A Proposed Technology Platform Framework to Support Technology Reuse

AbstractManaging a technology portfolio is one of the great challenges for sustained success, especially in high-technology industries where technologies can be a major selling point. For engineers, this portfolio is more of a toolbox for solving design problems, but in large organizations there can be so many technologies used in different business areas that even the engineers may not be aware of all of them. When the same technologies are used in different types of products, knowledge about them can also be generated by various groups within an organization. To improve the usefulness of a company's technology base, this paper proposes the use of a technology platform approach based on a framework featuring three different types of activities. The first approach is about adapting the technology base to future needs with the help of portfolio management techniques. The second approach serves to create awareness and shared understanding through an interactive technology catalogue, collecting information about how technologies work, where they are applied, and how they are used. The third approach is addressed at engineers who work with the technologies and includes practices for improving the reusability of knowledge recorded in documents and communicated to others who are using a particular technology for development. The framework is intended to support a systematic approach for technology reuse in order to stimulate organizational learning and reduce lead-time and cost of product development

The Faces of Bureaucracy: Understanding Enterprise Social Media

The social media are often perceived as tools that support openness and flexible participation among individuals and communities. This might explain the reason why social media have become indispensible for many daily practices in organizations. But how do these organizations appropriate and use these media relative to their formal structures and characteristics is a question in focus for the current paper. Drawing on classical concepts of organizational bureaucracy from Weber (1978) and Eisenstadt (1959), we present a qualitative analysis of empirical data obtained from two large organizations that use a wiki as a collaborative knowledge platform. The results show how the tendency to organize the use of the wiki through introducing structure might create barriers for open and democratic collaboration and knowledge sharing at the workplace. They also show that while a freer approach to using wikis might allow for self-organizing, there is still a possibility for enacting social structures that limit openness and flexibility. As such, the paper contributes novel insights into how social media might be used in bureaucracies and soft bureaucracies.

Social Media Use and Employee Attitudes Towards Information Security.

Social media has permeated the boundaries of organizations by employees bringing these popular tools from their personal lives into the workplace. Social media services promote openness and information sharing, which may or may not be consistent with an organization\u27s culture, polices and practices. We posit that the practices of social media use and the desired culture of information security in organizations are not compatible. This study will examine the use of social media by employees in both their personal lives and their roles in the workplace. This use of social media will then be examined to determine what effect it has on an employee\u27s perceptions and attitudes towards organizational information security policies

Social Media and Organizing – An Empirical Analysis of the Role of Wiki Affordances in Organizing Practices

The evolution of social media has introduced novel possibilities for work and interaction in organizations. The wiki technology is one important kind of social media technologies that is increasingly used to facilitate the creation and sharing of organizational knowledge within communities. Given the increasing use of social media in organizations and the lack of knowledge on their consequences for organizing, we use an affordance lens to explore the enactment of organizational wiki affordances. Using qualitative data obtained through interviews, field visits, and documents from two multinational organizations –CCC and IBM– we first identified eight affordances that describe various wiki possibilities and practices. We then identified four properties of these affordances including multiplicity, referential, situatedness, and communal. These properties represent the main contribution of the paper in that they extend the notion of affordance by theorizing new concepts that describe relational dynamics, situated and contextual conditions, and social factors involved in enacting, perceiving, and exploiting affordances. All correspondence must be addressed to the main author: Osama Mansour ([email protected])</p

EPISTEMIC MOTIVATION AND KNOWLEDGE CONTRIBUTION BEHAVIORS IN WIKI TEAMS: A CROSS-LEVEL MODERATION MODEL

Prior research on how to facilitate individuals’ participation in wiki knowledge contribution generally pays little attention to the differentiation of knowledge contributions and the embeddedness of individual team members in team context. This paper examines how an individual’s epistemic motivation and team task reflexivity interact to jointly influence adding, deleting and revising behaviors in distinct ways. Empirical data of 166 university students in 51 teams support our hypotheses. Individuals’ adding, deleting and revising behaviors on wikis are influenced differently by the interactive effect of individual epistemic motivation and team task reflexivity. First, the positive relationship between epistemic motivation and adding behaviors is stronger when the team’s task reflexivity is high. Second, the epistemic motivation stimulates deleting behaviors only when team task reflexivity is high. Third, epistemic motivation is significantly associated with more revising behaviors no matter the level of task reflexivity is high or low

Organizational Information Security: The Impact of Employee Attitudes and Social Media Use

Social media has infiltrated organizations through employees bringing these popular tools from their personal lives into the workplace. Organizations have begun to realize that social media applications can be used for more than just connecting individuals. The purpose of this research-in-progress is to investigate the use of social media by employees in both their personal lives and their roles in the workplace. In this pilot study, the use of social media is examined to determine how it is related to an employee’s perceptions and attitudes towards organizational information security policies. This pilot study was conducted at small, medium or large organizations in France. There were 46 usable responses. The preliminary findings confirm that an employee’s personal use of social media services is related to an employee’s use of social media services at work as well as it shows that there is a lack of awareness of security risks associated with the use of social media

Learners’ continuance participation intention of collaborative group project in virtual learning environment: an extended TAM perspective

The aim of this study is to explore learners’ intention to return to the electronic environment through the use of wikipages. The survey is based on students’ participation in a collaborative group project over a one semester course on business information systems. A research model based on the extended Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) has been proposed to investigate what factors will influence learners’ continuance participation in the electronic learning environment. 75% of students returned the questionnaire and the data analysis results based on the extended TAM Shows that the learners’ intention to return to the electronic learning environment was highly associated with their attitude towards the electronic learning tool and the affection associated with the tool

Collaboration sociale d'entreprise : Le réveil du courrier électronique ?

National audienceThis article studies the persistence of email while enterprise social collaborative tools are more and more promoted within firms: Can this be purely explained by the fear of change, or should other factors be considered? We claim here first that some important capabilities of messaging are lacking in enterprise social tools and second that email could be enhanced by adding new social capabilities. The first point is studied by a theoretical comparison of the different tools; the second point by a prototype followed by experimentation. This work leads to the conclusion that there are still some distinctive capabilities of messaging, which could explain its persistence, and also that email can remain a foundation to implement new social capabilities. These results open new research perspectives, and provide learnings to practitioners for the deployment of collaborative features for enterprises.Cet article part du constat de la persistance des usages de la messagerie électronique à l'heure des outils sociaux collaboratifs d'entreprise : est-elle uniquement explicable par des résistances au changement, ou d'autres facteurs doivent-ils être considérés ? Nous formulons ici les hypothèses que certaines capacités importantes de la messagerie manquent aux outils sociaux, puis que la messagerie peut être améliorée par l'ajout de nouvelles capacités sociales. La première hypothèse est étudiée par une comparaison théorique des différentes capacités des outils en présence ; la seconde par un prototypage suivi d'une expérimentation. Ces travaux concluent d'une part à l'existence de capacités distinctives de la messagerie susceptibles d'expliquer la persistance de son usage, et d'autre part à la possibilité de partir de l'email pour mettre en oeuvre de nouvelles capacités sociales, ouvrant ainsi des perspectives de recherche sur ce sujet, mais fournissant également des indications aux praticiens pour le déploiement de fonctions collaboratives dans les entreprises

USE OF SOCIAL MEDIA FOR INFORMATION SERVICE DELIVERY IN NIGERIAN ACADEMIC LIBRARY

This study examined the use of social media for information service delivery in Olusegun Oke Library LAUTECH Ogbomoso, Oyo State, Nigeria. Descriptive survey design was adopted for the study. Library personnel constitute the respondent, fifty-one (51) both (librarian and library officer). Questionnaire and Focus Group Discussion (FGD) were the instrument used to gather data. Descriptive statistics (such as frequency counts, percentage, mean) and inferential (Pearson Product Moment Correlation) statistical tools were used for data analysis. The findings revealed that use of social media is very relevant and important to library service delivery. Encouragement of social medial facilities among staff especially those with least level of relevance as it expected of any library staff to be knowledgeable enough to use any of the social media facilities for information service delivery while university management should put effort to encourage on –job training in this direction for its library staff members as this would improve the level of relevance, awareness and encourage the usage of social media facilities among the University Library Staff and University Community at large. The library management should facilitate use of social media platform among library personnel by making available adequate infrastructure that supports internet connectivity in the library in other to resolved challenges encountered. This will encourage the librarians and paraprofessionals to use social media at work for library service delivery

An Affordances Apparatus for Enterprise Social Media

The current paper addresses one of the core yet complex issues in the study of technology in organizations: the relationship between the social and the material. Many scholars in the field of Information Systems have used the notion of affordance as a lens to investigate and theorize this relationship. However, knowledge contributions in this area are often abstract and impractical, or at least compel further conceptual development. This paper uses a relational view of affordances to study organizational social media affordances based on empirical data collected about the use of the Wiki technology at two large multinational organizations—CCC and IBM. It theorizes four key mechanisms—referring to other affordances (referential), collectively enacting significant affordances (communal), situation-dependent exploitation of affordances (situatedness), and exploiting other opportunities for action (multiplicity), that embody the interaction between the social and the material. These mechanisms make up what is labelled in this paper as ‘the affordances apparatus’. The apparatus provides a conceptual structure for the interaction between social and material features that shows operational dynamics and processes underpinning the perception, enactment and exploitation of affordances. This apparatus is the main contribution of the paper in that it gives researchers a conceptual tool for investigating affordances as relational constructs between the social and the material. It also helps in understanding how people navigate the use of technology features relative to their intentions and goals