Antecedents and outcomes of boundary objects in knowledge interaction in the context of software systems analysis

Abstract

Much of knowledge management research has focused on knowledge generation, translation and storage during interactions among knowledge workers, which has led to project success; however, less effort has been made to examine the effects of artifacts or boundary objects that such interactions yield. Thus, the study aimed to help fill this research gap by investigating, not only the categories and characteristics of boundary objects, but also the possible antecedents, taking into consideration the link between outcome and type of boundary object. In the information system field, system design and implementation is a continuous process of interactions between system analysts and end-users, with most interactions occurring in the stage of defining system requirements. Thus, this stage offers an appropriate context to study knowledge interaction. Based on data collected and codified from 82 records of knowledge interaction, the results showed that project performance could be highly enhanced by making use of syntactic, semantic, pragmatic and metaphoric boundary objects. In addition, higher atmosphere leads to a higher frequency of the occurrence of semantic boundary objects. Although the results may be inevitably linked to the context being investigated, the importance of the expected findings will trigger like studies in other contexts. © 2011 IEEE.