Technology enabling project managers’ knowledge sharing: the case of Microsoft Teams

Abstract:       Contemporary organizations frequently employ projects to leverage work across organizational units, utilizing specialized knowledge from different niches of the organization to meet specific quality criteria in a defined time period, at a set cost. Project managers are integral to driving the success, often acting as hubs of knowledge both at the core within projects and towards the rest of an organization, as well as over time.       To realize this, project managers increasingly make use of technology to aid their knowledge sharing and drive digitalization in daily work, often with aspects of remote work to consider. To date little is known in how far a technology, and especially more recent technology, support this critical aspect of knowledge sharing as part of project management.              Thus, an interpretive qualitative approach was used to explore and interpret the ways in which a recent technology supports project managers’ knowledge sharing. Data were collected by means of semi-structured interviews with project managers who already use such a technology in their work, for which the 3 C’s approach of analysis was used to generate 6 concepts based on the data. The concepts were then reviewed in context of the research questions and the selected theoretical framework, including the informatics domain model by Beynon-Davies. Thus, a discussion of the findings in this context revealed that according to the project managers’ perceptions in the chosen research setting, such a technology largely enables knowledge sharing activities in the daily work, both presenting new opportunities to do so more efficiently as well as leading to more challenges. It seems that the introduction of, or increased used of, the technology is changing not only the modus of knowledge sharing but also individuals’ way of working with regards to knowledge sharing: what, when and how knowledge is shared. However, whether such a change is perceived as positive or negative by an individual project manager draws upon a range of factors such as technical proficiency, duration of use to date as well as personal preferences regarding structure and organization of their work.       That said, the technology is supporting the daily knowledge sharing activities of project managers in so far that those who have made a full transition to the technology, all employ it on a daily basis and in a range of knowledge sharing activities.