Alexander Stocker

Exploring Appropriation of Enterprise Wikis

The purpose of this paper is to provide both application-oriented researchers and practitioners with detailed insights into conception, implementation, and utilization of intra-organizational wikis to support knowledge management and group work. Firstly, we report on three case studies and describe how wikis have been appropriated in the context of a concrete practice. Our study reveals that the wikis have been used as Knowledge Base, Encyclopedia and Support Base, respectively. We present the identified practices as a result of the wiki appropriation process and argue that due to their open and flexible nature these wikis have been appropriated according to the users’ needs. Our contribution helps to understand how platforms support working practices that have not been supported by groupware before, or at least not in the same way. Secondly, three detailed implementation reports uncover many aspects of wiki projects, e.g., different viewpoints of managers and users, an investigation of other sources containing business-relevant information, and perceived obstacles to wiki projects. In this context, our study generates a series of lessons learned for people who intend to implement wikis in their own organizations, including the awareness of usage potential, the need for additional managerial support, and clear communication strategies to promote wiki usage.

Knowledge management goals revisited: A cross‐sectional analysis of social software adoption in corporate environments

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to provide both practice‐oriented researchers and practitioners with detailed insights into the social software goals and implementation strategies for corporate environments. Also, to illustrate the novelty and specificity of corporate social software (CSS) compared to other groupware or knowledge management systems.Design/methodology/approach – The paper is grounded in the ongoing discussion on differences and commonalities of knowledge management and Enterprise 2.0 applications and motivated by the lack of scientific studies on this topic. The authors have therefore made a comprehensive study of social software adoption in corporate environments, performing a cross‐case analysis of 23 enterprises. The study was meant to enable researchers and practitioners to acquire a better understanding and appropriate related explanations of the relatively new phenomenon of CSS appropriation and use.Findings – From the cross‐case analysis, six main goals of CSS adoption were d...

Towards a commercial adoption of linked open data for online content providers

Descriptive case studies for a successful commercial adoption of Linked Data are still rare. Little has been said by the Linked Data community concerning the business potential of Linked Data and the challenges lying ahead for all enterprises, intending to use Linked Data in their professional production environments. Motivated from this lack of research and driven by the requirements of commercial content providers, we present a first version of our prototype, aiming to support professional online editors in producing valuable online content, enriched with (multimedia) information from Linked Data sources. We also include a preliminary evaluation of our prototype and a comparison of the prototype against other systems for semantic content enrichement. Though presenting ongoing research, this paper contributes to the current discussion on business aspects related to the provision or consumption of Linked Data.

A Review of Microblogging in the Enterprise

Abstract As a worldwide phenomenon, Microblogging has gained increasing popularity. Twitter has not only attracted more than 100 Million active users in its six year history but is also said to have a considerable impact on public communication as is signified by its use during the Arab spring movement. In the corporate arena, the Enterprise Microblogging platform Yammer claims to have grown to more than 100000 corporate users. Since Microblogging is claimed to have benefits in fostering communication and knowledge sharing within enterprises, it seems timely to take a closer look at the phenomenon. Our paper summarizes the state of the art on Enterprise Microblogging. It reviews three Enterprise Microblogging case studies and compares their key findings regarding implementation, use and created benefits. Zusammenfassung

Enterprise Wikis – Types of Use, Benefits and Obstacles: A Multiple-Case Study

In this paper we present the results of our explorative multiple-case study investigating enterprise wikis in three Austrian cases. Our contribution was highly motivated from the ongoing discussion on Enterprise 2.0 in science and practice, but the lack of well-grounded empirical research on how enterprise wikis are actually designed, implemented and more importantly utilized. We interviewed 7 corporate experts responsible for wiki operation and about 150 employees supposed to facilitate their daily business by using the wikis. The combination of qualitative data from the expert interviews and quantitative data from the user survey allows generating very interesting insights. Our cross-case analysis reveals commonalities and differences on usage motives, editing behaviour, individual and collective benefits, obstacles, and more importantly, derives a set of success factors guiding managers in future wiki projects.

Der Mensch im Mittelpunkt der Fabrik von morgen

ZusammenfassungUngeachtet der wichtigen Impulse des Industrie 4.0-Begriffs für die Förderlandschaft im deutschsprachigen Raum, macht seine Unschärfe es Praktikern und Forschern schwer ihn einzuordnen, um konkrete Anwendungsfälle für Innovationsprojekte zu identifizieren. Hier setzt der vorliegende Beitrag an. Eine systematische Analyse von 35 großen, themenzugehörigen EU-Forschungsprojekten trägt zunächst zu einer besseren thematischen Orientierung bei. Im nächsten Schritt wird ein aktuell laufendes EU-Projekt vorgestellt, das sich mit der Entwicklung von Informations- und Kommunikationstechnologien (IKT) für Produktionsarbeiter der Zukunft auseinandersetzt. Drei aus dem Projektkontext gewählte Fallbeispiele illustrieren, wie IKT sich in Industriebetrieben einsetzen lassen, um den Menschen in den Mittelpunkt der Fabrik von morgen zu rücken. Am Beispiel der Dimension des befähigten Mitarbeiters, lässt sich zudem zeigen wie ein Produktionsarbeiter der Fabrik von morgen durch neue IKT insbesondere 1) Autonomie, 2) Kompetenz, 3) Verbundenheit und 4) Abwechslungsreichtum gewinnen kann. So ermöglicht der Beitrag einerseits die Orientierung an konkreten Anwendungsfällen und deren Reflexion sowie andererseits die Entwicklung eines ganzheitlichen Verständnisses für die sich derzeit und in den kommenden Jahren vollziehenden Veränderungen in vielen Industrieunternehmen.AbstractNotwithstanding the important push of the term “Industrie 4.0” towards research funding agencies in German-speaking countries, its fuzziness makes it challenging for researchers and practitioners to identify concrete application scenarios for innovation projects. The paper at hand enters the debate at this point: First of all, a systematic analysis of 35 big related EU research projects contributes to a better thematic orientation. Next, we introduce a current EU project looking into research and development of information and communication technology (ICT) for the production worker of the future. Three case studies from this EU project illustrate what kind of ICT can be implemented by industrial enterprises to put the human worker into the heart of future factories. The dimension of the “empowered worker” serves us to show how workers at factories of the future gain (1) autonomy, (2) competency, (3) connectedness and (4) work variety trough newly introduced ICT. Thus, the paper at hand facilitates the orientation towards concrete use cases and their reflection, and at the same time it facilitates the development of a comprehensive understanding for current and future transformations in many industrial enterprises.

Is enterprise search useful at all?: lessons learned from studying user behavior

Enterprise search is a growing industry: A recent report from the EU states the total revenue of EU-headquartered search vendors between 100 and 200 million Euros. However, enterprise search seems to be widely ignored by the academic information systems (IS) community. Little is known about user-adoption aspects of enterprise search, as almost no academic case studies and very few user evaluations are reported, leaving the topic more or less in hand of practitioners. A preliminary literature review reveals enterprise search user-aspects and especially perceived overall helpfulness as under-investigated subjects. The following paper provides insights into a qualitative study involving ten engineers from automotive and rail industry. While observing them using a piloted enterprise search engine, the authors report qualitative findings on how engineers apply enterprise search on project-relevant documents. With this paper, the authors want to contribute to the user-centered investigation of enterprise search and intranet search behavior and highlight the importance of scientific user studies in enterprise search.

Organisationaler Wandel durch die Emergenz Cyber-Physikalischer Systeme: Die Fallstudie AVL List GmbH

ZusammenfassungEntwicklungen wie Web 2.0, Web 3.0 und Semantic Web haben nicht nur die Art und Weise verändert, wie Menschen miteinander interagieren. Durch den Einzug von Informations- und Kommunikationstechnologie in physische Produkte sowie in ihre Produktionsstätten werden auch Maschinen intelligenter und vernetzter. Aus mechatronischen Systemen entstehen zunehmend vernetzte cyber-physikalische Systeme (CPS). Doch deren erfolgreiche Entwicklung zwingt Industrieorganisationen zu einem Wandel. Die AVL List GmbH ist das weltweit größte unabhängige Unternehmen für Entwicklung, Simulation und Prüftechnik von Antriebssystemen für PKW, LKW und Großmotoren. Sie steht heute mehr denn je vor der Herausforderung, aktuelle und künftige Trends rund um CPS erfolgreich in eigene Produkte und Services zu integrieren. Der Beitrag erläutert nach einer Beschreibung der wesentlichen sozio-technischen Konzepte rund um CPS und Industrie 4.0, warum es in Organisationen wie der AVL zu Veränderungen kommen muss. Er diskutiert in der AVL durchgeführte Maßnahmen, wie etwa die Befähigung von technischem Personal zum Denken in Systemen durch die Einführung von modellbasiertem Systems Engineering, um dem durch CPS ausgelösten Paradigmenwechsel erfolgreich zu begegnen.

Unternehmen und soziale Medien – wie passt das zusammen?

SummarySocial Media terms the transformation of users from consumers to producers of content on the Web. The adoption of social media in the enterprise is still very challenging for decision makers. This paper refers to the conflict between the self-organization of users in social media and the hierarchical structures in enterprises. High quality case studies from science including those on e20cases.org are an effective approach to convince decision makers to introduce social media.ZusammenfassungSocial Media bezeichnet die Transformation der Nutzer von Konsumenten zu Produzenten von Inhalten. Der Einsatz von Social Media im Kontext von Unternehmen stößt bei Entscheidern noch an die Grenzen. Dieser Beitrag thematisiert das Spannungsfeld von Social Media im Unternehmen und zeigt, wie es aufgelöst werden kann. Qualitativ hochwertige Fallstudien wie jene auf e20cases.org sind dabei ein effektiver Ansatz, um Entscheider vom Potenzial von Social Media zu überzeugen.

Does Tagging Indicate Knowledge Diffusion? An Exploratory Case Study

The high potential of knowledge to create economies of scale attracted the interest towards understanding the dynamics of its diffusion. The new developments in the collaborative and participatory role of web emerges new knowledge structures driving the need towards Web based indicators for studying the diffusion of knowledge on Web. We present the results of an exploratory case-study investigating the tagging and citing practices for the WWW `06 conference papers. We observed two important patterns: (1) Papers which got heavily tagged in all three applications Delicious, Citeulike and Bibsonomy (average total tags > 6) generally achieved a high number of citations. We also observed that most of the tags were from 2006 and most of the citations were from 2007. This indicated that tags may hold the potential of foretelling the future volume of regenerative diffusion of research. (2) Terms appearing in tag-clouds of highly tagged papers in 2006 reappear frequently in the titles of respective citing papers in 2007. This shows that tag clouds may have the potential of forecasting the context of diffusion as well. It furthermore indicates that the users tag the papers with multiple tags according to their specific contexts of use as well as content of that knowledge artifact. Based on these patterns we propose that tags may be used as a supplementary indicator to model the diffusion of knowledge on Web.