How did that happen? : an investigation of organisational outcomes when technology is used for knowledge sharing.

Abstract

This research set out to investigate a specific instance of knowledge sharing in an organisation to contribute to theoretical and practical understanding of use of a knowledge sharing technology (Microsoft SharePoint). The methodology for this study was developed within the context of Critical Realism adopting the concept of affordances as generative mechanisms. The findings demonstrate that using Affordance Actualisation as a lens to develop context-specific theory can provide actionable insights for practitioners. This approach gets inside the black box of knowledge sharing in an organisation to explain how the knowledge sharing technology was implicated in the process.