tacit knowledge is crystallized into collective explicit knowledge. The empirical observation argues that a consortium should have a pre‐project phase when a common vocabulary is developed and an integrator is introduced. The experience of our case consortium—that the white book has emerged as a tool of knowledge and process management—can be drawn upon by other cases. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.