Challenges for Knowledge Communities in Technical Work Domains

By drawing on the specific lessons learned from one case study, this paper will discuss collaboration, and issues upon knowledge communities in technical work domains. The results are based on a case study in a manufacturing process, thermal spraying, which can be characterised as very complex and technical. In order to understand the concept of knowledge communities in technical work domains I argue for an elaborated approach by going across different collaboration levels and organisational cultures, into issues of communities of practice. The discussion ends up with three main challenges for forming and supporting knowledge communities. These challenges might inspire an adequate work milieu, cultivated by both shared meanings and technology support

Boundary dialogues in user-centric innovation

This paper is based on a user-centric innovation project, Free2Ride, which is seen as an example of community interaction that overcomes boundaries. Free2Ride aimed at developing a piece of ICT safety equipment consisting of a sender (on the horse) and a receiver (application in a smartphone) to be used by equestrian club members during their everyday riding activities. We will answer the research question of what the characteristics of a boundary dialogue in user-centric innovation activities are. The aim of the paper is to propose a model describing the characteristics of boundary dialogue in user-centric innovation that involve different communities of practices such as ICT developers, users and researchers. We applied a combination of research approaches consisting of action research and engaged scholarship approach. The theoretical framework for analyzing our findings is communities of practices with a specific interest in boundary spanning and learning dialogues. Our contribution is a model describing the characteristics of boundary dialogues in user-centric innovation. An important element of that model is the mental wandering, inwards and outwards, by core members in a community. We discuss the temporal as well as the symbolic nature of the mental wandering during the boundary dialogue in user-centric innovation activities

The Dynamics Of Interaction: Exploring A Living Lab Innovation Process From A Community Of Practice Perspective

This paper is based on a living lab project, which is an open, user-centric, innovation approach, where several actors from industry, user groups and academia are involved. The research question is: How can interaction dynamics be understood in a living lab innovation process? We applied an action-oriented research approach, where the empirical results are from The Find Project (TFP), which aim is to customize an ICT product based on the needs of a user group. The findings are analyzed from a community of practice perspective where three different communities, i) researchers from Halmstad Living Lab (HLL), ii) ICT developers (ICTD) and iii) next of kin of demented elderly persons (NOKD), represented the unit of analysis. We identified situations and activities that played a vital role for the innovation process in terms of boundary interaction dynamics. The contribution of our research to innovation theory is a combination and further exploration of the boundary spanning and communities of practice theories. We have developed a conceptual model describing the dynamics in boundary interactions of an ICT innovation process with regard to boundary objects-inuse and brokering. The conceptual model highlights two different levels of brokering: i) inner-level brokering and ii) outer-level brokering

Boundaries of Logics in Municipality Communicators’ Facebook Practice: Towards a New Public Service Competence

With an increased use of external online platforms, digital government logics are gradually intertwined with external, algorithmic, crowd-influenced value logics of social media platforms. This new scene especially affects administration, which can no longer neutrally deliver public service, but becomes involved in processes of consideration and judging what rules and traditions seem most appropriate in the situation. Through deep interviews and workshops with municipal communicators, we examine this balancing act when communicators use social media for external communication. We use a practice perspective to characterize and conceptualize an emerging approach to public service

Towards a New Design Metaphor: Supporting Boundary Objects as Means of Knowledge Sharing in Community Networks

Working in the knowledge sector means dealing with increasing amounts of information, technology and people. Organizations as well as individuals in communities need to constantly maintain large repositories and networks of people, including colleagues, clients, experts, acquaintances and friends. This situation leads to complexity where person’s cognitive capability is insufficient when dealing with huge repositories of information and interaction. Viewing it as an individual problem has resulted in applications that highlight the need for structure and organization. We here define these applications in different levels where the first level is the office application generation, referring to “desktops” metaphors. The next generation, groupware applications, offers structure and process support for collaboration, but is still a rather limited “forum” metaphor. Our main argument is that current application generations and design metaphors are too limited when supporting the sharing of thoughts and associations in different community networks. We believe that a large portion of this problem is not related to information itself, but rather to processes of information categorization, navigation and interaction within and between communities. In our results we advocate the need for a new application generation and a new design metaphor, i.e. brainware applications based on “neural” metaphors. The result is a review of three application generations based on different design metaphors. We discuss several implications for a new design metaphor and suggest a design draft that supports boundary objects as means of knowledge sharing within and between communities

Assessing the business value of electronic order-to-payment cycle

In this paper, we build an evaluation tool for assessing the business impacts of an electronic order-topayment cycle. Based on a literature review and expert interviews, we formulate a three-stage model which includes performance indicators for electronic order, electronic invoice, and electronic payment processes. In addition, we pinpoint the inter-process linkages. We test the proposed evaluation tool in a business context and find that the impacts of automating the order-to-payment cycle relate closely to cost avoidance. However, a strong emphasis on asset utilization can be observed as well – better use of IT could enhance utilization of existing human resources and capital, affecting company profitability

The Analogue Disruption of Digitalization – The Local Bases of the Hospitality Industry in a Global Economy

There are vital challenges for organization undergoing digital transformation, especially those that rely more and more on the ever-evolving platform economy. Third-party platforms have rearranged the market conditions for organisations, especially for service-based organisations such as hotels. The hotel industry faces key problems as they need to have the power to control and augment the value chain supported by an ongoing access to accurate data (such as online customer behavior). We discuss on a conceptual level how such disruptive economic changes appear in the analogue and physical practice, at place in hotel organisations. We explore the practice of analogue disruption as it emerges as struggles and discontinuities that may not bring the expected flow of value to the business. This paper aims to examine how analogue disruptions takes place due to the ongoing digitalization in the hotel sector through the platform economy. We here apply a qualitative analysis with interpretative methodologies, that will open for further knowledge and insights on the analogue disruption of digital transformation

Re-organizing for Digital Product Platforms: The Work of Vehicle Motion Engineers

As flexibility and generativity of digitized information continuously afford new possibilities, a significant challenge for organizations becomes pinpointing forms and kinds of practice that are befitting from various aspects. Two overarching digitization eras have so far determined the greatness of the challenge for organizations; ‘computerization’, and ‘the Internet’. Today, a third era of digitization is marked by the emergence of digitized products. As an increasing number of code lines and software are being incorporated in previously physical products such as cars, they can be used as complete products on one layer, and simultaneously turn into platforms enabling other firms to develop and integrate new components, content, or services on another layer. As digital product platform’s multiple design layers need to be open to various applications and agendas, their development requires new justifications and approaches for organizing work. By looking into the characteristics of digital product platforms, we discuss the shifts in the work of engineers as they engage in developing digitized products along three main courses of action. We illustrate how these courses of action are formed based on the requirements of developing digital product platforms rather than managerial presuppositions