Towards virtualizing the helpdesk: assessing the relevance of knowledge across distance

Managers of information systems face a knowledge crisis as they operate in increasingly heterogeneous, hostile, expertise-poor environments. This problem is compounded for small organizations. This paper presents results from field research on the feasibility of fostering cross-organizational knowledge sharing in order to expand access to expertise for pernicious problems while minimizing the loss of context, such as situational and environmental factors, that impacts the usefulness of solutions. This essentially creates a virtual, cross-organizational helpdesk. In order to understand the utility of such a system we explore how employees' satisfaction with helpdesk articles changes as the source of the articles moves further away from local creation to generic solutions. Our findings suggest that procedurally-based information available within major Internet repositories tends to be the most highly relevant and valued within organizations. However, when no documentation is available from manufacturers, information contributed by partner sites is more effective than those solely developed in-house. This paper suggests strategies for reusing information to impact work within small organizations.