Stakeholder View of Enterprise System Knowledge Management P

Knowledge Management (KM) has been identified as one of the most important antecedents of ES success. Managing an Enterprise System is a knowledge intensive task that necessarily draws upon the experience and involvement of a wide range of stakeholders wit

This is the author version of an article published as:

SEDERA, Darshana (2007) Stakeholder View of Enterprise System

Knowledge Management Process. In Proceedings Pacific Asian

Conference on Information Systems, Auckland New Zealand.

Copyright 2007 (please consult author)

Accessed from

Knowledge Management (KM) has been identified as one of the most important antecedents of ES success. Managing an Enterprise System is a knowledge intensive task that necessarily draws upon the experience and involvement of a wide range of stakeholders wit

Stakeholder View of Enterprise System Knowledge Management Process

Darshana Sedera

Queensland University of Technology

Brisbane, Australia

Abstract

Knowledge Management (KM) has been identified as one of the most important antecedents of ES success. Managing an Enterprise System is a knowledge intensive task that necessarily draws upon the experience and involvement of a wide range of stakeholders with diverse knowledge capabilities. These stakeholders, ranging from top executives to data entry operators, have multiple and often conflicting objectives and priorities and rarely agree on a set of common aims. Using a four-phased Knowledge Management process, this paper seeks to identify common and specific requirements for the stakeholders in an Enterprise System Knowledge Management initiative. The empirical investigation, analyzing 310 responses, amplified the specific needs of stakeholders in relation to transfer of knowledge. Moreover, all stakeholders unanimously agreed on the importance of knowledge retention strategies and end-user training, when assessing the goodness of a KM initiative.

Keywords: Knowledge Management, Enterprise System, Stakeholders

1. Introduction

The importance of gathering perceptions of success at multiple levels in organizations has been discussed among academics for several decades (e.g. (Cameron and Whetten 1983; Leidner and Elam 1994; Tallon, Kraemer et al. 2000; Sedera and Gable 2004). An Enterprise System, unlike a traditional Information System, entails many ‘users’ ranging from top executives to data entry operators. These stakeholders (henceforth referred to as the employment cohorts due to the intra-organizational focus) typically have multiple and often conflicting objectives and priorities and rarely agree on a set of common aims (e.g. (Cameron and Whetten 1983; Quinn and Rohrbaugh 1983; Yoon 1995). Thus, gathering data from multiple employment cohorts enhance our understanding of the unique requirements, issues and benefits of each employment cohort. The purported differences are seldom investigated for the antecedents of Enterprise Systems (ES), where the focus of employment cohorts is as equally important.

The broad objective of this research is to better understand the ostensible differences of multiple employment cohorts associated with an Enterprise System Knowledge Management initiative. Managing knowledge – commonly referred to as Knowledge Management (KM) – has been identified as one of the most important antecedents of ES success (Davenport 1998; Markus, Axline et al. 2003). Many researchers have identified managing knowledge as a critical success factor of ES (Davenport 1996; Davenport 1998; Davenport 1998; Gable, Scott et al. 1998; Bingi, Sharma et al. 1999; Sumner 1999). Employing the knowledge classification of (Swanson 1994),

Knowledge Management (KM) has been identified as one of the most important antecedents of ES success. Managing an Enterprise System is a knowledge intensive task that necessarily draws upon the experience and involvement of a wide range of stakeholders wit

(Sadagopan 2003) categorized ES projects as the most demanding innovation domains. Using qualitative methods, (Lee and Lee 2000; Pan, Newell et al. 2001; Jones and Price 2004) observed a positive relationship between effective ES-related KM and the maximization of positive ES impacts.

This paper has following specific objectives: (1) to investigate incongruent views of employment cohorts on a KM initiative, (2) to identify specific aspects of KM that stakeholders may differ their opinions on, (3) to allude to possible reasons for observed differences, (4) to assess whether all employment cohorts are sufficiently informed to comment on all aspects of KM, and broadly

(5) whether a study of employment cohorts increase our understanding of KM for management and research purposes. The study results would also increase our understanding of the unique requirements of employment cohorts in KM initiatives that may be generalized into other antecedents of ES. The paper begins with a review of literature. The a-priori model is described next, with a succinct description of the KM construct. The research context is discussed next, followed by the details of the survey instrument. Next, the paper reports the data analyses focusing on the five aforementioned research objectives. The paper concludes with a summary of findings and a discussion on future research directions.

2. Literature Review

The literature review focuses on employment cohorts and knowledge management (KM). The historical perspective of employment cohorts identifies the appropriate employment cohorts for the study context, while the review of KM studies aims to derive an appropriate framework for KM-process.

2.1 Review of Employment Cohorts

Anthony (1965) provided the main foundations for employment cohort classification in management science. He referred to three levels of employment in an …… 此处隐藏：36787字，全部文档内容请下载后查看。喜欢就下载吧 ……