Knowledge-intensive Collaboration Research Articles

Knowledge sharing in ISD projects: role of task interdependence and social capital

PurposeExtant literature on design theory has little empirical evidence about how work characteristics affect team interaction processes. This paper examines the knowledge-sharing process in information systems development (ISD) projects.Design/methodology/approachTask interdependence from work design theory was used as an antecedent of knowledge sharing for collaboration for the empirical analysis. Data were collected from 203 ISD project teams in South Korea to examine team social capital and knowledge sharing among team members.FindingsThe results indicate that task interdependence has a statistically significant impact on the knowledge-sharing process. The mediating roles of social capital and knowledge sharing are critical. Additionally, the effects of social capital change over time as long-term projects have different mechanisms than short-term ones.Originality/valueThe paper introduces a novel perspective (i.e. the adoption of task interdependence from work design theory) and integrates it with the research constructs that play important roles in ISD projects: knowledge sharing and teams’ social capital. In an ISD project team, which represents knowledge-intensive collaboration and has heterogeneous team characteristics, task interdependence has a positive impact on the team as predicted by work design theory. It verifies the mediating effect of social capital, particularly the changing influence of social capital with time.

Towards the open innovation strategy: a longitudinal study of service firms in an emerging market

This study examines the innovation practises of service firms in one of the most promising emerging markets: Indonesia. The study highlights innovation strategies that Indonesian service firms employ, particularly, contrasting closed versus open innovation strategies, investigating the influence of innovation strategies on firm innovativeness and examining the impact of firm innovativeness on firm performance. The results reveal a significant shift towards open innovation, indicated by the increasing reliance on the external sources of innovation and the extent of external collaboration over the years. A higher degree of collaboration is shown by the degree of vertical collaboration (that is, collaboration with suppliers or customers) and knowledge-intensive collaboration (collaboration with universities or government). Open innovation strategy is found to have a positive effect on firm innovativeness; firm innovativeness further exerts a positive impact on firm performance, while firm size also influences the relationships.

How businesses should govern knowledge-intensive collaborations with universities: An empirical investigation of university professors

In light of the high relevance of universities as sources of knowledge, university-business collaboration (UBC) offers significant opportunities for businesses with respect to making use of external academic research and innovation support. Unlike knowledge-intensive collaboration with other businesses, UBC has particularities which need to be considered, notably the role of professors as individual decision makers. Additionally, to assign intellectual property rights to knowledge and to reduce the danger of opportunistic behavior, mutually beneficial UBC requires adequate governance mechanisms. As previous research has not investigated the effects of governance mechanisms on knowledge sharing (knowledge combination, learning, and co-poiesis) and the achievement of joint goals in UBC, our empirical study covering 415 German professors examines these relations. We find a positive influence of relational governance and a negative influence of transactional governance on knowledge sharing in UBC. Regarding the influence of knowledge sharing on the achievement of joint goals, we find positive impacts of knowledge combination and co-poiesis and a negative impact of learning on the achievement of joint goals.

"Creativity, Network Centrality, and Performance in Knowledge-Intensive Teamwork"

In knowledge-intensive team collaboration, creative members are potential valuable contributors to innovative performance. On the other hand, creativity is associated with independent thinking and ...

Initiating an Open Learning Ecology with Free and Open-source Animation Software in Hong Kong

In 1963, UNESCO established the International Institute for Educational Planning, a research center for national educational policy strategies. For the past 50 years breakthroughs in information and communication technology, as well as mobile computing, have facilitated ubiquitous access to digital information, causing a fundamental change in education. In 2002, the term Open Educational Resources was coined to highlight the merits of open access online courseware, and to reinforce the accomplishments of open teaching, open learning, and open educational researches. Numerous researchers have noted a profound change in learning styles and the emergence of transitional learning models in this digital era. Three fundamental aspects of learning have been identified and adapted to a pilot project: collaboration, networking, and self-learning. It is further argued that contemporary universities are unable to offer adequate online courseware due to the impact of cross-institutional, inter-disciplinary, and participatory learning; this is expedited by knowledge-intensive collaboration, which triggers complex flows of resources. Additionally, a transition to ubiquitous learning environments is foreseen. Support in this future learning modality is derived from various forms of mobilizing networks, peer-to-peer knowledge platforms, and heterogeneous content repositories that cannot be offered by a stringent education authority.

Enabling innovation in knowledge worker teams

Innovation and knowledge creation are processes, which require intensive collaboration of several people. Nevertheless, the constituents of successful collaboration in innovation activities are not well-known, and the understanding of the inherently social processes by which new intangibles are created is still in its infancy. This paper examines the key facilitators of innovation in knowledge-intensive group-level collaboration based on empirical evidence. The results demonstrate that social factors are highly influential for knowledge worker teams’ ability to produce innovations. Teams whose internal processes were characterised by trust, vision, aim for excellence, participative safety and support for innovation were likely to attain high levels of innovation. Team diversity based on highly visible attributes was found to be negatively related with team innovation. Surprisingly, also external collaboration seemed to affect team innovation outcomes negatively, except for when it was aimed at general scanning for ideas and information. In addition, the differences between the more and the less innovative teams arose mainly from differences in their internal interaction processes, rather than patterns of collaboration with people outside the team.

Collaborative Workflow Management for Interagency Crime Analysis

To strengthen homeland security, there is a critical need for new tools that can facilitate real time collaboration among various law enforcement agencies. Through a field study, we find that law enforcement work is knowledge intensive and involves complex collaborative processes interrelating a large number of disparate units in a loosely defined virtual organization. To support knowledge intensive collaboration, we propose a new workflow centric framework to seamlessly integrate previously separate techniques from the fields of information retrieval and workflow management. In this paper, we develop a collaborative workflow management framework for interagency crime analysis. The key contribution of our research is that by integrating various state-of-the-art techniques innovatively, the proposed system can support real time collaboration processes in a virtual organization that evolves dynamically.

Knowledge-intensive collaborative design modeling and support: Part I: Review, distributed models and framework

Contemporary design problems embody significant levels of complexity, which make it unlikely that a single designer can work alone on a complex design problem. Knowledge-intensive collaboration has emerged as a promising discipline for dealing with the modeling and decision-making processes in distributed design systems. In this paper, we first review previous work and current research status of knowledge-intensive collaborative design. Then, we develop knowledge-intensive distributed design models and a framework for collaborative design modeling and decision support. Based on the component-based modeling/design approach, a unified design-with-modules scheme is proposed to model the distributed network-centric design processes, and a web-based knowledge-intensive distributed module modeling and evaluation framework (KS-DMME) is developed. The KS-DMME framework intends to link distributed, heterogeneous knowledge-based design models and tools and assist designers in evaluating design alternatives, visualizing trade-offs, finding optimal solutions, and making decisions on the web. It also enables designers to build integrated design models using both the local and distributed resources and cooperate by exchanging services. Built on it, the client (browser)/knowledge server architecture allows product design models to be published and connected over the WWW to form an integrated intelligent models/modules network. Finally, as an illustration, a simple design problem model for modular micro-robotic systems design is built upon the KS-DMME framework.

Knowledge-intensive collaborative design modeling and support: Part II: System implementation and application

Contemporary design problems embody significant levels of complexity, which make it unlikely that a single designer can work alone on a complex design problem. Knowledge-intensive collaboration has emerged as a promising discipline for dealing with the modeling and decision-making processes in distributed design systems. In this paper, we present the implementation and application of a web-based knowledge-intensive collaborative design support system called WebKIDSS. With the modularization of design, a modules networked system could be developed and deployed according to CORBA standard to facilitate the rapid construction of the concurrent integrated distributed models for the design process and the coordination among designers within the range of enterprises and even virtual enterprises. The prototype web-based collaborative design platform, is implemented for proof-of-concept through the distributed knowledge server based framework (KS-DMME) with concurrent integration of multiple cooperative knowledge sources and software using Java/Java Bean and CORBA technologies. The unified user interface of the WebKIDSS provides a cross-platform for distributed users to access to module servers throughout the network. By use of the developed the prototype system, collaborative design can be carried out in an integrated and distributed open environment on the internet/intranet. Based on the preliminary application to the collaborative design of a micro robotic assembly system on the Internet, the developed system indicates some advantages to increase the efficiency of the design coordination and decision-making in the design process.

Process-driven collaboration support for intra-agency crime analysis

In law enforcement applications, there is a critical need for new tools that can facilitate efficient and effective collaboration. Through a field study, we observe that crime analysis, a critical component of law enforcement operations, is knowledge intensive and often involves collaborative efforts from multiple law enforcement officers within and across agencies. To better facilitate such knowledge intensive collaboration and thereby improve law enforcement agencies' crime-fighting capabilities, we propose a novel methodology based on modeling and implementation techniques from workflow management and information retrieval. This paper presents this process-driven collaboration methodology and its prototype implementation as part of an integrated law enforcement information management environment called COPLINK.