When ‘national innovation system’ meet ‘varieties of capitalism’ arguments on labour qualifications: On the skill types and scientific knowledge needed for radical and incremental product innovations

The literatures on ‘varieties of capitalism’ (VoC) and ‘national innovation systems’ (NIS) propose very similar arguments about how firms require different types of labour qualifications to pursue strategies of radical product innovation (RPI), incremental product innovation (IPI), and product imitation (PI) respectively. Despite their similar lines of reasoning, however, the VoC scholars are concerned with the skill profiles of a firm's entire workforce, whereas the NIS proponents focus on the knowledge base of scientists. Given that both literatures have developed without explicitly taking the arguments of the neighbouring discipline into account, it is thus unclear whether they explain the same, or different, phenomena. Furthermore, both literatures propose firm level arguments but test them on the basis of macro- rather than micro-level indicators. This paper therefore asks: first, does micro-level evidence support the VoC and NIS arguments that particular types of employee skills and knowledge backgrounds of scientists are needed for different competitive strategies? And, if so, do RPI, IPI, and PI firms need to employ scientists in combination with a workforce having the respective qualifications, or is it sufficient if scientists or employees alone are adequately qualified. Quantitative analyses indicate that a particular mix of scientific knowledge combined with employee skills facilitate RPI, IPI, and PI strategies. The article thus concludes that - despite their similar reasoning - the VoC and the NIS literatures indeed describe different phenomena, without being aware of the synergies created whenever adequate employee and scientific qualifications are hired together.     

Do RFIDs (radio frequency identifier devices) provide new ethical dilemmas for librarians and information professionals?

This paper provides an analysis of the current and potential ethical implications of RFID technology for the library and information professions. These issues are analysed as a series of ethical dilemmas, or hard-to-resolve competing ethical obligations, which the librarian has in relationship to information objects, library users and the wider social and political environment or state. A process model of the library is used as a framework for the discussion to illustrate the relationship between the different participants in the library system and it is argued that ethical analysis should involve the identification of future developments as well as current issues. The analysis shows that RFIDs do currently pose some dilemmas for librarians in terms of the conflicts between efficient service, privacy of users and an obligation to protect the safety of society as a whole, and that these are likely to become more problematic as the technology develops. This paper is part 2 of a series of papers on RFIDs and the library and information professions.     

On the motivating impact of price and online recommendations at the point of online purchase

Do online recommendations have the same motivating impact as price at the point of online purchase? The results (n = 268) of an conjoint study show that: (1) when the price is low or high relatively to market price, it has the strongest impact (positive and negative) on the likelihood of an online purchase of an mp3 player, (2) when the price is average to market price, online recommendation and price are equal in their impact at the point of online purchase, and, (3) the relative impact from price increases when online shopping frequencies increases. The implications these results give are that online retailers should be aware that online recommendations are not as influential as a good offer when consumers purchase electronics online. However, other customer recommendations have a stronger impact on novice online shoppers than towards those consumers that shop more frequently online.     

Collaborative management of business metadata

Legal provisions, cross-company data exchange and intra-company reporting or planning procedures require comprehensively, timely, unambiguously and understandably specified business objects (e.g. materials, customers, and suppliers). On the one hand, this business metadata has to cover miscellaneous regional peculiarities in order to enable business activities anywhere in the world. On the other hand, data structures need to be standardized throughout the entire company in order to be able to perform global spend analysis, for example. In addition, business objects should adapt to new market conditions or regulatory requirements as quickly and consistently as possible. Centrally organized corporate metadata managers (e.g. within a central IT department) are hardly able to meet all these demands. They should be supported by key users from several business divisions and regions, who contribute expert knowledge. However, despite the advantages regarding high metadata quality on a corporate level, a collaborative metadata management approach of this kind has to ensure low effort for knowledge contributors as in most cases these regional or divisional experts do not benefit from metadata quality themselves. Therefore, the paper at hand identifies requirements to be met by a business metadata repository, which is a tool that can effectively support collaborative management of business metadata. In addition, the paper presents the results of an evaluation of these requirements with business experts from various companies and of scenario tests with a wiki-based prototype at the company Bayer CropScience AG. The evaluation shows two things: First, collaboration is a success factor when it comes to establishing effective business metadata management and integrating metadata with enterprise systems, and second, semantic wikis are well suited to realizing business metadata repositories.     

The case of EAI facilitating knowledge management integration in local government domain

Information Technology (IT) infrastructure integration and knowledge management (KM) share communal objectives e.g. to transform organisations into more effective and efficient, agile and innovative, and more responsive to market changes. Such an association when assimilates bona fide knowledge management philosophy, it offers the IT departments a headship opportunity for organisational transformation in correlation with the rest of the organisation. Despite more than a decade of active research and practice in this complex problem area, advocates still perceive that Local Government Authorities (LGAs) lack integrated IT infrastructures that have resulted in the generation of data inconsistencies and redundancies, inefficient knowledge exchange and reduction in service quality and delivery. In the recent years, several LGAs have implemented Enterprise Application Integration (EAI) solutions to integrate their IT infrastructure. However, on analysing the relevant research studies, it is noticeable that application of EAI has been practiced at a larger scale in the private domain but to limited scale in the public domain. The shortage of such research studies presents a knowledge gap that needs to be endorsed. This research adapts a Revised Model for Integration Layers (REAL). By adapting to this model, it is exemplified that EAI achieves integration at five layers namely: connectivity, transportation, transformation, process integration and knowledge integration. The methodology for validating this model included a qualitative analysis of data gathered from formal interviews, observations and archive documents guided by initial conceptual observations from the literature. The findings indicate that cases leading to data inconsistencies and replication can be prevented by integrating knowledge through EAI.     

Enterprise Information Portals in support of business process, design teams and collaborative commerce performance

Enterprise Information Portals (EIPs) have been widely adopted as platforms for the integration of knowledge management and information technology (IT). This study has been conducted from the knowledge management perspective in order to examine the influence of EIPs on collaborative commerce in the automobile industry. This study explores the integration of internal and external business processes and the coordination of collaborative design teams. An initial qualitative investigation explores the practical applications of an EIP in an automobile company. A research model is then formulated and tested using a questionnaire survey of the R&D department of a motor company in Taiwan. The results of the data analysis reveal that presence of EIPs can help a company realize the benefits of c-commerce. EIPs also can improve collaborative commerce performance by promoting the degree of integration of the enterprise process and by strengthening the process innovation and communication of collaborative design teams. The results suggest that managers should reinforce important factors, including knowledge management tools, process integration, and the quality of design teams, in order to achieve success in collaborative commerce.     

Influencing citizen behavior: Experiences from multichannel marketing pilot projects

Information technology allows national and local governments to satisfy the needs of citizens in a cost effective way. Unfortunately, citizens still tend to prefer traditional, more costly channels, such as the front desk, phone and mail. Through pilot projects government agencies attempt to influence this behavior of citizens, directing them towards the online channel. With this paper we provide insight into the possibility to influence citizens’ behavior in the complex landscape of multi-channel service provision. The paper systematically compares five pilot projects using a framework that is based on organizational and marketing literature. The results show that socio-psychological factors are crucial in multi-channel management, much more than the technology itself. We conclude that citizens can be directed towards the online channel. However, not all projects are successful. Economic and legal instruments tend to sort more direct effects than communication or service instruments. Moreover, organizational factors such as bureaucracy often hinder eventual success. Choosing a smart and relatively small scope and strong project manager may help to evoke success in directing citizen online behavior.     

Analyzing the impact of knowledge management on CRM success: The mediating effects of organizational factors

Customer relationship management (CRM) and knowledge management (KM) have become key strategic tool for all companies, especially in the current competitive environment. Moreover, customer knowledge is an important issue for CRM implementation. Reviewing the literature, we found many studies that analyze the crucial role played by KM initiatives as determinants of the success of CRM. Moreover, we found also diverse studies that show high rates of failure when implementing that strategy, so there is still no integrated conceptual framework to guide companies to their successful implementation. In this paper, with data of 153 Spanish hotels, we examine the relationships between KM and CRM success using a structural equation model. The main contribution is that having knowledge management capabilities is not sufficient for the success of CRM, but there are other factors to consider. In particular, organizational factors indeed impact CRM success and they appear to be intermediaries of the impact of other factors (KM capabilities/technological/customer orientation factors) in the success of CRM (in financial and marketing terms).     

Demand articulation in emerging technologies: Intermediary user organisations as co-producers?

User involvement is assumed to be beneficial to innovation processes. Intermediary user organisations contribute to articulating societal demands for innovations. However, the learning processes inside these organisations are still not understood well. Therefore, this paper empirically investigates intermediaries using an event history approach. It yields characteristic learning mechanisms, e.g. concerning the management of expectations or actively building a case. If intermediaries overcome challenges regarding positioning, representation and the level of proactivity, they can play a precarious role in demand articulation in the context of new technologies.     

e-Government stakeholders—Who are they and what do they want?

There is an increasing recognition that various stakeholder groups for e-government have a significant role to play in ensuring the long-term success of the e-government enterprise. This article seeks to contribute to the understanding of the stakeholders’ multiple perspectives by proposing typologies of stakeholder roles, and stakeholder benefits, respectively, and embedding these in a stakeholder benefits analysis tool. A literature review is used to surface the diverse existing categorizations of e-government stakeholders and their interests and the benefits sought. This review informs a proposal for a typology of stakeholder roles, and for a typology of stakeholder benefits, which together are used to construct an initial proposal for a stakeholder benefits analysis tool (SBAT), which can be used to map stakeholder roles to stakeholder benefits. This tool has been tested by an expert group, and revised. This exploratory study is an important first step towards the development of tools and approaches for understanding the benefits sought by a wide range of different stakeholder groups in e-government. Progress in the development of such tools is important for the development of knowledge and practice, policy, and evaluation with respect to stakeholder engagement with, and participation in, e-government.