ABSTRACT
It is the transfer of knowledge that ultimately drives changes to organizational form. Historically, much research has focused on the introduction of computer-mediated communication (CMC) as an agent of change to organizational form. CMC has also received much attention as an enabler for knowledge transfer within the context of knowledge management and organizational learning. After examining these two streams of research in parallel, we suggest that (1) the perceived relationship between CMC and organizational form runs through knowledge transfer and (2) organizational form in turn drives additional changes in the use of CMC. In other words, the impact of CMC on organizational form is not necessarily direct and can be better understood by interjecting knowledge transfer as an intermediate step. In addition, changes in organizational form can be seen as looping back to impact CMC thus creating a cycle. This paper describes and justifies what we refer to as the CMC Impact Cycle—the flow of organizational change moving from CMC to knowledge transfer to organizational form and back to CMC.
