Abstract not found

The burden of organizational learning surrounding software process innovations (SPIs)—and complex organizational technologies in general—creates a "knowledge barrier" that inhibits diffusion. Paul Attewell has suggested that many organizations will defer adoption until knowledge barriers have been sufficiently lowered; however, this leaves open the question of which organizations should be more likely to innovate, even in face of high knowledge barriers. It is proposed here that organizations will innovate in the presence of knowledge barriers when the burden of organizational learning is effectively lower, either because much of the required know-how already exists within the organization, or because such knowledge can be acquired more easily or more economically. Specifically, it is hypothesized that organizations will have a greater propensity to initiate and sustain the assimilation of SPIs when they have a greater scale of activities over which learning costs can be spread (learning-related scale), more extensive existing knowledge related to the focal innovation (related knowledge), and a greater diversity of technical knowledge and activities (diversity). An empirical study using data on the assimilation of object-oriented programming languages (OOPLs) by 608 IT organizations strongly confirmed the importance of the three hypothesized factors in explaining the assimilation of OOPLs.

Introduction The task of deciding when and how to innovate is not an easy one. Consider the following managerial quandaries: . A CIO has joined a firm that lags in the adoption of emerging information technologies. He wonders: just how innovative should this firm be going forward, and what can be done to position it to be more willing and able to assume the challenge of early adoption? . A VP of marketing resides in a firm that generally leads in IT innovation, and must decide whether to endorse the immediate adoption of a particular innovation with major implications for marketing strategy. She wonders: are her firm's needs in this area and "readiness" to adopt sufficient to justify taking the lead with this specific innovation? If so, how should the assimilation process be managed? . A product manager must design a deployment strategy for an innovative software development tool. He wonders: how fast can this technology diffu

Because of the increasing interests on knowledge management (KM), various researches have been accomplished. Many conceptual research frameworks have been proposed and thus empirical researches are required to provide practical benefits. However, most current empirical researches have dealt with the relationship of knowledge management enablers, processes or performance in isolation. Accordingly, an integrated view of knowledge management is missing and thus how to perform knowledge management to improve organizational performance is not clear. In order to alleviate these limitations of the previous researches, this study analyzes the current research frameworks and finds their relationships. An integrated research model is built by incorporating knowledge management processes into organizational performance. The model is tested empirically to investigate the relationship between knowledge management processes and enablers such as organizational structure, culture, and information technologies. The correlation between knowledge management processes and organizational creativity is also identified. Both non-financial and financial performance measures are adopted to measure the impact of knowledge management. The findings of this study imply that knowledge management processes are significant predictors for

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

As organizations become increasingly dependent on information systems (IS) for strategic advantage and operations, the issue of IS security also becomes increasingly important. In the interconnected electronic business environment of today, security concerns are paramount. Management must invest in IS security to prevent abuses that can lead to competitive disadvantage. Using the literature on security practices and organizational factors, this study develops an integrative model of IS security effectiveness and empirically tests the model. The data was collected through a survey of IS managers from various sectors of the economy. SMEs were found to engage in fewer deterrent efforts compared to larger organizations. Organizations with stronger top management support were found to engage in more preventive efforts than organizations with weaker support from higher management. Financial organizations were found to undertake more deterrent efforts and have stiffer deterrent severity than organizations in other sectors. Moreover, greater deterrent efforts and preventive measures were found to lead to enhanced IS security effectiveness. Implications of these findings for further research and practice are discussed.

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The extent of organizational innovation with IT, an important construct in the IT innovation literature, has been measured in many different ways. Some measures are more narrowly focused while others aggregate innovative behaviors across a set of innovations or across stages in the assimilation lifecycle within organizations. There appear to be some significant tradeoffs involving aggregation. More aggregated measures can be more robust and generalizable and can promote stronger predictive validity, while less aggregated measures allow more context-specific investigations and can preserve clearer theoretical interpretations. This article begins with a conceptual analysis that identifies the circumstances when these tradeoffs are most likely to favor aggregated measures. It is found that aggregation should be favorable when: (1) the researcher's interest is in general innovation or a model that generalizes to a class of innovations, (2) antecedents have effects in the same direction in all assimilation stages, (3) characteristics of organizations can be treated as constant across the innovations in the study, (4) characteristics of innovations can not be treated as constant across organizations in the study, (5) the set of innovations being aggregated includes substitutes or moderate complements, and (6) sources of noise in the measurement of innovation may be present. The article then presents an empirical study using data on the adoption of software process technologies by 608 US based corporations. This study—which had circumstances quite favorable to aggregation—found that aggregating across three innovations within a technology class more than doubled the variance explained compared to single innovation models. Aggregating across assimilation stages had a slight positive effect on predictive validity. Taken together, these results provide initial confirmation of the conclusions from the conceptual analysis regarding the circumstances favoring aggregation.

The integration of marketing and R&D is a major concern for companies that want to improve their new product performance (NPP). In order to integrate, companies are using mechanisms such as physical proximity, cross-functional teams, and job rotation. This study examines the relative effectiveness of these mechanisms by developing a model that distinguishes between indirect effects of mechanisms on NPP (i.e., through a higher level of integration) and direct effects. The model is tested with data collected from 148 pharmaceutical companies. By simultaneously studying a broad range of integrating mechanisms, we found that housing marketing and R&D closer to each other and using an influential cross-functional phase review board are highly effective mechanisms to increase integration. Using information and communication technology (ICT) more intensively, having equal remuneration and career opportunities for marketing and R&D and using more cross functional teams are also effective in producing more integration, although to a somewhat lesser extent. The effectiveness of personnel movement and informal social group events is rather low. Interestingly, ICT appears to be a very effective tool for enhancing NPP. ICT not only fosters integration, but in addition it has an independent direct positive effect on NPP, possibly through knowledge creation within marketing and R&D. We also found a direct effect on NPP of another mechanism: cross functional phase review boards. However, for this mechanism the direct effect is negative. So, notwithstanding its strong positive effect on integration, a price is paid in terms of NPP. This may be related to the amount of formalization and complexity accompanying this mechanism.

This paper’s argument is that founding team composition—in particular, members’ prior company affiliations—shapes new firm behaviors. Firms with founding teams whose members have worked at the same company engage in exploitation because they have shared understandings and can act quickly. Conversely, founding teams whose members have worked at many different companies have unique ideas and contacts that encourage exploration. In addition, firms whose founding teams have both common and diverse prior company affiliations have advantages that allow them to grow. The results suggest team composition is an important antecedent of exploitative and explorative behavior and firm ambidexterity. The terms “exploration ” and “exploitation ” have been used broadly to capture a wide array of firm actions and behaviors. The concepts are central to studies of adaptation, organizational learning, and