Energizing the Nexus of Corporate Knowledge: A Portal Toward the Virtual Organization

In the age of virtual organizations, managers and experts cease to be lone custodians of the corporate knowl- edge base. Knowledge must be shared across cultural and time-space boundaries to create strategic frontiers in global and virtual enterprises. However, we believe that organizations have barely scratched the surface of the “knowledge sharing game” played across virtual environments. In technology-based organizations, for example, technical knowledge must be meticulously captured and conveyed in a highly cognitive manner to have substantive benefits in raising the competence and productivity of globally-dispersed workers. In this light, we contend that richer forms of knowledge/media representations, such as virtual reality (VR) and 3D imagery, could be creatively utilized to enable improvements in knowledge management, especially within virtual workspace. We further argue that organizational learning evolves to a higher level only when knowl- edge management is radically improved and effectively exploits “organizational memory” with the aid of IT (Stein and Zwass 1995). This paper explores how a technology-based firm, APV Anhydro, has extracted technical knowledge from its experts and creatively presented such knowledge in rich media representations using VR/3D technologies. This enabled APV to share rich technical knowledge across its global marketing operations, and as a consequence, accelerated its organizational learning process

Securing the Future of Information Systems as an Academic Discipline

There are reasons to be concerned about the future of the academic discipline (or field) of Information Systems. Enrollments have dropped, survey courses are questioned, some writers have suggested that the IS function will soon disappear, and some well-known schools have yet to acknowledge the existence of a new academic discipline. These events are enough to create uncertainty in a relatively young field less than 40 years old. Is there a real crisis, or is the current situation temporary? The paper evaluates six pessimistic arguments about the field. Overall, while problems exist, we believe the prognosis is good. The need for and the value of the IS function and systems continue to be high. Investment continues to be strong. The preconditions are in place for con- tinued strength for the IS academic discipline. Are there things the field needs to do right in order to secure the future of the field? Perhaps muddling along will work, but proactive actions are more likely to be success- ful. This paper makes five recommendations for proactively making sure the field prospers and makes real contributions through our research, our teaching, and our relationships with other academic fields and practitioners

National IT Policies: European and United States Perspectives

As we are entering the twenty-first century, an increasing number of governments around the globe are formulating or implementing“national”ITpolicies. Amajordriveunderlyingtheseeffortsistherecognitionoftheemergingworldofthe information highway and the networked society and the new business opportunities that lie ahead

Panel 21 Enhancing the Stature of the IS Field

At the AIS’95 conference, many were inspired by Tom Davenport’s keynote address. Tom lamented that when things happen in the real world about which IS researchers could provide learned insight based on over thirty years of research, the media rarely calls upon us to comment

Panel 9 Playing Politics with Information Technology: A Global Perspective

[No abstract available