It is an important industrial need to deliver high-quality knowledge-based systems and organizational memories (e.g., to support service management or knowledge management in general). Evaluation is required to ensure this high quality and guide the development and maintenance. We present an approach for facilitating practical evaluation of organizational memories that meets the requirements for good measurements in knowledge engineering. The base of this methodology is the Goal-Question-Metric (GQM) technique, which is an industrial-strength technique for goaloriented measurement and evaluation from the field of software engineering. The practical benefit of GQM is demonstrated by a case study where GQM was applied to an existing case-based reasoning system/application.

This paper proposes that transaction costs and capabilities are fundamentally intertwined in the determination of vertical scope, and identifies the key mechanisms of their co-evolution. Specifically, we argue that capability differences are a necessary condition for vertical specialization; and that transaction cost reductions only lead to specialization when capabilities along the value chain are heterogeneous. Furthermore, we argue that there are four evolutionary mechanisms that shape vertical scope over time. First, the selection process, itself driven by capability differences, dynamically shapes vertical scope; second, transaction costs are endogenously changed by firms that try to reshape the transactional environment to increase their profit and market share; third, changes in vertical scope affect the nature of the capability development process, i.e., the way in which firms improve their operations over time; and finally, the changes in the capability development process reshape the capability pool in the industry, changing the roster of qualified participants. These dynamics of capability and transaction cost co-evolution are illustrated through two contrasting examples: the mortgage banking industry in the United States, which shows the shift from integrated to disintegrated production; and the Swiss watch-manufacturing industry, which went from disintegration to integration. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons,

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This paper reviews and extends recent scholarly and popular literature to provide a broad overview of how information technology (IT) impacts organizational characteristics and outcomes. First, based on a review of the literature, we describe two of the principal performance enhancing benefits of IT: information efficiencies and information synergies, and identify five main organizational outcomes of the application of IT that embody these benefits. We then discuss the role that IT plays in moderating the relationship between organizational characteristics including structure, size, learning, culture, and interorganizational relationships and the most strategic outcomes, organizational efficiency and innovation. Throughout we discuss the limitations and possible negative consequences of the use of

Joint value creation through partnering and networking is a topic of current interest. This paper proposes that the dimensions of the supplier’s value creation in a supplier–customer relationship could be classified according to efficiency, effectiveness and network functions. These functions are interrelated, but they are conceptually distinct. The value creation process could be described as a spectrum ranging from core value, to added value, to future value. The value-producing potential of a supplier can be assessed reasonably well only in the case of the core value, where there is sufficient benchmarking information in the form of existing alternative offerings and solutions. A priori evaluation of the costs and benefits of added value and, especially, future value projects is problematic, because the realisation of the value is dependent on the development of multiple partners, technologies and industries. In these cases, we suggest that a customer could use a supplier’s capability profile as an indicator of how suitable that particular supplier is for specific value creation projects. A framework connecting specific capabilities to different types of value production is suggested, and its managerial implications are discussed.

We define cultural entrepreneurship as the process of storytelling that mediates between extant stocks of entrepreneurial resources and subsequent capital acquisition and wealth creation. We propose a framework that focuses on how entrepreneurial stories facilitate the crafting of a new venture identity that serves as a touchstone upon which legitimacy may be conferred by investors, competitors, and consumers, opening up access to new capital and market opportunities. Stories help create competitive advantage for entrepreneurs through focal content shaped by two key forms of entrepreneurial capital: firm-specific resource capital and industry-level institutional capital. We illustrate our ideas with anecdotal entrepreneurial stories that range from contemporary high-technology accounts to the evolution of the mutual fund industry. Propositions are offered to guide future empirical research based on our framework. Theoretically, we aim to extend recent efforts to synthesize strategic and institutional perspectives by incorporating insights from contemporary approaches to culture and organizational identity. Copyright © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. It is a virtual truism that stories of entrepreneurs have long been celebrated in the media, trade

Abstract: Knowledge management is characterized by many different activities ranging from the elicitation of knowledge to its storing, sharing, maintenance, usage and creation. Skill management is one of such activities, with its own peculiarities, as it focuses on full exploitation of knowledge individuals in an organization have, in order to carry out at best given tasks. In this paper a semantic-based automated Skill Management System is proposed, which supports competences search and creation. The system implements an approach exploiting the formalism and the reasoning services provided by Description Logics. The approach embeds also non standard Description Logics reasoning services to extend the set of provided features. Here we present main characteristics of our system and focus on a novel algorithm exploiting advanced inference services for the one-to-one assignment of a set of individuals to a set of tasks, endowed of logical explanation features for missing/conflicting skills.

This article examines the strategic process of new service development (NSD). The authors empirically explore the strategic influence of team-based organizational structure, NSD process design, and information technology (IT) choices on the speed and effectiveness of NSD efforts. Several literature-based relationships are tested with a recursive path model using a multi-industry sample of U.S. service organizations. Most results for the service sector are similar to those found in manufacturing: (a) NSD cross-functional team structures directly influence the effectiveness of the firm’s NSD efforts, (b) more formalized NSD processes indirectly influence the firm’s ability to develop new services by increasing the speed of NSD, and (c) IT choices directly affect both the speed of the NSD process and the general effectiveness of the firm’s NSD activities.

this paper we address the challenge of making these choices rationally. We give examples in which similar companies, facing similar choices, select make/buy patterns in very different ways, resulting in very different patterns of interdependencies along companies' supply chains. These choices are not restricted to skills related to the product, but include choices related to key design and manufacturing issues. To make sense of these differences, we propose a framework that ties together the following engineering and management concepts into one coherent view: . core competencies . the product development process . systems engineering . product architecture and modularity . supply chain design

The capitalist and socialist societies of the 20 th century assigned firms different roles within their economic systems. Enterprises transforming from socialist to market economies thus face fundamental organizational restructuring. Many former state-owned firms in the transition economies of Central and Eastern Europe have failed at this task. These firms have pursued primarily defensive downsizing, rather than strategic restructuring, as a result of both internal and external constraints on restructuring strategies. Building on the organizational learning and resource-based theories, we analyze strategies available to management in privatized, former state-owned enterprises in transition economies to restructure their organization. Both internal forces promoting or inhibiting the restructuring process, and external constraints arising in the transition context are examined. A model and testable propositions are developed that explain post-privatization performance. Implications of our research point to the ways in which firms should manage and develop their resource base to transform to competitive enterprises.