Hind Benbya

Corporate portal: a tool for knowledge management synchronization

As the basis of value creation and success of organizations increasingly depends on the leverage of knowledge available internally, knowledge management systems (KMS) are emerging as vital tools for competitive advantage. Among these KMS, corporate portals present the potential of providing organizations with a rich and complex shared information workspace for the generation, exchange, and use of knowledge. But developing corporate portals and building the critical mass of users required to make them successful is not an easy task. In this paper, drawing upon the literature review and an analysis of early adopters of corporate portals, we address the strength of this tool which consists mainly in synchronizing and supporting knowledge processes, put the emphasis on factors inhibiting its adoption by companies and finally propose some perspectives for a successful implementation.

Using Coevolutionary and Complexity Theories to Improve IS Alignment: A Multi-Level Approach

The misalignment of information systems (IS) components with the rest of an organization remains a critical and chronic unsolved problem in todays complex and turbulent world. This paper argues that the coevolutionary and emergent nature of alignment has rarely been taken into consideration in IS research and that this is the reason behind why IS alignment is so difficult. A view of IS alignment is presented about organizations that draws and builds on complexity theory and especially its focus on coevolution-based self-organized emergent behaviour and structure, which provides important insights for dealing with the emergent nature of IS alignment. This view considers Business/IS alignment as a series of adjustments at three levels of analysis: individual, operational, and strategic, and suggests several enabling conditions – principles of adaptation and scale-free dynamics – aimed at speeding up the adaptive coevolutionary dynamics among the three levels.

Toward a Complexity Theory of Information Systems Development

Purpose – Existing literature acknowledges information systems development (ISD) to be a complex activity. This complexity is magnified by the continuous changes in user requirements due to changing organizational needs in changing external competitive environments. Research findings show that, if this increasing complexity is not managed appropriately, information systems fail. The paper thus aims to portray the sources of complexity related to ISD and to suggest the use of complexity theory as a frame of reference, analyzing its implications on information system design and development to deal with the emergent nature of IS.Design/methodology/approach – Conceptual analysis and review of relevant literature.Findings – This article provides a conceptual model explaining how top‐down “official” and bottom‐up “emergent” co‐evolutionary adaptations of information systems design with changing user requirements will result in more effective system design and operation. At the heart of this model are seven firs...

An Empirical Investigation of the Customer Knowledge Creation Impact on NPD Performance

New product development (NPD) projects require efficient strategies for reducing time to market and responding faster and better to the customer needs. While these strategies were mostly technology driven at the early stages, nowadays firms are adopting knowledge management systems (KMS) to enhance new customer knowledge creation and NPD performance. Despite their potential benefits, there is a variance in the extent of efforts that firms deploy for achieving NPD performance. This is because not all the firms can meet the KMS requirements to support the customer knowledge creation process. In this study, the authors develop a research model that identifies (1) the impact of KMS factors on customer knowledge creation process and NPD performance, (2) the elements that interconnects KMS factors, customer knowledge creation process, and NPD performance (3) the outcomes that are generated by this approach

Understanding Developers’ Motives in Open Source Projects: A Multi-Theoretical Framework

The question of why so many developers dedicate time and effort into contributing to Open Source Projects (OSP) is one of the most intriguing questions in OS research. Several preliminary studies have theorized about and empirically examined this challenging question. They suggest a variety of reasons to explain this phenomenon but mostly rely on self-determination theory, with its extrinsic-intrinsic dichotomy, to explain the heterogeneous and complex nature of motivation in OS. This paper provides an alternative, theory-driven approach, where three different, yet complementary, theories of motivation are combined, to explain the participation and outcomes of developers in OSP. More specifically, our multi-theoretical framework is based upon, social exchange theory, goal-orientation and expectancy theory. An empirical test of the model is provided within the context of SourceForge.net. The results offer new theoretical and practical insights into developers’ motivation and how it affects their participation and outcomes.