Coping knowledge boundaries between information system and business disciplines: An intellectual capital perspective

•We explore knowledge boundary spanning (KBS) from intellectual capital perspective.•We conduct surveys and apply PLS to examine the research framework in ISD context.•We highlight the importance of knowledge boundary spanning on ISD performance.•The intellectual capital increases the degree of effective KBS.•The findings introduce and highlight the role of KBS to ISD research.

Information system development can be considered a collaboration between users and developers. The inability to leverage the localized knowledge embedded in these two stakeholders hinders software development work to achieve high performance. Exploring the ways to counter this difficulty is then critical. This study applies an intellectual capital perspective to address the issues around spanning the knowledge boundary between developers and users. Our findings highlighted how important effective knowledge boundary spanning is to both product and project quality. Furthermore, three dimensions of intellectual capital increased the degree to which knowledge boundary spanning was effective.