Creating And Sharing Knowledge Through A Corporate Social Networking Site: The Impact Of Employees\u27 Perceptions On Effectiveness

There have been various claims that enterprise social networking sites (ESN) might improve business effectiveness and performance. Nevertheless, many of the initiatives supported by ESNs have failed. This paper argues that divergent perceptions about ESNs across the different levels of the organization may explain failures in ESNs’ design and implementation. Using an extended version of the Technological Frames of Reference framework (Orlikowski & Gash, 1994), this paper reports on a study that analyzed employee’s perceptions about an ESN within a software engineering firm. It was found that significant divergent perceptions in the organization led to a social order that discouraged employees to create and share knowledge through the ESN. This paper highlights the importance of aligning top management perceptions about the ESN with its actual scope. It also highlights the relevance of aligning perceptions about the ESN across the different levels of the organization. This paper proposes extending the original Technological Frames of Reference framework in order to better understand people’s perceptions about technologies that support knowledge management systems. It also proposes an explanatory model for understanding how people’s perceptions about a corporate social networking site impact on its usage

RFID/INTERNET OF THINGS SYSTEMS ON THE BOUNDARY BETWEEN PUBLIC AND PRIVATE SECTORS: AN ANT STUDY OF MULTIPLICITY

Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) systems are becoming increasingly common in applications that are shared between the public and private sectors. These systems facilitate supply chain, traceability and sensor functions, not to mention the application of RFID technology in enabling the Internet of Things. Despite their increasing ubiquity, the management of public-private RFID systems is under-researched and little understood. This research addresses a gap in literature by using Actor-Network Theory (ANT) to uncover the public-private RFID network. It was found that the public-private sector relationship is initially characterised by stereotypical views which diminish as sectors work together. Further, the public sector in this context was seen to be a multiplicity with four different performances, public sector as a member of the public-private partnership; as legislator; as enforcer and as funding provider. This multiplicity is shown to lead to confusion within public-private partnerships as members of the partnership are not always clear about which performance of the public sector they are enacting, or interacting with. ANT provided a sound basis to explore such a complex networked system, its inclusion of technology within the construction of the social offers a way of understanding complexity within internet of things based applications

Demystifying the Role of the Steward

This study seeks to enhance understanding regarding the public sector stewardship of integrated services delivery initiatives in joined-up digital government, with a particular focus on understanding the nature of the steward’s role in practice. This specifically includes the skills required of those performing stewardship, and the key challenges stewards faced. Eight interviews supplemented by the use of reflective journals were completed with stewards of the New Zealand public sector to understand their practice and perception of the steward concept. Three tiers of stewardship practice were identified: (1) Internal Stewardship, (2) Inter-Agency Stewardship, and (3) Stewardship as a Governance Model. Each tier exhibited unique challenges. Participants overcame these challenges through performing two complementary sub-roles: Navigator and Storyteller. Understanding the operational challenges of the stewardship tiers and how the stewardship roles were enacted has implications for both practitioners and researchers

“You have a few wordy spots”: Role-related Impacts of Working with an Intelligent Assistant

This study examines the role-related impacts of working with an intelligent assistant. Using collaborative autoethnography, we analyse the impact of working with an intelligent writing assistant (IWA) on our roles as teachers. Drawing on role theory, we find that working with the IWA had significant impacts on role enactment, role set, role multiplexity, role stress, and role self-concept. The social setting for role enactment changed as key dyadic relationships became triadic, and the IWA assumed a co-regulatory role, mediating our performance as coregulators of student learning. Collaborating with the IWA created a need to maintain control by switching between micro-identities (our role of teacher/mentor and our new role of mentee of the IWA). The study demonstrates that significant role-related impacts can arise from human-machine collaboration when AI aims to enhance human performance. It highlights the need for new adaptive capabilities as humans become involved in new triadic human-AI relationships

Online Communities of Practice and Professional Change: a Three-Tier View of the Knowledge Embedding Process

This interpretivist study, in the field of information Systems, investigates the process of transformative professional change using a knowledge management lens. The goal of the research was to understand how online communities of practice (CoPs) facilitate the transfer and embedding of professional knowledge. It was guided by the question: How do online CoPs facilitate the transfer and embedding of professional knowledge? This topic was of contemporary and strategic significance in New Zealand: The government had embarked on a strategy to transform teaching in NZ schools, aiming to leverage a major investment in IT infrastructure, using online CoPs to help embed a new paradigm of studentcentred, ICT-enriched learning at system level. There was, however, no research to suggest how this might occur. Despite the increasing use of online CoPs by organisations, and an expansion in the number of tools available for this purpose, there is little understanding of how online CoPs can facilitate knowledge transfer. The way in which knowledge embedding (deep transfer) occurs, and the role online CoPs may play in supporting this process, is particularly poorly understood. This is significant issue in this internet-rich era, when developing nations are aiming to cultivate knowledge economies. I conducted the research using a case research strategy, qualitative methods and an inductive process of theory generation. The research case was a national professional development programme for schools, with five CoP subunits: Four were regionally based school cluster CoPs and one was a distributed blogging community. (Membership of this community overlapped with three of the cluster CoPs.) Based on my analysis of data, and on feedback from participants, I found that three complementary mechanisms were operating simultaneously, facilitating the embedding of knowledge at meso, micro and macro levels. The result of my study is a threelevel explanatory theory. At the meso (school) level, knowledge embedding followed a six-stage cycle, with different activities and issues characterising each stage. Online CoPs played a different role at each stage. At the micro (individual) level, knowledge embedding was driven by teachers' crossings of multiple engagement spaces (communication contexts) in a polycontextual environment. Crossings drove personalisation and facilitated the linking of theory and practice, leading to deep individual understanding. At the macro level, the embedding of knowledge was driven by the brokering function of a middle layer community in a system of overlapping, tiered CoPs. Key roles were played by two kinds of knowledge brokers: connector-leaders and follower-feeders. All three embedding-facilitating mechanisms promoted five fundamental knowledge embedding processes: focusing, persuading, aligning, adapting, and owning (developing ownership)

Technology Knowledge in Marketing Ecosystems: a Framework and Research Agenda

Information and Communication Technology (ICT) continues to transform societies and contributes significantly to the socio-economic advancement of developing nations, which are beginning to experience the same service-based transformations previously observed in the western world. However, while the proliferation in ICT is considered a crucial enabler of this digital service transformation, ICT4D projects continue to fail, and do not achieve the anticipated societal impact. This research-in-progress identifies the key challenges associated with ICT4D research to date, and proposes potential pathways to remedy these by using the metatheoretical lens of Service-dominant (SD) logic. We put forward a novel research framework that summarises the opportunities and challenges at the intersection of ICT4D and service research, and identify future avenues related to research exploring ICT-enabled transformation in developing countries

Polycontextuality: Driving Professional Change in Online Communities of Practice

This paper reports on a case research project that investigated how online communities facilitate professional change. The context was an ICT professional development programme which aimed to transform teaching in New Zealand. Research indicates that transformations in professional behaviour require changes in professional knowledge – interpretive frameworks, values and methods. However, there is little understanding of how to facilitate this. We focused on this issue, guided by the question, “How do online communities of practice facilitate the embedding of professional knowledge?” Embedding was driven by repeated crossings between engagement spaces (communication contexts) in a polycontextual system. polycontextuality has been linked with expert knowledge acquisition. Here, the number of contexts was dramatically increased. As individuals crossed between engagement spaces, with a shared focus, they adapted and recombined content to fit the demands of each context. This required deep engagement with ideas. Embedding was evidenced by theory-practice crossings, and personalisation of recurrent, powerful themes

VALUE IN THE MASH: EXPLORING THE BENEFITS, BARRIERS AND ENABLERS OF OPEN DATA APPS

The open government paradigm relies on the provision and reuse of open government data (OGD) to improve transparency and create new sources of valu. This study aims to progress understanding of OGD beyond a theoretical commentary by exploring the perceived sources of valu of mashups (online services that combine diverse OGD), and to examine issus that impact on, and facilitate, the delivery of this valu from an ˜insider´ perspective. Based on open-ended interviews with 17 individuals actively involved in OGD application design, use, and advocacy in New Zealand (ranked fourth in the 2013 Global Open Data Barometer) nine key sources of valu were identified: Ease of discovery, improved data quality, bringing knowledge into relevant contexts, economic benefits, social benefits, cost reduction and efficiencies, predictive valu, transparency, and ability to explore and play. Twelve barriers to delivering this valu were found, ranging from change-related issus to problems relating to sustainability. Six facilitators were identified as helping to overcome these barriers and realise the valu of OGD