Knowledge Sharing Challenges during Post-Merger Integration: The Role of Boundary Spanners and of Organizational Identity
When organizations merge, information systems (IS) need to be integrated to span the demarcations between the previously independent entities, be to bridge the pre-merger ISs or as new, single IS. Although research stresses the important role played by ISs in support of the combined organizations, there is a paucity of studies on the process of IS integration. Grounded in the practice perspective of knowledge and on the concept of organizational identity, we first propose a conceptual framework that conjectures about effective knowledge sharing processes, boundary objects and the role that boundary spanners are expected to play if they are to be effective. Then, we assess the relational dynamics suggested by our framework in four existing case studies from the academic literature that present rich post-merger IS integration data.