Designing collaborative systems for better knowledge management and team performance

Collaborative technologies have been widely used to support teams to function effectively in today's competitive business environment. However, the impacts of collaborative technologies on team performance were inconclusive in prior research. This paper seeks to understand the mediational mechanisms that transmit the effect of collaborative technologies to team performance. Specifically, we theorize the relationships between: (a) design features and knowledge contextualization; and (b) knowledge contextualization and a team's ability to collaborate, i.e., collaboration know-how development, and assimilating knowledge, i.e., absorptive capacity, both of which are expected to influence team performance. We conducted a field study and collected data from nearly 1,900 team members (190 software project teams) in an organization and the results indicated support for our theoretical model. We discuss theoretical and practical implications of our findings.