Nassim Belbaly

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.

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.

The IT culture as an obstacle to the adoption of an ERP: Case of a high-tech SME

The firm’s IT experience is considered among the characteristics that influence the adoption of an ERP. Few authors assume that the firms IT experience act as a main risk factor for ERP implementation projects. In this paper, a literature review based on theories related to resistance and conflicts factors in ERP implementation is presented. Then we describe the outcomes that may be deducted from a high-tech SME which tried to adopt an ERP. We find in this case that IT expertise and culture turned out to be inhibitors of ERP adoption. In conclusion, we present a dual perspective on the firm’s capability to implement an ERP.

Introduction to Social Media, Mashups, and Design Sciences Approaches Minitrack

The objective of this minitrack is to develop architectures of particularly social knowledge systems to support organizations facing changing environments. Organizational decision-making and learning are people-intensive processes. Individuals learn and share what they have learned with those “nearby” them, who in turn share knowledge with others. In this manner, knowledge propagates or “spirals” throughout the organization and beyond. This growth of knowledge and the understanding it brings enable organizations to react quickly to changing environments, a necessity for survival. However, because these needs are so strongly based in the social perspective, we believe that technological support of these systems should have a foundation that can recognize the social aspects of knowledge creation and use. This minitrack in general seeks to explore knowledge management (KM) architectures, tools, and social media technologies such as mashups in the context of knowledge systems – for example as related to supporting knowledge use and transfer or to organizational learning, particularly from a design science perspective. We discuss a wide range of approaches that focus on architectural design for knowledgebased or learning organizations. After a rigorous review process, two papers were accepted for presentation: The first paper is co-authored by Tobias Heide and Lukasz Lis: The authors propose a combined approach of dynamic knowledge mapping, which is based on a manual creation of the underlying context (e.g., the metaphor) of the visualization. The particular knowledge items are mapped onto this background automatically in response to changes in the knowledge base. Thus, this approach benefits from the use of a challenging graphical context while allowing for an automated generation of visualizations. The second paper is co-authored by Philip Raeth, Maurice Kugler, and Stefan Smolnik: In their paper, the authors introduce a multilevel model for investigating the impact of organizational social web site (SWS) usage on individual and team performance. They propose that team SWS usage impacts individual and team performance through its improved structural collaboration capabilities. Organizational learning, social capital, and network theories serve as the theoretical basis. We wish to thank all of the authors who submitted work for consideration in this minitrack. We would also like to thank the dedicated reviewers who provided time and effort in reviewing the submitted papers. We believe that these papers contribute very much to furthering our understanding of knowledge systems and design sciences approaches, and we look forward to discussing them in our session. 2012 45th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences