In this article I argue that the organizational involvement of large scale information technology packages, such as those known as Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), has important implications that go far beyond the acknowledged effects of keeping the organizational operations accountable and integrated across functions and production sites. My claim is that ERP packages are predicated upon an understanding of human agency as a procedural affair and of organizations as an extended series of functional or cross-functional transactions. Accordingly, the massive introduction of ERP packages to organizations is bound to have serious implications that precisely recount the procedural forms by which such packages instrument organizational operations and fashion organizational roles. The conception of human agency and organizational operations in procedural terms may seem reasonable yet it recounts a very specific and, in a sense, limited understanding of humans and organizations. The distinctive status of framing human agency and organizations in procedural terms becomes evident in its juxtaposition with other forms of human action like improvisation, exploration or playing. These latter forms of human involvement stand out against the serial fragmentation underlying procedural action. They imply acting upon the world on loose premises that trade off a variety of forms of knowledge and courses of action in attempts to explore and discover alternative ways of coping with reality. Key Words: Human agency, behaviour, information infrastructures, integration, organizational action, procedural action, procedural knowledge, standardization

Effective organizational beaming requires high absorptive capacity, which has two major elements: prior knowledge base and intensity of effort. Hyundai Motor Company, the most dynamic automobile producer in developing countries, pursued a strategy of independence in developing absorptive capacity. In its process of advancing from one phase to the next through the preparation for and acquisition, assimilation, and improvement of foreign technologies, Hyundai acquired migratory knowledge to expand its prior knowledge base and proactively constructed crises as a strategic means of intensifying its beaming effort. Unlike externally evoked crises, proactively constructed internal crises present a clew performance gap, shift beaming orientation from imitation to innovation, and increase the intensity of effort in organizational learning. Such crisis construction is an evocative and galvanizing device in the personal repertoires of proactive top managers. A similar process of opportunistic learning is also

Abstract: Environmental scanning is the acquisition and use of information about events, trends, and relationships in an organization's external environment, the knowledge of which would assist management in planning the organization's future course of action. Depending on the organization's beliefs about environmental analyzability and the extent that it intrudes into the environment to understand it, four modes of scanning may be differentiated: undirected viewing, conditioned viewing, enacting, and searching. We analyze each mode of scanning by examining its characteristic information needs, information seeking, and information use behaviors. In addition, we analyze organizational knowing processes by considering the sensemaking, knowledge creating and decision

Emergency response organizations are faced with complex, unprecedented events with the potential for catastrophic losses. To assist emergency response organizations in responding to unprecedented events, new models must be developed and the traditional command and control structure of decision making must be revised to accommodate greater flexibility and creativity by teams. In this paper we propose the concept of decision support for improvisation in emergency management. The concept is based on the paradigm of operational risk management and is motivated by the observation that emergency response organizations must be prepared to improvise during response activities. The process of emergency response in light of this new concept is first discussed and opportunities for supporting the process identified. We conclude with a review of a project at the Port of Rotterdam, where we are currently assessing this new decision making approach for emergency management.

Extreme events such as natural or technological disasters challenge society's capabilities for planning and response. While advanced technologies and modeling techniques continue to expand how society can limit and manage extreme events, flexibility and an ability to improvise remain crucial in responding to them. By analyzing a case from the response to the 2001 World Trade Center attack, this paper develops a set of requirements for computer-based systems intended to support improvisation in response to extreme events. The particular goal of this analysis is to identify methods for providing cognitive-level support for organizations in determining when and how to improvise. Key Words Extreme Events, Improvisation, Emergency Response To appear in Decision Support Systems 323 Martin Luther King, Jr. Blvd, Newark, NJ 07102. Email: mendonca@njit.edu 1

Geo-collaborative systems address the computational support to situations where people are working in different locations, gathering geographically-related data in the field and sharing knowledge. We propose a conceptual framework identifying the design issues that fundamentally set the stage for eliciting the requirements of geo-collaborative systems. The conceptual framework has five elements: places, teams, tasks, artifacts and georeferenced knowledge. We also highlight two important relationships between some of these elements: (1) a task-artifact relationship, related with the need to increase the organizational decision making abilities through concerted efforts; and (2) an artifact-knowledge relationship, related with the need to support mechanisms for jointly understanding geo-referenced data. The conceptual framework was applied to the development of a groupware tool aiming to increase the productivity of the geological mapping process followed by a national agency with competence in this area. The paper describes in detail how the conceptual framework influenced the groupware design. The obtained results indicate that the framework can focus the designers on the human aspects of geo-collaboration and guide them through the initial design stages. Key words: geo-collaboration, geo-collaborative systems, geo-informatics, groupware, sensemaking 1.

Abstract. Improvisation is being appreciated by the management literature because of its key role in a variety of contingencies: emergencies, markets and work organizations. Improvisation is described as a form of extemporaneous, situated action. In the literature, the study of these two phenomena has been mainly cognitive. This exposes it to the critique according to which the situated action paradigm would not add value to the symbolic knowledge and representation paradigm developed by Artificial Intelligence. Also, on the issue of time the cognitive study of improvisation seems to have little to say: extemporaneous means simply quick and unplanned. This paper suggests a different point of departure by stating that improvisation should be regarded as a mood, and not a mindset. We can learn about improvisation by contrasting it with other moods such as panic and boredom. Why study moods? The new perspective indicates that the cognitive approaches are limited since they disregard the “situation of the actor”. Moods capture the situatedness of the actor as opposed to the situation of the action only. Finally, a phenomenological analysis unveils the fundamental relationships between moods, existence and time, which can lead to a new explanation of the “extemporaneous ” character of improvisation. This paper is still being developed- do not cite or quote without permission

During research about organisational memory (OM), it is discussed whether an organisation can remember at all. The answers vary. Here, the systems theory is used as a way to analyse the concept of memory and describe its functionality. The answer is YES, an organisation has a memory, but it is a memory function, which in itself can be seen as a highly complex system and is difficult to describe. It might be necessary to see it as a "black box": The study of it can be directed primarily towards the input and output, not at the inner mechanisms. It is possible to distinguish between cer tain parts of the black box. The domain which is used as an example is a military organisation, which have clear characteristica, and where a memory function is essential. Although its functionality and its influence are complex and situated in the operational activities, certain parts are visible as information and information processes. Some can be related to the concept of organisational cultural pract...

During research about organisational memory (OM), it is discussed whether an organisation can remember at all. The answers vary. Here, the systems theory is used as a way to analyse the concept of memory and describe its functionality. The answer is YES, an organisation has a memory, but it is a memory function, which in itself can be seen as a highly complex system and is difficult to describe. It might be necessary to see it as a "black box": The study of it can be directed primarily towards the input and output, not at the inner mechanisms. It is possible to distinguish between cer tain parts of the black box. The domain which is used as an example is a military organisation, which have clear characteristica, and where a memory function is essential. Although its functionality and its influence are complex and situated in the operational activities, certain parts are visible as information and information processes. Some can be related to the concept of organisational cultural pract...

Research in the field of knowledge management seems to be split between two different types of knowledge: explicit, codified, articulated, and formalized knowledge; and tacit uncodified, socially constructed knowledge. There has been little research looking at the boundary/intersection between these two types, despite the impact they have on each other. The proposed study seeks to articulate the processes of conversion between tacit knowledge and explicit knowledge. Of particular interest are occasions when individuals and organizations routinely ignore codified knowledge for decision making in favour of "gut feel" reactions. This type of incident has been recognized in the hiring practices of small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). That is, although there exist many formal and explicit guidelines, many hiring decisions are the process of more informal processes. Accordingly, managers and owners of SMEs will be interviewed about their use of tacit and explicit knowledge in making hiring decisions. Each interview will be guided by the construction of sequence diagrams demonstrating hiring document construction and use in a manner consistent with the archaeological method of chane opratoire. The narratives produced by the SME represents during the construction of the sequence diagrams will form a basis for discourse analysis regarding how individuals and organizations construct cognitive authority in relation to both tacit and explicit knowledge. The results have implications for improving the state of practice for knowledge discovery and codification. The Sequence of SME Hiring : Towards an understanding of the interchange between tacit and explicit