João Álvaro Carvalho

Knowledge sharing barriers in complex research and development projects : an exploratory study on the perceptions of project managers

Numerous projects are considered complex because of the number of stakeholders, the diversity of skills, and the uncertainty involved, requiring accurate information retrieval and management of the social interactions between different participants leading to efficient knowledge sharing. This paper reports the findings of an empirical study on knowledge sharing barriers and research and development (R&D) activities that occur in the context of complex project management. The study presents issues, difficulties, and practices acknowledged by project managers related to knowledge sharing and R&D (focused on activities that involve cooperation and collaboration). Particularly, we point out the following major knowledge sharing barriers: codification process, inadequate information technology, lack of initiative and strategy by the workers, and lack of time and resources. We also explained the following practices and issues regarding the collaborative R&D activities: information exchange and retrieval, communication barriers, interdependence of knowledge and skills, and different technical terminologies. We intend to contribute to the understanding of the work carried out in the context of complex projects to improve the management practices and the information technology platforms to support them. Copyright

Information System? Which One Do you Mean?

Information systems and technology is an emerging area of human knowledge that experiences some difficulties related to a lack of consensus about its more basic concepts and terminology. Instances of problematic terms are information and information system. Any person attending conferences or reading books and papers related to information systems will soon discover that there is more than one possible meaning for the term information system. In other words, people that talk or write about information systems aren’t always referring to the same object. The distinctions among the different objects that can be viewed as information systems are not always clear because they have many aspects in common: they all deal with information; they all are somewhat related to organisations or to the work carried out in organisations; and they all are related to information technology, either because they can benefit from its use or because they are made with computers or computer-based devices.

New Local Government Accounting in Portugal

Local government accounting in Portugal has changed significantly over the past five years bringing local government accounting closer to business accounting. The previous system was basically cash-based and budget-oriented, now cash-based budgeting is used with accrual-based financial and cost accounting, using double-entry in order to provide more useful information for decision-making. In this article, the authors show how the new accounting and budgeting system can lead to misinterpretations of an organizations economic and financial situation.

Computer-based systems that support the structural, social, political and symbolic dimensions of work

The requirements definition needs attention to a number of issues related to the way people understand organisations, do their work and use the tools available to support that work. Most well-known requirements engineering methods focus on technical aspects of work. This paper proposes a way of looking at work situations in order to gain a deep understanding of their inherent complexity. The knowledge obtained will help to define requirements for a computer-based system that supports both explicit and tacit aspects of the organisational work.

The Role of Emotion, Values, and Beliefs in the Construction of Innovative Work Realities

Traditional approaches to requirements elicitation stress systematic and rational analysis and representation of organizational context and system requirements. This paper argues that (1) for an organization, a software system implements a shared vision of a future work reality and that (2) understanding the emotions, feelings, values, beliefs, and interests that drive organizational human action is needed in order to invent the requirements of such a software system. This paper debunks some myths about how organizations transform themselves through the adoption of Information and Communication Technology; describes the concepts of emotion, feeling, value, and belief; and presents some constructionist guidelines for the process of eliciting requirements for a software system that helps an organization to fundamentally change its work patterns.

Organizational and National Issues of an ERP Implementation in a Portuguese Company

This technical research report describes a case of an Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) implementation in a Portuguese SME. We focused on the identification of organizational factors that affect the ERP implementation project. We also analyzed the ERP implementation project from a national cultural perspective using Geert Hofstedes dimensions. These dimensions were used to explain some of the attitudes and behaviours during the ERP implementation project. The findings suggest that some of the problems in ERP implementation projects are not of technological nature but may be attributed to organizational factors while some issues related to national culture.

Aspects That Contribute to the Success of Personalized Web Applications

Personalized applications exhibit features adjusted to the preferences or needs of users and can provide benefits related to customer relationship or related to the efficiency of organizational work. This article presents a conceptual model that can be viewed as a contribution to the body of knowledge of Information Systems and Technologies professionals with responsibilities in the adoption, and development of personalized Web applications. These contributions include: a conceptual model that combines and articulates aspects that contribute to the success and to the quality of personalized information system (this model combines design features, facets that contribute to the quality and metrics that can be used to evaluate the performance of organizational work supported by personalized information systems). This set of aspects combines a synthesis of information so far scattered in the literature with proposals and recommendations with empirical knowledge based on an empirical study.

Profiling and Framing Structures for Pervasive Information Systems Development

Pervasive computing is a research field of computing technology that aims to achieve a new computing paradigm. Software engineering has been, since its existence, subject of research and improvement in several areas of interest. Model-Based/Driven Development (MDD) constitutes an approach to software design and development that potentially contributes to: concepts closer to domain and reduction of semantic gaps; automation and less sensitivity to technological changes; capture of expert knowledge and reuse. This paper presents a profiling and framing structure approach for the development of Pervasive Information Systems (PIS). This profiling and framing structure allows the organization of the functionality that can be assigned to computational devices in a system and of the corresponding development structures and models, being. The proposed approach enables a structural approach to PIS development. The paper also presents a case study that allowed demonstrating the applicability of the approach.

Operational excellence, organisational culture and agility: the missing link?

In an increasingly dynamic environment where change seems to be the only constant feature, operational excellence programmes are often used to achieve improved performance results. However, the capacity of such approaches to make organisations successful in the long term is yet to be demonstrated. Operational excellence should not be seen as an approach to promote change, but rather to provide tools and framing for people in the organisation to deal with it. Our literature-based theory is that the relationships of operational excellence with both organisational culture and agility have the potential for further integration in the promotion of long-term, sustainable operational excellence initiatives. To do so, such initiatives need to look beyond simple cultural fit and work to promote a more agile behaviour and a cultural capacity to deal with constant change. If these conditions are met, the sustainability of operational excellence should be achieved, with organisations being able to strive in the long term with the promotion of organisational agility capabilities and an adaptable culture. The objective of this paper is to sustain this theory building, proposing the research questions that will help us understand the relationships and integration between the concepts of operational excellence, organisational agility and organisational culture.

Business and technology integrated management: a case of e-government for assessing the impact of policies

This article describes an ongoing research project that aims at developing an integrated approach to the management of business and technology. The project followed a design science research process and it involved several action research iterations that enabled improvement and validation. The article describes an iteration that was carried out in a real case in a government institution: the Court of Auditors at Mato Grosso state, Brazil. The proposed unified technique provides support to managers of government agencies to the definition, analysis, and development of public services and their supporting technologies. It also provides to technology managers a set of guidelines to develop the technological architecture adequate to achieve better services results. Besides the contributions to the approach being developed, this case evidences the importance of representing the complete model of inter-government responsibilities to enable the assessment of the impact of policies on citizens.