Antecedents and Consequences of User Co-Production in Information System Development Projects

A significant number of information system development (ISD) projects fail to achieve their predefined goals on time and/or within budget. Many organizations recognize that users can engage in projects to minimize the difficulties in effectively controlling the project and maximize the value created; therefore, user co-production is a crucial for organizations to enhance the effectiveness of ISD project. This study attempts to understand the antecedents and consequences of user co-production in ISD project. As a key contribution, we posit that user co-production is influenced by social capitals between users and developers. We then postulate that user co-production determines the project outcomes, which are shaped by system quality, user satisfaction and project performance. Data were gathered from a questionnaire survey of 103 pairs of user representatives and developers. Our results show that project outcomes are significantly influenced by user co-production. Furthermore, social capitals between user representatives and developers have positively significant influence on user co-production

The Knowledge Application and Utilization Framework Applied to Defense COTS: A Research Synthesis for Outsourced Innovation

Purpose -- Militaries of developing nations face increasing budget pressures, high operations tempo, a blitzing pace of technology, and adversaries that often meet or beat government capabilities using commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) technologies. The adoption of COTS products into defense acquisitions has been offered to help meet these challenges by essentially outsourcing new product development and innovation. This research summarizes extant research to develop a framework for managing the innovative and knowledge flows. Design/Methodology/Approach – A literature review of 62 sources was conducted with the objectives of identifying antecedents (barriers and facilitators) and consequences of COTS adoption. Findings – The DoD COTS literature predominantly consists of industry case studies, and there’s a strong need for further academically rigorous study. Extant rigorous research implicates the importance of the role of knowledge management to government innovative thinking that relies heavily on commercial suppliers. Research Limitations/Implications – Extant academically rigorous studies tend to depend on measures derived from work in information systems research, relying on user satisfaction as the outcome. Our findings indicate that user satisfaction has no relationship to COTS success; technically complex governmental purchases may be too distant from users or may have socio-economic goals that supersede user satisfaction. The knowledge acquisition and utilization framework worked well to explain the innovative process in COTS. Practical Implications – Where past research in the commercial context found technological knowledge to outweigh market knowledge in terms of importance, our research found the opposite. Managers either in government or marketing to government should be aware of the importance of market knowledge for defense COTS innovation, especially for commercial companies that work as system integrators. Originality/Value – From the literature emerged a framework of COTS product usage and a scale to measure COTS product appropriateness that should help to guide COTS product adoption decisions and to help manage COTS product implementations ex post

Understanding the Role of Knowledge Co-Production between Users and Developers in ISD Project: An Intellectual Capital Perspective

Information system development (ISD) has long been treated as that process that system developers craft an artifact to support business operation based on their special expertise. However, a significant portion of projects still have failed because the developed outcome cannot fit users’ needs. An emerging internal service concept indicates that, by treating ISD as one type of service, the requirement definition can be viewed as a co-production process in which users and developers integrate their own knowledge. By incorporating this concept into research design and taking intellectual capital perspective into account, this study proposed a model to examine the antecedents and consequences of knowledge co-production between users and developers. Data collected from 267 developers confirmed our hypotheses that knowledge co-production can benefit ISD outcomes, and common knowledge, relational capital and participative decision-making between these two parties increase the effectiveness of knowledge co-production effectively. Lastly, the implications toward academic and practitioner are also provided

Learning during the New Financial Service Innovation Process: Antecedents and Performance Effects

This article theoretically and empirically examines the antecedents and consequences of project learning during the new financial service innovation process. We analyze the impact of project learning on project performance and performance of the financial institution. Next we investigate the antecedent role of the nature of communication and organizational design on project learning. Following the development of a propositional framework, a survey research has been developed within the Belgian banking industry. Our research findings indicate that the level of project learning contributes to the corporate reputation of the financial institution. Moreover, learning during project innovation enhances the cost and the competitive position of the innovating bank. Our study empirically supports the crucial influence of management support, harmonious cross-functional interfaces, organizational diversity and participative decision-making on the level of project learning. Both innovative and coordinative communication are needed to balance the information needs throughout the innovation process. However, our findings underline the fact that the impact of innovative communication on the level of project learning is contingent upon the quality of the planning stage. The up-front activities of the innovation process seem to have an important leveraging effect on learning, and hence on project and bank performance.Economics ;

Exploring the concept of web site customization: applications and antecedents

While mass customization is the tailoring of products and services to the needs and wants of individual customers, web site customization is the tailoring of web sites to individual customers? preferences. Based on a review of site customization applications, the authors propose a model with four different levels standardization, adaptation, passive personalization, and active personalization). Each of these levels requires a different level of involvement of both the supplier and the customer. Based on an extensive review literature the authors then develop conceptual models of the determinants of site customization from both a customer?s and a supplier?s point of view. Both models contain the factors that determine the willingness of a party (customer or supplier) to get actively involved in web site customization. Some factors have a positive impact on the willingness to customize while others have a negative impact. Managers engaged in site customization projects should realized that site customization is not an undisputed topic. Its success will be context dependent. The presented conceptual models can be used to analyze the essentials of a particular context and to assess the potential of web site customization.

Benefits of and barriers to involving users in medical device technology development and evaluation

Objectives: This study investigated the benefits of, and barriers to user involvement in medical device technology development and evaluation. Methods: A structured review of published literature in peer-reviewed journals. Results: This review revealed that the main benefits of user involvement were an increased access to user needs, experiences and ideas; improvements in medical device designs and user interfaces; and an increase in the functionality, usability and quality of the devices. On the other hand, resource issues, particularly those of time and money were found the key impediments to involving users in the development and evaluation of medical device technologies. This study has categorised both the benefits and barriers to user involvement also. Conclusions: The involvement of users in MDTD&E requires resources, which are limited; however, it is essential from both users and manufacturers perspectives