Harnessing Intellectual Resources in a Collaborative Context to Create Value

The value of electronic collaboration has arisen as successful organisations recognize that they need to convert their intellectual resources into customized services. The shift from personal computing to interpersonal or collaborative computing has given rise to ways of working that may bring about better and more effective use of intellectual resources. Current efforts in managing knowledge have concentrated on producing; sharing and storing knowledge while business problems require the combined use of these intellectual resources to enable organisations to provide innovative and customized services. In this chapter the collaborative context is developed using a model for electronic collaboration through the use of which organisations may mobilse collaborative technologies and intellectual resources towards achieving joint effect.electronic collaboration;value creation;collaborative computing;knowledge management and intellectual resources

A Gaming Laboratory to Study Distributed Collaboration Processes.

Current events present many examples of situations where a fast and coordinated response is required from many and diverse organizations and stakeholders. Technology-mediated communication and collaboration may be the only option for getting things done in situations like these. There is a real need for research on the kinds of environments and processes that best support fast response on urgent tasks for virtual teams. The paper presents the development and initial test of a gaming laboratory to study such processes. The laboratory is adaptable to different kinds of situations. We discuss the design principles and implementation of the laboratory environment, along with lessons learned from the first experiences with it

The effectiveness of virtual facilitation in supporting GDSS appropriation and structured group decision making

Since their introduction a quarter of a century ago, group decision support systems (GDSS) have evolved from applications designed primarily to support decision making for groups in face-to-face settings, to their growing use for “web conferencing,” online collaboration, and distributed group decision-making. Indeed, it is only recently that such groupware applications for conducting face-to-face, as well as “virtual meetings” among dispersed workgroups have achieved mainstream status, as evidenced by Microsoft’s ubiquitous advertising campaign promoting its “Live Meeting” electronic meeting systems (EMS) software. As these applications become more widely adopted, issues relating to their effective utilization are becoming increasingly relevant. This research addresses an area of growing interest in the study of group decision support systems, and one which holds promise for improving the effective utilization of advanced information technologies in general: the feasibility of using virtual facilitation (system-directed multi-modal user support) for supporting the GDSS appropriation process and for improving structured group decision-making efficiency and effectiveness. A multi-modal application for automating the GDSS facilitation process is used to compare conventional GDSS-supported groups with groups using virtual facilitation, as well as groups interacting without computerized decision-making support. A hidden-profile task designed to compare GDSS appropriation levels, user satisfaction, and decision-making efficiency and effectiveness is utilized in an experiment employing auditors, accountants, and IT security professionals as participants. The results of the experiment are analyzed and possible directions for future research efforts are discussed

Testing a Multi-Channel Service Design Method

Although the multi-channel shopper has recently become a dominant consumer type, firms are still struggling with consciously designing their multi-channel service mix. In this paper, a design method based on QFD (Quality Function Deployment) is introduced and tested for defining eservices that have to function in a multi-channel context. Within a design research perspective, a structured field experiment was conducted, using control group testing. Two measurement instruments were used: questionnaires for business participants (n=62) and a protocol for external observers (n=56) to measure performance of design tasks throughout the process. We found that business teams tend to bias towards the supplier’s perspective at the expense of customers and channel partners. The new method scored significantly better than the control group method on a number of evaluation criteria: customer orientation, channel coherence and communication between different stakeholder perspectives

Harnessing Intellectual Resources in a Collaborative Context to Create Value

The value of electronic collaboration has arisen as successful organisations recognize that they need to convert their intellectual resources into customized services. The shift from personal computing to interpersonal or collaborative computing has given rise to ways of working that may bring about better and more effective use of intellectual resources. Current efforts in managing knowledge have concentrated on producing; sharing and storing knowledge while business problems require the combined use of these intellectual resources to enable organisations to provide innovative and customized services. In this chapter the collaborative context is developed using a model for electronic collaboration through the use of which organisations may mobilse collaborative technologies and intellectual resources towards achieving joint effect

Structuring electronic discourse for inter-organisational decision making

Electronic technology is increasingly used to support inter-organisational decision making groups in situations where the objectives of participants are divergent and power diffused. This creates conceptual and practical difficulties for participants and sponsors alike. How should the problem be structured? How should success be measured? What type of model should drive the problem structuring process? While the literature on electronically-supported inter-organisational decision making raises issues such as these it does not provide a solution. The current research draws on the problem structuring literature to fill this gap. A conceptual problem structuring model is developed from the theoretical perspectives of pluralism and communicative action. The model is applied to structure strategically important electronically-supported inter-organisational decision making meetings sponsored by government organisations. The focus question is: ‘Does electronic discourse increase the success of inter-organisational decision making? If so, what problem structuring principles and processes were employed, and what level of participant satisfaction was achieved?

Innovations in Information Systems Education-VIHKNet: Instilling Realism Into the Study of Emerging Trends

In this paper we describe explicit materials that were generated in an ongoing effort to help undergraduate and Masters-level students learn about off-shore outsourcing and radical technical changes in Information Technology development, and the environment in which these materials were developed and continue to be distributed. The environment provides a realistic, effective way for students to learn about emerging trends. Over the last seven years, we tried to bring realism into Information Systems education through a joint project between universities in Hong Kong, Orlando, Tilburg, Eindhoven, Grenoble, and more recently, Beijing. The HKNET project offers an integrated learning activity across multiple international institutions and brings Information Systems reality into educational contexts. It allows students to focus on organizational trends

Group Support Systems (GSS)

Groupware is a term describing an emerging computer software technology enhancing the ability of people to work together as a group, (a software driven 'group support system'). This project originated at the beginning of 1992 and reports were issued describing the activity through May 1995. These reports stressed the need for process as well as technology. That is, while the technology represented a computer assisted method for groups to work together, the Group Support System (GSS) technology als required an understanding of the facilitation process electronic meetings demand. Even people trained in traditional facilitation techniques did not necessarily aimlessly adopt groupware techniques. The latest phase of this activity attempted to (1) improve the facilitation process by developing training support for a portable groupware computer system, and (2) to explore settings and uses for the portable groupware system using different software, such as Lotus Notes