John W. Bagby

Knowledge Transfer from Universities to Business: Returns for all Stakeholders?:

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Intellectual property transfer from universities to business: requisite for sustained competitive advantage?

Business is experiencing an ongoing fundamental shift in the competitive environment, which highlights the need for knowledge development and the interdependence between users and producers, including universities, government, and society. This interdependence is specifically accentuated by the transfer of intellectual property from universities to corporations that are intent on developing sustainable competitive strategies. This paper presents a conceptual framework and research questions and the results of an exploratory study which focused upon the interaction between pivotal universities and business in a society-government context. Among other findings, the paper concludes that the economic and contractual imperatives of business may not conform to the traditional research, instructional, and service roles of universities. The implications of the study findings for business and university interactions are discussed.

Standardizing Web Services: Overcoming 'Design by Committee'

Web service standards, like several other IT standards, are anticipatory, i.e., they are designed and codified in anticipation of actual adoption and use. As a result, the setting of Web service standards takes on properties that resemble the designing of software artifacts. In contrast, the traditional perspective on standards views them as law-like systems that legislate modes of behavior, product structures or specifications. The two perspectives - dasiadesignpsila and dasialegislationpsila - can sometimes be at odds. In the software engineering community, the phrase dasiadesign by committeepsila has come to symbolize designs that are not effective, not elegant and not addressing issues that are core to the original intentions. Current efforts and recent outcomes in Web services standards appear to have overcome this taboo. We demonstrate, with the help of an empirical study, how the participants interact, and the roles they take on to produce Web service standards.

Empirical analysis of anticipatory standardization processes: a case study

The processes followed for developing anticipatory standards such as those for web services are still not well-understood. In spite of the openness of the process, there are few analyses that shed light on the roles that different participants play or the actions they engage in during the development of these standards. We analyze archival documents that capture development of SOAP, a core web service standard. Our analysis shows that participants spend a bulk of their time discussing technical issues, identifying action items, and engaging in discussion to reach consensus. These activities reveal prototypical roles that participants take on such as: Advocate, Architect, Bystander, Critic, Facilitator, Guru, and Procrastinator. Together, the findings support the existence of three clusters in standards development processes: design activities performed by Architects, sense-making activities performed by Critics, and managerial activities performed by Facilitators; along with the important activity of coordinating the work of multiple participants. We discuss implications of our findings and identify opportunities for future work.

An Empirical Analysis of Development Processes for Anticipatory Standards

There is an evolution in the process used by standards-development organizations (SDOs) and this is changing the prevailing standards development activity (SDA) for information and communications technology (ICT). The process is progressing from traditional SDA modes, typically involving the selection from many candidate, existing alternative components, into the crafting of standards that include a substantial design component (SSDC), or “anticipatory” standards. SSDC require increasingly important roles from organizational players as well as SDOs. Few theoretical frameworks exist to understand these emerging processes. This project conducted archival analysis of SDO documents for a selected subset of web-services (WS) standards taken from publicly available sources including minutes of meetings, proposals, drafts and recommendations. This working paper provides a deeper understanding of SDAs, the roles played by different organizational participants and the compliance with SDO due process requirements emerging from public policy constraints, recent legislation and standards accreditation requirements. This research is influenced by a recent theoretical framework that suggests viewing the new standards-setting processes as a complex interplay among three forces: sense-making, design, and negotiation (DSN). The DSN model provides the framework for measuring SDO progress and therefore understanding future generations of standards development processes. The empirically grounded results are useful foundation for other SDO modeling efforts.

Implications of agent-based supply chain games

The increased prevalence of network-enabled supply chains and out-sourcing of business processes suggests a stronger role for simulation tools, such as multi-agent systems, in supply chain management. We report on a new supply chain management game in the 2003 Trading Agent Competition and the design and experiences of our agent, PSUTAC. We discuss how using a shared mental model approach can help SCM designers address the role of information flow in an uncertain market environment. We conclude with a discussion about future implications to SCM of such trading agent simulations.

E-government evolution in small municipalities in Pennsylvania in web 2.0 social environment: a poster

In the poster proposal, we briefly describe the nature of ongoing doctoral dissertation research and describe why this project may be of particular interest to the conference attendees. This is a qualitative study designed to expand our current view of e-government in small municipalities in Pennsylvania (PA) and it is guided by a combination of sociotechnical theory and grounded theory approach. This research is aimed at discovering whether and/or how existing and emerging ICTs (including social media) facilitate citizen engagement in local government decision-making process.

Moving Toward Web 2.0-Enhanced E-Government in Small-Town Pennsylvania

This chapter on adoption and use of Web 2.0 technologies by local governments in Pennsylvania represents a part of an ongoing research project to investigate the nature and extent of collaborative initiatives between public and academic institutions in small college towns in support of e-government innovation. In this research, e-government is approached as a sociotechnical, dynamic system situated within a complex context (people, technology, and location). The case study was guided by a combination of socio-technical theory and grounded theory. A study of one municipality in Central Pennsylvania (USA) revealed the transformative potential of e-government through the adoption of Web 2.0 technologies. The municipal social media toolbox offered citizens a variety of complementary yet unique ways (e.g., Facebook and Twitter) to stay connected with their municipal government and its various departments. The study identified four major purposes of social media integration, including emergency notification, citizen participation, public safety, and promotion of the official municipal website. This case represents a continuum of e-government adoption and municipal transformation from addressing problems and challenges along the way to finding successful solutions.

Using Problems to Learn Service-Oriented Computing

Service-oriented computing and the ensuing science of services represent significant challenges to academia. As we come to grips with its many implications, we are slowly beginning to realize the challenges of introducing service-orientation in research. The change also requires a rethinking of strategies used for educating computing professionals. Service-orientation questions the traditional vision of the IT professional as a toolsmith. Instead, it requires shifting the role of the IT professional to that of a participant in a multidisciplinary team of diverse professionals. We describe one specific strategy that is a core part of an ongoing experiment to support such pedagogical practices, and reflect on its usefulness and limitations.

Investigating IT Standardization Process Through the Lens of Theory of Communicative Action

Developing standards is a social practice wherein experts engage in discussions to evaluate design solutions. In this paper, we analyze processes followed to develop SOAP standard from the theory of communicative action perspective, which argues that individuals engaged in social discourse would exhibit five possible actions: instrumental, strategic, normatively regulated, dramaturgical, and communicative. Our findings reveal that participants in standardization processes engage in communicative action most frequently with aim of reaching mutual understanding and consensus, engage in strategic action when influencing others towards their intended goals, engage in instrumental action when taking responsibility for solving technical issues, engage in dramaturgical action when expressing their opinions, and engage in normatively regulated action when performing roles they assumed. Our analysis indicates that 60 % of activities performed are consensus oriented whereas the rest are success oriented. This paper provides empirical evidence for Habermasian view of social actions occurring in the standardization process setting.