Identification and Measurement of the Knowledge-Sharing Requirements in Collaborative Business Processes

This chapter introduces a modelling language called Awareness Net for both representation as well as measuring the knowledge-sharing requirements in collaborative business processes. It is a conceptual model that facilitates representation and analysis of knowledge-sharing requirements of the actors in collaborative business processes. The representation and measurement are handled by a set of collaborative semantic concepts and their relationships. The proposed language enforces overall specification of what matters to the actors in collaborative processes when collaborating in business process to keep them aware of the collaboration context.

Towards an Emotionally Intelligent IT Organization

Considerable attention has recently been focused on the area of “emotional intelligence” (EI) in business administration circles as well as in IT management. Often, it is being suggested that IT workers need the “soft skills” of emotional literacy, especially when dealing with users and co-workers. However, how can one develop this “emotional intelligence”? What might be its various components? Moreover, to what degree and how might IT management get involved to try to move its IT organization on the EI path? Such issues are discussed in this chapter.

Knowledge Management of E-Business Initiatives Within Two Global Organizations

The concept of Knowledge Management concerns the creation of structures that combine the most advanced elements of technological resources and the indispensable input of human response and decision making. This chapter addresses a very interesting topic—Knowledge Management (KM) and e-business initiatives within global organizations. It compares and contrasts the experiences of two global corporations as they have conceived and implemented KM initiatives. After in-depth secondary research on the subject, both companies developed their own KM in e-business strategy. The two case studies discussed in this chapter highlight Business-to-Business (B2B), Business-to-Consumer (B2C), and Business-to-Employee (B2E) initiatives at these two global organizations. This provides concepts and viewpoints related to the drivers of KM, the hurdles to KM in an organization, the elements of KM philosophy and process, how KM can come to be understood as a critical part of a company’s competitive strategy, and how to deploy a sustainable KM system that suits the business needs of an organization.

E-Government

Increasingly, governments are using information and communication technologies (ICTs) to communicate internally, with citizens, and with corporations. The electronic interactions between governments, citizens, and/or corporations are usually referred to as e-government. E-government as such attempts to increase the efficiency of government operations and of service delivery (i.e., “reduce red tape”), but also to increase citizens’ trust in public administration. Some authors even foresee democratic renewal, in conjunction with a drastically reengineered government apparatus. This chapter explores the normative, managerial, and technological antecedents of e-governments and explores the manifestation of e-government. It does so by focusing on goals, visions, and beliefs (“rhetorics”) at national and supranational policy levels (i.e. the American and European e-government policies) and by analyzing the technological and managerial problems encountered at the shop floor of municipal e-government initiatives (“reality”).

Information and Communication Technologies in Supply Chain Management

One of the important fields of application of the modern information and communication technology (ICT) has been the Supply Chain Management (SCM). Despite the fact that ICT is the determining element in SCM automation and rationalization, practical use of ICT in SCM is in its starting rather than progressive phase. The present philosophy of logistics is characterized as coordinated cooperation between companies in supply chains, through which it is possible to achieve higher productivity than in any other way. These cooperation activities represent a typical content of logistical centers, which provide a wide range of services for their clients. This chapter focuses on designing a multi-integral logistical center and analyzing it from the aspect of its effectiveness. Also, other aspects, such as the impact of ICT on the development of virtual logistical centers and the development stages of SCM are presented. Moreover, the chapter outlines pitfalls of this development trend in an effort to provide practitioners in SCM with a more complex view of this issue.

ERP Systems and Competitive Advantage

This chapter describes the processes that firms and managers go through in their quests to create and sustain competitive advantages based on so-called Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems. It is based on resource-based theory, combined with the strategy process perspective and with existing literature on information technology and ERP. The theoretic framework is extended through a detailed case study of a specific in-house ERP venture in a European multinational manufacturing company in the paper packaging industry. The emergent resource management framework describes cognitive and cultural factors that support or hamper progress, including uncertainty, knowledge gaps, knowledge transfer issue, and the problems of ensuring that ERP usage is converted into competitive advantage. The framework also addresses managerial implications and potential solutions to such obstacles throughout the process.

The Role of Interactive and Synchronized Multimedia Content in E-Learning

Multimedia-based e-learning systems have become increasingly available. Many of them, however, do not provide sufficient interactivity to learners. E-learners have little control over learning content and process to meet their individual needs. Therefore, the challenges include how to integrate instructional material in different media, and how to provide flexible process control in an e-learning environment to enable personalized knowledge construction and improve learning effectiveness. We propose an e-learning system with interactive multimedia that can help learners better understand learning content and achieve comparable learning performance to that of classroom learning. The results from an empirical study provide significant evidence to support our proposition. The chapter also discusses several important issues towards building effective and sharable multimedia-based e-learning systems.

A User Perspective of Information Requirements Determination Quality

A study was performed to identify factors that affect the process quality of the information requirements determination (IRD) process from a user perspective. A nominal group process was used with three groups of users that have had experience with the IRD process. The results indicate there is a set of factors that users agree impact the quality of the IRD process. A total of 33 factors were identified as critical to IRD process quality. These factors are then classified into five logical categories: management, organization, process, technical, and human resource. The users consider management commitment the most important individual factor for IRD quality. However, the groups ranked the process category of factors highest. By using this set of factors as a checklist during the project planning stage, a manager may identify potentially problematic projects or projects with a higher likelihood of success. This study should benefit information technology (IT) users, IT professionals, project managers, and IT researchers. The identification of factors that impact IRD process quality may give managers guidance in assessing the risk associated withspecific development projects. By determining the value of these factors prior to the commitment of resources, managers may increase the likelihood of recognizing problematic projects or projects with potentially high returns, allowing them to take prescriptive action. By identifying the concerns of users, it may be possible to control and manage the antecedents to the IRD process that have the most effect on users’ perceptions and expectations. Lastly, the factors identified may be used to develop metrics to monitor the IRD process or measure its success or quality. For IT researchers, this study offers two primary contributions: (1) identification of the critical factors suggests that there are many variables that have not received attention, and (2) an example of an approach to generate potential variables for further study.

Implementing CRM Systems

Many companies have large expectations of the use of Customer Relationship Management (CRM) systems, expecting to harvest benefits from dialogue marketing and internal knowledge synergies. How should these systems be implemented? And how easy do the benefits come? The research approach is a longitudinal, six-year case study of a company implementing CRM both as a marketing principle and as an information system. The implementation was, from the outset, regarded as an organizational experiment, and the case is laid out in some detail to provide a somewhat “thick description” of the social setting and actors’ behavior. The high failure rate of CRM projects illustrates the gap between our intentions and outcomes. Interpreting a longitudinal case study and the research literature, we find two options to improve our practice. From a managerial view, we should treat CRM projects as complex challenges, needing tight project control and the application of change management techniques, focusing on the marketing process and data quality. In contrast, we could accept that the mechanisms at work at the micro level are only partly controllable by management techniques, and we should let the infrastructure grow organically.

Business Alignment in Agile/Virtual Enterprise Integration

The concept of strategic alignment between business strategy and technology is essential for improving competitiveness. The driving force of business is to fully satisfy customer needs with the right products/services, at the right price, and with the required quality and responsiveness in a global competitive market. In this context, by alignment we mean the actions to be undertaken to gain synergy between business, that is, a market opportunity, and the provision of the required product, with the required specifications, at the required time, with the lowest cost and with the best possible return. In this chapter we focus on a leading organizational model, the Agile/Virtual Enterprise model, characterized by a fast reconfigurability or adaptability face to the dynamically changing market and introduce the concept of a Market of Resources as the environment able to assure a permanent alignment of the networked structure with market. We also propose alignment strategies between business opportunities and the creation/reconfiguration of the Agile/Virtual Enterprise that is expected to meet that opportunity.