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The purpose of this paper is to adopt two different perspectives of an organization’s absorptive capacity, namely, the asset perspective and the capability perspective, to examine its impact on enterprise resource planning (ERP) assimilation. While prior IT knowledge represents the asset perspective, organization’s combinative capabilities – formalization, cross-functional interfaces and connectedness – represent the capability perspective of absorptive capacity.

The study develops a hypotheses-based theory of absorptive capacity. Data for hypotheses testing are collected from Indian organizations using a cross-sectional survey method. Partial least-squares technique is used to test the proposed hypotheses.

The results reaffirm earlier work showing the importance of connectedness and cross-functional interfaces in ERP assimilation; other two factors (prior IT knowledge and formalization) were not found to be positively related to ERP assimilation. To obtain more insights regarding the latter unexpected results, the study checked the interaction effect of the nature of company ownership (private or state-owned). The results pointed to the existence of a negative relationship between prior IT knowledge and ERP assimilation particularly in the case of private organizations compared to state-owned organizations.

Previous studies on ERP have predominantly examined the influence of absorptive capacity on ERP implementation outcomes at the user level. The present study focuses on absorptive capacity at the organizational level using two perspectives. By utilizing two perspectives on absorptive capacity, namely, the asset perspective and the capabilities perspective, it illustrates how different aspects of absorptive capacity can be brought to light while studying its impacts.

The purpose of this paper is to explore identity work in response to various types of contradictions experienced by employees in outsourced software development in the initial stages of their careers.

A qualitative methodology is adopted. Data are generated primarily through in-depth interviews with participants who had less than five years of work experience in outsourced software development.

Four dimensions of contradictions in the setting are identified and behaviors associated with identity work driven by these contradictions are explored. While responses included regression, despair, resignation and disengagement, behaviors in the direction of adjustment and development were also reported. The importance of various kinds of resources for developmental identity work is pointed out.

This work contributes to discussions on identity work by bringing to light how contradictions influence it in the context of outsourced software work.

The article seeks to explore the various ways in which researchers have approached boundaries in relation to organizations.

This paper is conceptual in nature and explores prominent strands of research into boundaries within and at the periphery of the organization through a selective literature analysis.

The paper introduces new categories in the way boundaries are conceptualized and explores how researchers can introduce these in their studies.

The literature review is selective and provides an indication of how further work could be directed.

The work could be of use to those exploring the dynamics of organizational boundaries.

A few convergence zones in the literature are identified and a new categorization indicating the dichotomies inherent in the study of organizational boundaries is introduced.

This paper focuses on how shared objects created by support departments in a software development firm facilitate the advancement of learning and knowledge sharing. Objects can be both facilitative and restrictive in certain ways, and the study seeks to enhance our understanding of how they can be made more facilitative.

This study can best be described as a single location exploratory case study in which data were predominantly gathered through unstructured interviews. The theoretical perspective of practice‐oriented studies is adopted, specifically utilizing activity theory to understand and analyze objects.

It is pointed out that, striving to understand objects with a focus on their often unanticipated usage can be useful in making them more facilitative. While emphasizing that objects are not used coherently in the field, the study explores how they could be made more facilitative by focusing on situated ways in which they act in the field. It was observed that they could become more facilitative by being shells with higher degrees of configurability, by being legitimate facades that create interesting contexts of multi‐project interactions and by being anchors of stability in an organizational setting of constant flux.

The research is exploratory in nature and has focused on the introduction of new ways of looking at objects in project‐based organizations. An enhanced understanding of the dynamics of objects in project settings can enable project personnel and support service personnel to make them more facilitative. For researchers, this study contributes to the discussions on understanding objects by proposing new ways of looking at the role of objects in project‐based organizations.