An integrated customer knowledge management framework for academic libraries

The ability of academic libraries to produce timely and effective responses to various environmental changes constitutes a major challenge for them to enhance their survival rate and maintain growth in competitive environments. This article provides a conceptual model as an analytical tool for both improving current services as well as creating innovative services through appropriate management of client knowledge in academic libraries. Through an exploratory qualitative case study and from reviewing the current literature in knowledge management, a theoretical framework is proposed for managing customer knowledge. The proposed framework is expected to improve existing library services and create new innovative services in academic libraries. © 2012 by The University of Chicago. All rights reserved

Investigating the impact of facebook use on cancer survivors' psychological well-being

Rapid growth of Social Network Sites (SNSs) use by cancer survivors makes it important to examine whether there is a relationship between the use of these online communities and cancer survivors' psychological well-being. This article poses the question of how the Facebook use as the most popular SNS, may impact cancer survivors' psychological well-being. To answer this question a comprehensive literature review of studies conducted in information systems and health disciplines has been undertaken and a theoretical model is proposed. This study is expected to contribute to the existing knowledge base through the development of a new theoretical model which introduces and explains the ways that SNS use may impact cancer survivors' psychological well-being. It provides important information on the health-related SNSs use and is envisioned to assist health care organizations and cancer survivors to use SNS as an e-health application. © (2013) by the AIS/ICIS Administrative Office All rights reserved

An awareness-based meta-mechanism for e-commerce buyer coalitions

© 2014, Springer Science+Business Media New York. Many of the existing theories in e-Commerce and Buyer Coalition assume that all persons involved adopt self-interested strategies by seeking their own gains using environmental/market information. In reality however, such information may not be complete. Also, each person’s knowledge may differ from others. By adopting a collaborative perspective towards the buyer coalition process, this study introduces and validates an awareness-based mechanism for buyer coalitions that generates various outcomes corresponding to different levels of awareness of the collaborating roles within the process, where ‘awareness’ is defined in terms of the knowledge of the collaboration context of the coalition. The theoretical foundation of the study is an overlapping space of Game Theory (Hassan et al. Information Systems Frontiers 16(4):523–542, 2014), e-Commerce (Yang et al. Information Systems Frontiers 16(1):7–18, 2014), and Knowledge Management (Daneshgar & Wang Knowledge Based Systems 20(8):736–744, 2007). The research methodology is design science using simulation software for demonstration and proof of concept. Results indicate that higher levels of awareness of buyers do not necessarily increase total coalition discount but it enables individual buyers to make more opportunistic and calculated decisions to protect their personal interests

Operationalizing Off-task Sociability of Asynchronous Computer Supported Collaborative Learning

Many previous studies have emphasized the role of the sociability of the computer supported collaborative learning (CSCL) environments on learning achievements. Also, recent studies have reported that other than on-task interaction, students have considerable off-task interactions in CSCL environments. Yet, more studies are needed to clarify the off-task aspect of social interactions in CSCL and sociability of the environment. This paper attempts to investigate and operationalize sociability of CSCL environments from off-task point of view in order to further clarify this aspect of CSCL. It first reviews previous sociability questionnaires and instruments and then proposes a list of measure to represent and operationalize off-task sociability of CSCL. The proposed list of measures is then validated through experts judges and finally implications are discussed

Managing Incompatible Impacts of Organizational Values on Knowledge Sharing

At any given time the two rival organizational values cooperation and competition coexist in any team and/or organization in different intensities and mix, depending on both internal factors (e.g., culture, task dimensions of accuracy and speed) and external factors (e.g., market and competitive forces). However, determining that desirable intensity and mix of these two values seems to be a challenging task in the current literature and no explicit method currently exists for measuring factors that may lead to determination of such desirable mix. Considering the crucial impacts of these values on organizational behaviours, this in turn may result in loss of efficiency and productivity in organizations. In this study a systematic review of current literatures in the areas of knowledge management, social psychology, organizational studies and Computer-Supported Cooperative Systems (CSCW) studies, is used to uncover a research theme for analysing the impacts of the two rival organizational values competition and cooperation on knowledge sharing behaviours through promotive interaction between individuals. Supporting the IT-culture conflict theory, this study is considered as a research theme which investigates the impact of culture on IT application and use. More specifically, by combining the goal interdependency theory of conflict, social learning theory, the internal organizational forces of competition and cooperation and the awareness net analysis, the present study deeply investigate the term tension between cooperative and competitive values and their impact on organizational behaviours. It then introduces factors that can assist in finding an optimal mix of the cooperative and competitive values in organizations at any given time. The present study also relates the above optimal mix/tension with the organization’s reward structure, the task dimensions of ‘speed’ and ‘accuracy’, group characteristics and organizational climate in order to draw inferences for attaining an optimal level of process awareness for individuals while performing their tasks within an organization

User Requirements of a Crowdsourcing Platform for Researchers: Findings From a Series of Focus Groups

While the concept of crowdsourcing has generated significant interest in the information systems (IS) research community, the application of crowdsourcing for research itself remains limited. This limitation in the adoption of crowdsourcing by researchers is partly explained by the lack of a crowdsourcing platform that is suitable for their needs. This paper presents the findings of a focus group study involving28 researchers which aimed to reveal how such a platform should be designed. Based on the study, we are able to articulate a set of functional and non-functional requirements of a crowdsourcing platform for researchers. The findings will support researchers in design science and computer science to develop an appropriate crowdsourcing platform for researchers

Identifying knowledge transfer requirement in global organisational contexts

This article studies the inter-organisational (IO) knowledge transfer in global supply chains. A representative case was selected that consists of a number of laboratory analysis equipment dealer companies in Thailand and their customer companies in different industries in various parts of the world. Using the theories and frameworks in knowledge transfer in inter-organisational relationships, a survey questionnaire instrument was designed and data were collected from 73 employees of dealer companies and 87 employees of their customer companies (users of the laboratory equipment) scattered in different industries worldwide. Results indicate that the intra-organisation characteristics of the dealer companies which are expected to affect transfer of the necessary knowledge to the customers has no significant relationship with the nature of knowledge that is transferred or with the inter-organisation management. Moreover, there is no statistical significance in the intra-organisation relationships within the client companies perhaps because the majority of laboratory analysis equipment dealer companies import a great part of their products from overseas companies and they do not possess the technology themselves. Based on the findings, appropriate guidelines were provided for the enhancement of the effectiveness of the knowledge transfer process within the wide case study of this research. © 2012 Inderscience Enterprises Ltd