ABSTRACT

Organizational environments are increasingly turbulent, chaotic, and unpredictable, thereby creating demands for organizational flexibility, agility, and adaptability (Terreberry, 1968). Organizations have responded to these pressures in a multitude of ways. They have made structural changes to organize work around teams (Lawler, Mohrman, & Ledford, 1995), to push expertise closer to the source of problems, to enable more rapid decision making, and to empower flexible action. They have made investments in information technology to manage knowledge acquisition, retention, and transfer (Argote, McEvily, & Reagans, 2003). Furthermore, they have invested in human capital to increase their collective knowledge stock and capacities (Davenport, 1999).