Cracking the Design of Information Systems for Knowledge Workers: SSCI publication!
Just came in the news that I have a new paper accepted for the esteemed Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology (JASIST).
I have led the research in highly critical area which so far has not yet succesfully been tackled nor by research nor by practice: how to create infomation systems that are suitable for business users, knowledge workers of today and tomorrow, which strive to utilize existing and create new knowledge during their everyday activities. Along with Prof Dr Kevin C Desouza of Metropolitan Institute at Virginia Tech (USA) and Prof Dr Ray Hackney of Brunel University London (UK), we have engaged in profoundly deep existing research analysis from variety of fields (such as management science, information technology, information systems, organization science, learning and cognitive science, decision making, sense making, knowledge work) and synthesised – through a grounded theory style empirical work at Parsons Brinckerhoff (USA) and Samsung Electronics (South Korea) – a design model for new, comprehensive breed of information systems that are needed today in knowledge intensive, innovative organizations. The contributions of our paper can be used by professionals (managers in charge of organizational design, Chief operation officers, Project managers, Chief executive officers, Information systems designers, Knowledge management interventions designers…) and by academics (we have contributed to major existing theories such as task technology fit theory, process-based value of IT, various knowledge creation theories and others).
The paper is forthcoming, will be appearing in print in early 2012.
Contextualizing Organizational Interventions of Knowledge Management Systems: a design science perspective
Abstract
The research in this paper addresses how individuals’ (workers) knowledge needs influence the design of knowledge management systems (KMS) enabling knowledge creation and utilization. It is evident that KMS technologies and activities are indiscriminately deployed in most organizations with little regard to the actual context of their adoption. Moreover, it is apparent that the extant literature pertaining to knowledge management projects is frequently deficient in identifying the variety of factors indicative for successful KMS. This presents an obvious business practice and research gap which requires a critical analysis of the necessary intervention that will actually improve how workers can leverage and form organization-wide knowledge. Our research involved an extensive review of the literature, a Grounded Theory methodological approach and rigorous data collection and synthesis through an empirical case analysis (Parsons Brinckerhoff and Samsung). The contribution of the research is the formulation of a model for designing KMS based upon the design-science paradigm which aspires to create artifacts which are interdependent of people and organizations. The essential proposition of our research is that KMS design and implementation must be contextualized towards knowledge needs and that these will differ for various organizational settings. Our findings therefore present valuable insights and further understanding of the way in which KMS design efforts should be focused.
Keywords: Knowledge Management, Knowledge Management Systems, Design Science, Task Technology Fit, Evolutionary Information Processing, Business Processes
JASIST is one of the “A” journals in the management of technology and information systems field, with Impact Factor of 2.137. ISI Journal Citation Reports © Ranking: 2010: 11/76 (Information Science & Library Science); 11/77 (Information Science & Library Science); 21/128 (Computer Science Information Systems). Online ISSN: 1532-2890.