1 Negotiating the Inter-organizational Information Systems Space Caroline Emberson and John Storey The Open University Business School, The Open University Paper presented to the OLKC2006 Conference at the University of Warwick, Coventry, UK. 20 th -22 nd March 2006 Introduction Organizational boundaries have become increasingly porous: outsourcing, insourcing and a variety of hybrid arrangements mean that previously distinct dividing lines between one organisation and another have become blurred. As competition intensifies and shifts rapidly, businesses are more inclined to question their enterprise and asset boundaries (Brant, 2005). Attempts to understand this state of flux and its implications for sharing information and knowledge across emerging and uncertain inter-organizational relationships are of interest to scholars and management practitioners alike (McKenzie, 2005). Technology has often been advocated as a solution for the effective capture, storage and retrieval of organisational knowledge. Despite doubts about the extent to which technology can be used to effectively transfer ‘information’ (Boland, 1987) or ‘knowledge’ (Hislop, 2002) between individuals and organisations, its development continues to be a prime concern to management practitioners. For example, responses from a recent survey of 122 executives in large European companies showed that whilst they were unable to exploit much of their existing corporate data, so called ‘Knowledge Management Solutions’ were ranked as the single most important priority for future strategic technological investment (Economist Intelligence Unit, 2005). Following close on the heels of this rush towards intra-organizational knowledge integration, comes increasing interest in extending the implementation and