An Investigation of Factors Motivating Employee Attitudes and Intentions to Share Knowledge in Homeland Security

The terrorist events of September 11, 2001, highlighted the inability of federal employees and officials to collaborate and share actionable knowledge-based information with the right people at the right time. However, much of the literature on knowledge sharing provided insight into knowledge sharing in private sector organizations and foreign public-sector organizations, instead of domestic public sectors or the United States federal government. While the importance of knowledge sharing for homeland security has been documented in the literature, there are no established frameworks that evaluate knowledge sharing motive and intentions in this context. The main goal of this research was to understand what motivates employee attitudes and intentions to share knowledge, by empirically assessing a model, testing the impact of the factors of expected rewards, expected contributions, expected associations, trust, and information technology (IT) type and usage on employee attitudes and intentions toward knowledge sharing in homeland security. The technology acceptance model and the theory of reasoned action served as the theoretical framework to understand motivation factors that affect employee attitudes, intentions, and their influence on knowledge sharing behaviors, as well as the technology used in sharing knowledge. Data were collected from employees and affiliates of the United States Department of Homeland Security (N = 271), using a Web-based survey. The effects of expected rewards, expected contributions, expected associations, trust, and IT type usage were studied using regression analyses. The statistical results revealed that expected contributions and expected associations were positively related to attitudes to share knowledge, but expected rewards were not significantly related to attitudes to share knowledge. Results also revealed that attitudes to share knowledge was positively related to intentions to share knowledge, but trust did not significantly moderate this relationship. Finally, the results revealed that intentions to share knowledge was positively related to knowledge sharing, and IT-type usage positively moderated this relationship. The research model showed significant results to support five of the seven hypotheses proposed and revealed key findings on factors that influence employee attitudes and intentions to share knowledge in homeland security. This research advances prior findings and contributes to knowledge sharing research, practice, and overall literature regarding knowledge sharing, individual behaviors, attitudes, and intentions to share knowledge, technology acceptance, and usage. This contribution to the body of knowledge provides researchers, policymakers, and decision-makers with foundations for improving collaboration through information and knowledge sharing across traditional and nontraditional organizational boundaries

Electronic information sharing in local government authorities: Factors influencing the decision-making process

This is the post-print version of the final paper published in International Journal of Information Management. The published article is available from the link below. Changes resulting from the publishing process, such as peer review, editing, corrections, structural formatting, and other quality control mechanisms may not be reflected in this document. Changes may have been made to this work since it was submitted for publication. Copyright @ 2013 Elsevier B.V.Local Government Authorities (LGAs) are mainly characterised as information-intensive organisations. To satisfy their information requirements, effective information sharing within and among LGAs is necessary. Nevertheless, the dilemma of Inter-Organisational Information Sharing (IOIS) has been regarded as an inevitable issue for the public sector. Despite a decade of active research and practice, the field lacks a comprehensive framework to examine the factors influencing Electronic Information Sharing (EIS) among LGAs. The research presented in this paper contributes towards resolving this problem by developing a conceptual framework of factors influencing EIS in Government-to-Government (G2G) collaboration. By presenting this model, we attempt to clarify that EIS in LGAs is affected by a combination of environmental, organisational, business process, and technological factors and that it should not be scrutinised merely from a technical perspective. To validate the conceptual rationale, multiple case study based research strategy was selected. From an analysis of the empirical data from two case organisations, this paper exemplifies the importance (i.e. prioritisation) of these factors in influencing EIS by utilising the Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) technique. The intent herein is to offer LGA decision-makers with a systematic decision-making process in realising the importance (i.e. from most important to least important) of EIS influential factors. This systematic process will also assist LGA decision-makers in better interpreting EIS and its underlying problems. The research reported herein should be of interest to both academics and practitioners who are involved in IOIS, in general, and collaborative e-Government, in particular

The impact of national culture on e-government implementation: A comparison case study

Over the past decade there has been increasing interest in the IS research literature on the impact of cultural differences on the development and use of information and communications technologies (Ives & Jarvenpaa, 1991; Shore & Venkatachalam, 1995; Tractinsky & Jarvenpaa, 1995, Myers and Tan, 2002, Ali and Brooks, 2008). In this paper the authors explore the influence of national culture on eGov implementation. The authors have conducted a comparative case study in two different countries the UK as a developed country and Sari Lanka as a developing country. The research findings highlight the potential influence of cultural differences on eGov implementation

The complexities of electronic services implementation and institutionalisation in the public sector

This is the post-print version of the final paper published in Information & Management. The published article is available from the link below. Changes resulting from the publishing process, such as peer review, editing, corrections, structural formatting, and other quality control mechanisms may not be reflected in this document. Changes may have been made to this work since it was submitted for publication. Copyright @ 2013 Elsevier B.V.Electronic service implementation (ESI) in the public sector attempts to improve efficiency, effectiveness, and transparency of governmental departments. Despite having provided the necessary infrastructure and investment, many governments have struggled to realise such aims due to the various forces that challenge implementation and institutionalisation. Using institutional theory as a lens, we explored the forces influencing the implementation and institutionalisation of ESI in the public sector. While our results reinforced previous research in IT implementation and organisational transformation, they showed that the dynamic nature of technology poses unanticipated pressures, and that these can impede the implementation and institutionalisation process

ELECTRONIC INFORMATION SHARING IN LOCAL GOVERNMENT: THE DECISION-MAKING PROCESS

Recently local authorities have been placed under enormous pressure due to problems arising from poor decision-making in relation to the sharing of personal information. While in some circumstances the incompetence of agency employees is identified as the cause, in other circumstances organisational failure, implicitly driven by inter-organisational distrust, is to blame for inappropriate decisions taken with regards to sharing information. Sometimes implicit policies and regulations set by policy makers are blamed, while at other times, explicit rules of confidentiality and data-protection acts are accused. During the last decades, several Local Government Authorities (LGAs) in the United Kingdom have started to employ Inter-Organisational Information Systems (IOIS) to support information sharing and networked collaboration within their departments in order to meet a diverse range of citizen needs including housing services, social care services, education services, etc. However, reaching this level of cross-agency collaboration is not easy and requires additional time and effort by individuals and agencies involved. Therefore, this paper proposes and validates a novel conceptual framework that can be used as a tool for decision-making while sharing information electronically. The framework consists of four main levels: (a) investigation and presentation of factors influencing Electronic Information Sharing (EIS) in LGAs based on external environment, organisational capacity, technology environment, EIS characteristics, and inter-departmental environment, (b) investigation and presentation of the processes that an LGA department should carry out to decide whether to share information with another department, (c) mapping of the influential factors on the participation phases, and (d) prioritisation of the factors influencing EIS in LGAs in different decision-making phases

Factors influencing interdepartmental information sharing practice in electronic government agencies

Electronic information sharing is a key to effective government.This study is conducted to investigate the factors influencing interdepartmental information sharing (IS) practice in electronic government (EG) agencies.Based on previous study and observation, the issues on electronic government and information sharing are highlighted and the influencing factors are identified. Three domains of factors that are considered in this study are individual, organizational and technological factors. This paper proposes the conceptual framework of interdepartmental information sharing for electronic government agencies in Malaysia

Extending IT infrastructures in the service sector organisations through enterprise resource planning – a telecom case study

Copyright @ 2012 ISEing.Service Sector Organisations (SSOs) have significantly focused on adopting and implementing Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems to automate their prime business processes, enhance organisational productivity with lower costs and prompt service delivery to fulfil consumer demands. Thus, ERP systems are considered as a principal source to provide imperative information vital for strategic decision making process. On the contrary, ERP systems adoption and implementation is also highly considered as a challenging and expensive process that not only requires rigorous efforts but also demands to have an exhaustive investigation of influential factors that are critical to the adoption and implementation of ERP systems. As a result, the authors exhibit that it is of great significance to investigate this area within SSOs. In so doing, this paper thus focuses on the ERP critical success factors from five different categories such as: stakeholders; process; technology; organisation; and project based on the literature analysis. These perspectives comprise of 24 factors that are imperative for a successful ERP adoption and implementation. These factors are validated through an in-depth qualitative single case study based research. The findings from the literature and empirical demonstrate that most of the factors influencing the decision making process for ERP adoption and implementation are highly significant with exception to few that have either low or medium importance

FrAmework for Multi-Agency Environments (FAME) : Final Report of the Learning & Evaluation Strand

Framework for Multi-agency Environments (FAME) was one of the Local Government On-Line funded National Projects sponsored by the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister (ODPM). Within FAME there were six local projects (known as strands) led by English local authorities in partnership with service providers. Each strand aimed to improve a particular set of services (for example, to vulnerable older people or disabled children) through effective and appropriate exchange of information. These local projects worked with IT suppliers (known as technology partners) to produce a technical system to facilitate the exchange and management of client / patient information across agency boundaries. Not all the outputs of FAME were in the form of IT systems. Improvements to business processes and information sharing practices were also expected. Newcastle University led two further strands, the Generic Framework and Learning & Evaluation. The Generic Framework identifies and describes nine building blocks that are essential to effective multi-agency working. The FAME website http://www.fame-uk.org contains details of these building blocks, together with a ‘how to’ guide and a toolkit to support local authorities and their partners in assessing their ‘readiness’ for multi-agency working. This is the report of the Learning & Evaluation strand. The Learning & Evaluation team worked closely with the local FAME project teams, who were supportive of our work and generous with their time. Throughout the project we reported back to the local teams both individually and collectively. Evaluation was thoroughgoing and critical, not an exercise in public relations or advocacy. It is important to stress that learning is likely to be gained from what did not work as well as from what did. Problems and setbacks, as well as successes, are therefore documented and analysed in the report