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

The mediating role of organizational learning between absorptive capacity and performance in companies employing enterprise resource planning software

This dissertation focuses on the acquisition of information systems technology and how the acquisition of information systems (IS) can improve the performance of a firm. The central purpose of this dissertation is to contribute to the literature that explains the success of IS projects. It addresses the organizational processes that contribute to the successful implementation of IS, and explains why some organizations achieve financial returns and strategic advantages from their IS efforts while others do not. The population in this dissertation consists of top level IS executives in the US or Canada employed in firms who have implemented enterprise resource planning software. Enterprise resource planning (ERP) has the capability to join disparate data sources and make them available across enterprises in an organized, personalized, secure, and searchable fashion. ERP integrates key business and management processes to provide a comprehensive view of an organization. The term used in the literature to refer to firm readiness to technological advances is absorptive capacity. Absorptive capacity is an organizational, firm-level construct that incorporates a learning curve into the technology adoption process. Cohen and Levinthal (1990) define absorptive capacity as the firm\u27s ability to perceive value in external information, in this case an information system, and be able to adopt it, internalize it and exploit it to maximize profits. This dissertation tests the relationship between absorptive capacity and performance mediated by organizational learning. Absorptive capacity, therefore, is a measure of potential increase in performance but not a guarantee of increased performance. Several processes have to occur in order for organizations to learn. First of all, organizations have to acquire knowledge by eliciting or sharing knowledge (Argote, 1999) in the assimilation stage (Lane et al., 2001; Lane & Lubatkin, 1998). This stage is followed by a second stage named internalization or integration (Kim, 1998; Lyles & Salk, 1996). Group learning involves the processes through which members share, generate, evaluate and combine knowledge (Argote, 1999). The third stage, optimization, is where an organization reaches the point of exploitation of a learned technology (Cohen & Levinthal 1990, 1994). The relationships between absorptive capacity, organizational learning and performance represent the research framework for the dissertation. A path begins from absorptive capacity to organizational learning, but because organizational learning is divided into three stages there are three separate paths leading to each level in organizational learning: assimilation, integration and optimization. Structural equation modeling was used to examine the series of dependence relationships simultaneously

Perceived Absorptive Capacity Of Individual Users In Performance Of Enterprise Resource Planning (Erp) Usage: The Case For Penang Manufacturing Firms

Penyelidikan ini memeriksa kesan keupayaan menyerap pengguna Perancangan Sumber Perusahaan (ERP) di kilang-kilang pembuatan Pulau Pinang. The research examines the effect of absorptive capacity of users on their use of ERP in Penang manufacturing firms

Impact of Institutional Pressures on Absorptive Capacity of a Firm and Web 2.0 Assimilation

We investigate a theoretical model that combines two streams of research in IT adoption. The first is the institutional theoryperspective, which provides the institutional pressures that induce a firm to align itself with the members of the institution ofwhich it is a part. The second is the learning perspective on organization, which has been used to study firm characteristicsthat promote technology assimilation; it provides the mediating factor of absorptive capacity. In this study we empiricallystudy the role of institutional factors as they are mediated by absorptive capacity in the assimilation of Web 2.0 technologies.Linear structural equation model using formative constructs are developed. Preliminary results are promising. Full resultswill be discussed at the conference

The Implementation of ERP System in Indian SMEs

The objectives of the research reported in this thesis are to explore how enterprise resource planning (ERP) can be implemented successfully in Indian medium sized manufacturing firms and to understand why only some firms are able to implement ERP successfully, while others experience ERP failure. A review of existing literature addressing ERP implementation in both large companies and SMEs was undertaken to identify specific gaps in the literature. The resource-based view (RBV) of the firm, absorptive capacity and the diffusion of innovations (DOI) were identified as insightful theoretical bases for the study. A qualitative research methodology was adopted and, following a pilot study, data was collected through semi-structured, multi-respondent, in-depth interviews in nine case study firms. Data was analysed at three levels - within case, cross-case and group analysis. The empirical findings indicate that firms undertaking a big bang ERP implementation through well-known international vendors are more likely to be successful than those firms adopting a step by-step-approach with local vendors. A number of critical success factors (CSFs), consistent with existing studies of ERP implementation, were identified. This study demonstrates strong interlinkages between the identified CSFs, with top management support playing a central and enabling role amongst the other CSFs. Furthermore, the study identified high absorptive capacity as another important CSF for ERP implementation. The thesis offers a number of contributions. Firstly, it introduces the concept of absorptive capacity into a consideration of the CSFs of ERP implementation. It also provides a more in-depth understanding of the CSFs necessary for ERP implementation, how these are inter-related and demonstrates the central role of active top management involvement throughout the implementation process

Social Media Assimilation in Firms: Investigating the Roles of Absorptive Capacity and Institutional Pressures

Firms are increasingly employing social media to manage relationships with partner organizations, yet the role of institutional pressures in social media assimilation has not been studied. We investigate social media assimilation in firms using a model that combines the two theoretical streams of IT adoption: organizational innovation and institutional theory. The study uses a composite view of absorptive capacity that includes both previous experience with similar technology and the general ability to learn and exploit new technologies. We find that institutional pressures are an important antecedent to absorptive capacity, an important measure of organizational learning capability. The paper augments theory in finding the role and limits of institutional pressures. Institutional pressures are found to have no direct effect on social media assimilation but to impact absorptive capacity, which mediates its influence on assimilation

Examining The Factors That Affect ERP Assimilation

The aim of this study is to identify the factors that influence the assimilation of enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems in the post-implementation stage. Building on organizational information processing theory (OIPT) and absorptive capacity (AC), we propose an integrated model, which examines the relationship among organizational fit, absorptive capacity, environmental uncertainty, and ERP assimilation. Based on the survey data from 98 firms that have implemented ERP, most of the proposed hypotheses were supported, showing that initial fit, potential AC, realized AC, and heterogeneity jointly affect ERP assimilation. Task uncertainty (hostility and heterogeneity) negatively moderates the relationship between initial fit and ERP assimilation. The implications for both theory and practice are discussed

Innovation and Foreign Technology in Italy,1861-2011

The paper explores the long run evolution of Italy’s performance in technological innovation as a function of international technology transfer, reconstructing the different phases and dimensions of Italian innovative activity, tracking the transfer of foreign technological knowledge through a number of channels, analysing the impact of imported technology. The study is based on a newly constructed dataset, over the 1861-2009 period, composed of variables related to: innovation activity performance; foreign technology transfer; domestic absorptive and innovative capability. The analysis highlights, also by econometric assessment, the significant contribution of foreign technology both to innovation activity results and to productivity growth. Differences across channels of technology transfer and historical phases emerge, also in connection with the evolution of human capital endowment and domestic innovative capacity. Machinery imports contributed positively both to innovation activity and to productivity growth; inward FDI contributed positively to productivity growth, but not to indigenous innovation activity; the accumulation of technical human capital fuelled both. In the long Italian Golden Age, for the first time the association of foreign technological knowledge with indigenous innovation processes strengthened productivity significantly. More recently instead the dismal productivity growth is negatively associated with formalised innovation activity under-performance and reduced imports of disembodied technologyItaly,Technology Transfer,Innovation,Absorptive Capability,Patenting