Digital Cross-Organizational Collaboration: A Metatriangulation Review

This paper presents a metatriangulation review on the topic of digital cross-organizational collaboration, defined as the integration of people, information systems, and processes across different organizations to accomplish a particular task by using digital means as an enabler. Using paradigm lenses adapted from Markus and Robey (1988), we examine 80 research papers published in six information systems journals between 2000 and 2007. The results of our analysis suggest that the theoretical view points (technological imperative, organizational imperative, and emergent perspective) substantially affect the unit of analysis and the selection of an underlying theory. Finally by reviewing conflicting results and inconsistent conclusions, we propose a framework which points to several research gaps and reveals possible research opportunities.