A Framework for a Dynamic Organizational Memory Information System

Organizational memory information systems (OMIS) implement important aspects of organizational memory with the aim of enhancing organizational effectiveness. We propose a 3-layered framework for a dynamic OMIS. The framework consists of a pragmatic layer to support the actual activity, a conceptual layer to store the concepts inherent in that activity, and a process layer to store the experience of performing that activity. Both the conceptual and process layers represent organizational memory repositories in the form of respective models. The implementation of OMIS assumes that any activity is the instantiation of relevant conceptual and process models and includes the reuse of knowledge stored in association with those models. In this way, organizational memory is always mapped to current activity, and its adequacy is constantly evaluated. This provides the potential for the models to evolve as a direct result of the current activity. A partial implementation of this framework to support epidemiological research is illustrated.     

A Conceptual Framework for the Design of Geo-Collaborative Systems

Geo-collaborative systems address the computational support to situations where people are working in different locations, gathering geographically-related data in the field and sharing knowledge. We propose a conceptual framework identifying the design issues that fundamentally set the stage for eliciting the requirements of geo-collaborative systems. The conceptual framework has five elements: places, teams, tasks, artifacts and geo-referenced knowledge. We also highlight two important relationships between some of these elements: (1) a task-artifact relationship, related with the need to increase the organizational decision making abilities through concerted efforts; and (2) an artifact-knowledge relationship, related with the need to support mechanisms for jointly understanding geo-referenced data. The conceptual framework was applied to the development of a groupware tool aiming to increase the productivity of the geological mapping process followed by a national agency with competence in this area. The paper describes in detail how the conceptual framework influenced the groupware design. The obtained results indicate that the framework can focus the designers on the human aspects of geo-collaboration and guide them through the initial design stages.     

Organizational Assimilation of Web Services Technology: A Research Framework

Web services is an extremely promising technology that has the potential to revolutionize many aspects of information systems. Web services facilitates vendor-, platform-, and language-independent, loosely coupled, inexpensive integration of both internal and external systems. Although there is a general agreement that Web services will have a significant impact on applications of information technology in organizations, there is a disagreement regarding the speed and spread of assimilation due to a multitude of inhibitors. In this article, we identify 3 areas of assimilation of Web services in organizations: information systems departmental assimilation, intraorganizational assimilation, and interorganizational assimilation. We propose a research framework for investigating various issues related to organizational assimilation of Web services. In addition, we developed a projection of the assimilation patterns for the 3 areas of organizational assimilation of Web services. Based on the proposed framework, we outline a research agenda on the organizational assimilation of Web services.     

Constructing conceptual models for knowledge capture and delivery systems

Appropriate conceptualization of the nature of entities and relationships in a problem domain is a key prerequisite to the successful design of computerized decision aids for business, especially those developed for more than one idiosyncratic user. The need for a reliable conceptual model is particularly acute in the design of decision support systems that must function in problem‐solving situations with no existing theoretical framework or where theory and practice differ considerably.

This paper presents an interative procedure for developing a reliable conceptual model by testing the “fit”; of successive revisions of the model against a collection of “think‐aloud”; verbal problem‐solving protocols of people with experience in the domain. The model is revised each time until it is verifiably and consistently accurate. Such a procedure, it is argued, is more objective and reliable than intuition or traditional knowledge engineering and requires considerably less experimental data collection and analysis than more elaborate empirical model development procedures.

The feasibility of this procedure is illustrated by using it to construct a conceptual model for a computer‐based system that seeks to capture knowledge used during project planning and deliver it for use during project control.     

Organizational analysis and information-systems design: A decision-process perspective

Acquiring relevant information, processing it sensibly and acting rationally on the results is central to proper functioning at all management levels of an organization. To improve these capabilities is a major concern of developers of management information systems, yet a growing consensus indicates that it is infeasible to initiate system development by modeling a total organization's information system. Thus, many systems designers— drawn less from the ranks of technologists than of experienced managers—have scaled down aspirations, and are thinking of parts of an organization rather than of the whole. This change of philosophy has emerged most clearly in marketing, where Chambers comments that “attempts to construct large scale models in marketing have generally resulted in failure… the management scientist has now recognized that it is usually better to begin by solving smaller segments of the total problem” [9].Failure of systems designers to adapt their efforts to the structure of the organization and to the people in it also has impeded successful development of information systems. Researchers and managers long have recognized the necessity for such adaptation [25, p/ 483] and also have been concerned by other behavioral problems raised by information systems [25, 3].This study presents a structure for development of “partial” information systems in their organizational context. It utilizes a growing body of empirical knowledge—drawn mainly from marketing—to help analyze organizations in terms of operational guidelines for the development of information systems.     

Avoiding a “me” versus “we” dilemma: Using performance management to turn teams into a source of competitive advantage

Teams are pervasive in today's world of work. Unfortunately, in many cases teams do not live up to their promise and, instead, lead to disappointing results. In this installation of Human Performance, we discuss how to design and implement performance management systems that include a good combination of both “me” and “we” considerations. We offer the following research-based recommendations: (1) use measures of individual and team performance, (2) use measures of processes and outcomes, (3) develop performance measures using input from inside and outside the team, (4) gather performance information using sources from inside and outside the team, (5) foster team learning and development, and (6) reward both individual and team performance. We discuss implementation guidelines for each of these recommendations that will help maximize individual and team performance as well as alignment among individual, team, and organizational goals. Implementing performance management systems following our recommendations will help organizations turn teams into an inimitable and sustainable source of competitive human capital advantage.     

商务活动中应用电子商务技术的合理性评价

电子商务技术作为一种新兴的技术,它已经在很多领域中得到广泛的应用。但是,不是企业的所有商务活动都适合用电子商务技术加以解决。从商务活动的流程出发,通过建立商务活动模型、应用电子商务技术的合理性评价模型,以及从成本与效益的角度,探讨电子商务技术对不同类型的商务活动,以及商务处理过程中的不同阶段的适用性,从而为我国企业应用电子商务技术提供参考依据。     

Conceptual Knowledge Markup Language: An introduction

Conceptual Knowledge Markup Language (CKML) is an application of XML. Earlier versions of CKML followed rather exclusively the philosophy of Conceptual Knowledge Processing (CKP), a principled approach to knowledge representation and data analysis that “advocates methods and instruments of conceptual knowledge processing which support people in their rational thinking, judgment and acting and promote critical discussion”. The new version of CKML continues to follow this approach, but also incorporates various principles, insights and techniques from Information Flow (IF), the logical design of distributed systems. Among other things, this allows diverse communities of discourse to compare their own information structures, as coded in logical theories, with that of other communities that share a common generic ontology. CKML incorporates the CKP ideas of concept lattice and formal context, along with the IF ideas of classification (= formal context), infomorphism, theory, interpretation and local logic. Ontology Markup Language (OML), a subset of CKML that is a self-sufficient markup language in its own right, follows the principles and ideas of Conceptual Graphs (CG). OML is used for structuring the specifications and axiomatics of metadata into ontologies. OML incorporates the CG ideas of concept, conceptual relation, conceptual graph, conceptual context, participants and ontology. The link from OML to CKML is the process of conceptual scaling, which is the interpretive transformation of ontologically structured knowledge to conceptual structured knowledge. This revised version was published online in August 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Key capabilities in knowledge-intensive service business

The purpose of this study is to identify key capabilities in knowledge-intensive service business. Current service research lacks evidence on this topic, since knowledge-intensive services constitute a very heterogeneous group, making the identification of key capabilities challenging. To bridge this gap, a conceptual framework is developed, integrating discussion on knowledge intensity with the classical service features. Empirical data are collected from two case firms with the help of focus groups, theme interviews and a survey. Based on the developed framework and analyzed data, we identify four specific capability categories of knowledge management, service productization, project management, and relationship orchestration.     

Macrocognition in Collaboration: Analyzing Processes of Team Knowledge Building with CoPrA

Sophisticated collaboration software allows teams that are dispersed in space and time to work together. Nevertheless, to reach their common goals, distributed teams—and the professional facilitators who support them by intervention techniques—are faced with the communication challenges arising from dispersed settings, including task coordination and effective information exchange. When distributed teams use collaboration software, however, traces of their collaboration are left behind. These traces provide an underused source of data which can be analyzed and be used to inform the design of interventions aimed at improving collaboration in distributed teams. This paper investigates the untapped potential for understanding collaboration, and in particular, the macro-cognitive processes of team knowledge building. These processes rely on information shared and knowledge structures developed by team members which are also referred to as team cognition. We performed a qualitative content analysis applying the COllaboration PRocess Analysis technique, CoPrA, and a framework for measuring team knowledge building. Communication data was collected from 18 participants assigned to six distributed teams. While working collaboratively on a problem-solving task teams were supported with synchronous collaboration software. The results show that by using a cognitive perspective on teams, all the hypothesized processes of team knowledge building could be identified in collaboration traces. Moreover, our analysis shows that CoPrA enables us to identify key characteristics of (1) team behavior, e.g., whether teams are rather solution-oriented or problem minded, show consensus-oriented behavior, withhold evaluative arguments, discuss ideas in breadth and/or depth, or spend much effort on coordination as well as (2) behavior of team members, e.g., who show non-participation, are willing to share or predominantly guide coordination. Future research could adopt this approach to improve our understanding of the dynamics of collaboration patterns and its effects on team performance to inform collaboration facilitation in distributed settings.     

Knowledge and Knowledge Management in the Social Media Age

Social media comprise the set of tools identified as blogs, wikis, and other social networking platforms that “enable people to connect, communicate, and collaborate.” These tools create a dynamic, complex information infrastructure that enables easier, faster, and more widespread sharing of information. These affordances make possible phenomena such as viral processes, and they can change how we are able to work and organize. This article explores the impact of this emerging knowledge ecosystem (KE) on some prominent characteristics of knowledge and knowledge management (KM) models through an exploratory critical review of popular epistemological perspectives and conceptual foundations underlying KM models. We find that this emerging KE requires a revisiting of both the social aspects of knowledge creation and some popular notions of enterprise knowledge management.     

A Conceptual Model for Virtual Organizational Learning

As a trend toward virtual organizations (VOs) emerges in the era of electronic commerce, an understanding of knowledge processing is essential to sustain performance. Active learning is the key to achieving flexibility in a VO; however, few studies have focused on this dimension. In this article we attempt to assemble insights about learning in a VO by developing a conceptual model for virtual organizational learning (VOL). The VOL model is focused on transactive memory, which is composed of knowledge maps, social networks, and mnemonic functions. The initialization of modeling learning in VOs in this article has been erecting the foundation for transactive memory systems in a cyber community. A case study, Smart Creative Teachers Network, is used for demonstrating the transactive memory system for a teacher community to share and create knowledge and form VOs across school boundaries.     

Capture and Dissemination of Specialized Knowledge in Network Organizations

I present a model for the capture and retrieval of organizational memory that can help overcome the information dissemination problem faced by network organizations. Network organizations are made of small, heterogeneous, product-oriented teams. In these organizations, the specialization of knowledge that has characterized functional hierarchies can be lost as the functional units in which this expertise was created and shared are dismantled. The preservation and dissemination of expert knowledge thus becomes a major issue to be addressed by these organizations, whose competitive advantage depends on this specialization. The problem of capturing project-related organizational memory is addressed with a 3 step solution: (a) the use of explicit work processes; (b) the development of models capable of representing these processes, the artifacts that are developed, and the rationale used during decision making; and (c) the implementation and deployment of computer tools that support the development processes selected and that, in doing so, record and document the project. I address the problem of accessing information from projects developed elsewhere in the organization and propose a solution based on monitoring the user's manipulation of information and creating hypotheses of his or her information needs. These hypotheses are then used as queries by a fuzzy information retrieval engine that produces a ranked list of documents that are suggested to the user as being relevant to his or her information needs. As the user manipulates these documents, the hypothesis is updated, triggering a new retrieval and the update of the list of suggested documents. The feasibility of the approach is demonstrated with the implementation of a prototype.     

Stay close! The role of leader distance in the relationship between transformational leadership,work engagement,and performance in undergraduate project teams

The author aimed to show that (a) transformational leadership is related to project teams’ performance via work engagement and (b) leader distance moderates the relationship between transformational leadership and work engagement. The proposed moderated mediation model was tested using 180 students in an undergraduate management course and working in project teams. The findings supported only the relationship between work engagement and performance, and thus transformational leadership does not appear to be useful in undergraduate project teams. However, the nonsignificant moderator effect revealed an unexpected finding for a direct and marginally significant relationship between leader distance and work engagement.     

Boundary Spanners' Satisfaction with Organizational Support Services

SUMMARY

Internal services (i.e., support services) are an important form of organizational support for external boundary spanners (e.g., salespeople, customer service representatives). Internal services such as information systems, market research, training, accounting, and facilities support are intended to allow boundary spanners to better serve the firm's customer. Little research, however, has addressed factors that influence a boundary spanner's satisfaction with such services. The research presented here offers insight into how internal communication by both managers and service providers impacts a boundary spanner's satisfaction with support services. Results indicate that service provider and manager communications are largely complementary and that satisfaction with service outcomes, rather than service quality, appears to have an enduring impact upon a boundary spanner's overall job satisfaction. Implications for future research are addressed.     

Y2K all over again: How groupthink permeates IS and compromises security

Despite increased concerns about security, most government, private, and public information systems remain vulnerable to terrorist and hacker attacks. To examine this potentially catastrophic problem, we study another infamous, expensive failing in information systems: the year 2000 (Y2K) problem. We argue that many of the same drivers of the Y2K problem now impede the security of information systems, and identify groupthink as a root cause of the continuing inability of organizations and IS (information systems) teams to learn from past mistakes in managing information systems. We also identify measures to help organizational team leaders and members prevent future IS-related threats.     

Spiritual Leadership as a Paradigm for Organizational Transformation and Recovery from Extended Work Hours Cultures

Various explanations are offered to explain why employees increasingly work longer hours: the combined effects of technology and globalization; people are caught up in consumerism; and the “ideal worker norm,” when professionals expect themselves and others to work longer hours. In this article, we propose that the processes of employer recruitment and selection, employee self-selection, cultural socialization, and reward systems help create extended work hours cultures (EWHC) that reinforce these trends. Moreover, we argue that EWHC organizations are becoming more prevalent and that organizations in which long hours have become the norm may recruit for and reinforce workaholic tendencies. Next, we offer spiritual leadership as a paradigm for organizational transformation and recovery from the negative aspects of EWHC to enhance employee well-being and corporate social responsibility without sacrificing profitability, revenue growth, and other indicators of financial performance. Finally, we will offer suggestions for future theory, research, and practice.     

Putting market-facing technology to work: Organizational drivers of CRM performance

A large proportion of firms that adopt customer relationship management (CRM) technology find it challenging to integrate CRM technology into their core marketing processes and utilize CRM strategically to appreciably improve their performance. The authors conceptualize a model to understand the drivers of superior CRM performance after CRM technology has been adopted by a firm and examine strategic utilization of CRM technology as driven by user acceptance and proficiency in the form of employee buy-in and expertise. Top management championship practices, employee information technology (IT) skills, and CRM knowledge are identified and examined as key building blocks toward strategic utilization. The empirical test of the conceptual model is based on a mail survey of North American firms that have adopted information technology-based CRM systems. The results, based on random effects model, show that strategic utilization of CRM technology leads to higher performance when there is an emphasis on using it to manage business-to-business rather than business-to-consumer relationships, user expertise (but not buy-in) impacts CRM performance through strategic utilization, and top management championship practices, CRM knowledge, and employee IT skills impact strategic utilization through buy-in and expertise.     

组织内部知识共享影响因素研究与分析

知识共享是组织内部知识管理的重要环节,是企业持续成长的关键和持续竞争优势的源泉。知识共享包括知识发送和知识接受两个过程,由知识拥有者和知识接受者共同完成,其中共享知识特征,知识提供方特征,知识接受者特征,知识共享情境特征,团队知识共享文化、知识共享机制等是影响知识共享的主要因素。     

Bad behavior and conflict in retailing spaces: Nine suggestions to ease tensions

This article builds on years of work studying territoriality and conflict issues between customers and employees in retail and service settings. The key contribution of this research is to illustrate the bad behaviors and conflicts that take place in retail spaces between customers, between customers and employees, and between employees. Using multi-methods of data collection—critical incident technique, interviews, mystery shoppers, and surveys—the authors outline these bad behaviors and conflicts for managers and offer nine solutions to help retailers handle these behaviors and conflict in retail spaces.