Knowledge Networking across the Social Divide: A Model for Distributed Decision Making

As organizations become increasingly extended across global boundaries, their reliance on information and communication technologies to support their decision making processes increases. Given the narrowing of the digital divide these infrastructures for distributed decision making are becoming more prevalent. Knowledge networking appears to have transformed the nature of decision making through the integration of electronic networks with human networking to bring about collaborative strategies for the provision of goods and services. Such decision making processes are affected by the social divide that is dominated by migration, education and civic engagement issues. This paper investigates how processes of knowledge networking enable distributed decision making to take place in the context of development. It considers vignettes in as they relate to how knowledge networking and the social divide to enable global capability sourcing strategies to be accomplished. Following an analysis of these vignettes, a model of distributed decision making is provided that illustrates how these processes enable global capability sourcing strategies to be implemented.