Knowledge Governance in Virtual Corporations

The concept of the virtual corporation, which describes a modern form of collaboration among organizations, was introduced in the scientific discussion in the mid 1990. Just recently virtual corporations have been closer described in numerous contributions. At the same time the topic of knowledge management became increasingly important in business studies. Especially the topic of the creation and saving of knowledge have been investigated by scientific researchers. The following contribution integrates both fields of research and links the concept of the virtual corporation with the resource based view by the transfer of the concept of experience curve to virtual corporations and the description of the shape of the experience curve in virtual corporations. With this approach present deficits in the governance of virtual corporations are outlined. Particularly the differences between traditional and virtual corporations in the process of accumulation of experience will be described. Finally the authors discuss strategic aspects of successful governance in virtual corporations. The presented theoretical considerations build the basis for further empirical studies. 2 Sören Kupke, Christoph Lattemann, Christian Schulz