Offshore software development (OSD) is a leading business sector in the present ‘glocal’ IT marketplace, and vendors in different countries are opening software development centres worldwide to take advantage of the new business opportunities. However, software development is both a technical and a social process as various software modules need to be integrated, which requires ongoing interaction between the stakeholders. The software modules rely upon local knowledge regarding customer wants, project specific features, chosen design methodologies by development team members and synchronisation of activities to confirm the next design iteration. This study focuses on knowledge sharing processes involving the interplay between acquiring local knowledge and applying the knowledge acquired into the design of the client-specific software builds. New knowledge is created as new processes are applied and new outcomes realised, resulting in re-definition of software development practices. Building on existing theories with empirical case study evidence, this research reveals the socio-technical influences on knowledge management in the OSD process. Ideographic research methods have been applied to bring sensitivity in the everyday organisational activities for knowledge sharing across diverse social and cultural groups within two country contexts (New Zealand and India). Empirical data from ten case studies is used to inductively develop a conceptual framework, which has been applied to make within case and cross case comparisons across three levels of analysis (micro, meso and macro) for knowledge sharing. The micro level analysis explores individual key success drivers (behaviours and methodologies), the meso level explores organisational level practices (work processes and structures) and the macro level gives a holistic evaluation across two country contexts. Country contexts reveal that New Zealand vendors share closer cultural proximity with their clients, are engaged in client facing skills and have further outsourced software development tasks to other low cost countries. The Indian vendors are involved in software construction, prefer technical specialist skills and have defined more discipline in their software development processes. The thesis offers new insights on how vendors’ shape their software development styles based upon their beliefs and understanding of the offshore market and is especially relevant to both vendors and clients who intend venturing into the offshore market.

Offshore software development (OSD) is a leading business sector in the present ‘glocal’ IT marketplace, and vendors in different countries are opening software development centres worldwide to take advantage of the new business opportunities. However, software development is both a technical and a social process as various software modules need to be integrated, which requires ongoing interaction between the stakeholders. The software modules rely upon local knowledge regarding customer wants, project specific features, chosen design methodologies by development team members and synchronisation of activities to confirm the next design iteration. This study focuses on knowledge sharing processes involving the interplay between acquiring local knowledge and applying the knowledge acquired into the design of the client-specific software builds. New knowledge is created as new processes are applied and new outcomes realised, resulting in re-definition of software development practices. Building on existing theories with empirical case study evidence, this research reveals the socio-technical influences on knowledge management in the OSD process. Ideographic research methods have been applied to bring sensitivity in the everyday organisational activities for knowledge sharing across diverse social and cultural groups within two country contexts (New Zealand and India). Empirical data from ten case studies is used to inductively develop a conceptual framework, which has been applied to make within case and cross case comparisons across three levels of analysis (micro, meso and macro) for knowledge sharing. The micro level analysis explores individual key success drivers (behaviours and methodologies), the meso level explores organisational level practices (work processes and structures) and the macro level gives a holistic evaluation across two country contexts. Country contexts reveal that New Zealand vendors share closer cultural proximity with their clients, are engaged in client facing skills and have further outsourced software development tasks to other low cost countries. The Indian vendors are involved in software construction, prefer technical specialist skills and have defined more discipline in their software development processes. The thesis offers new insights on how vendors’ shape their software development styles based upon their beliefs and understanding of the offshore market and is especially relevant to both vendors and clients who intend venturing into the offshore market.

In order to stay competitive, companies need to take into account many different aspects such as Knowledge Management (KM). Knowledge sharing (KS) is an important aspect in the field of KM. Organizations today increasingly recognize the need to support, in one way or another, knowledge sharing amongst employees. Employees and specifically managers are searching, testing and using various proactive interventions to facilitate knowledge sharing. By effectively enhancing knowledge sharing a company can develop a higher degree of competitive advantage. The purpose of our thesis is to make recommendations for how knowledge sharing may be improved amongst the sales representatives in the sales department at a customeroriented company, Arctic Paper. In order to fulfil this purpose and to present a reliable and valid report a qualitative analysis method was used. We wanted to get a deeper understanding of the chosen subject matter in this company and therefore conducted the interviews in a semi-structured manner in order to have the flexibility to follow up the interviewed participants perceptions and thoughts. Conducting the interviews on the two levels, strategic and operational, turned out to be rather informative. We found that the view on the chosen subject, knowledge sharing, differed in the two levels. There seemed to exist a notion of problem-free view on the higher level of the company, while the employees on the operational level could more easily target the main problems that they face. The most evident problems regarding the sharing of knowledge in the Sales Department concerns the tacit knowledge, since this is prevalent here and do not have structured means of transfer among the sales representatives and therefore easily can get lost. The informal direct sharing of knowledge causes loss of information and errors in production and delivery. Drawing from this we have gathered some recommendations for the company to consider, which will be presented in the study. Some of the most important recommendations that we could conclude deriving from the probelms concerns the transferring of a certain amount of tacit knowledge into explicit, which means paying more attention to the process of externalization from Nonaka’s model which we present in the our Frame of Reference.

This study argues that knowledge sharing behaviour is a kind of organizational citizenship behaviour and that as such (i) the two should be strongly positively correlated and that (ii) strong predictors of organizational citizenship behaviour should also strongly predict knowledge sharing behaviour. Since the organizational behaviour literature identifies job satisfaction and organizational commitment as robust predictors of organizational citizenship behaviour, the study investigated the interrelationships among knowledge sharing behaviour, organizational citizenship behaviour, job satisfaction, and organizational commitment. The study employed a correlational survey design, sourcing the empirical data from secondary school teachers in a number of schools in and around Gaborone, Botswana. As expected, knowledge sharing behaviour and organizational citizenship behaviour were significantly positively correlated, organizational commitment was a significant predictor of organizational citizenship behaviour, and job satisfaction and organizational commitment were significantly positively correlated. Contrary to expectations, however, both job satisfaction and organizational commitment were unrelated to knowledge sharing behaviour. Not all study hypotheses were supported, and as such, it would be premature to conclude, on the strength of the evidence presented in this thesis, that knowledge sharing behaviour indeed is a kind of organizational citizenship behaviour. Nevertheless, the positive correlation between knowledge sharing behaviour and organizational citizenship behaviour would seem to suggest that the role of organizational citizenship behaviour in organizational knowledge sharing is worth investigating further. / Thesis (DPhil)--University of Pretoria, 2010. / Information Science / unrestricted

Der Austausch von Wissen zwischen Organisationen gewinnt aufgrund beschleunigter Entwicklungsschleifen und begrenzten internen Möglichkeiten zur Wissensgenerierung immer mehr an Bedeutung. Der vorliegende Beitrag untersucht in diesem Zusammenhang, welche Barrieren den interorganisationalen Wissensaustausch auf der Ebene einzelner Personen einschränken. Dazu wurde anhand einer Literaturanalyse ein ganzheitlicher Ordnungsrahmen zur Identifikation, Zuordnung und Beschreibung der Barrieren gebildet. Darauf aufbauend wurden Methoden entwickelt, die eine Messung und Bewertung der Barrieren ermöglichen. Die Ergebnisse dienen Entscheidungsträgern in Wirtschaft und Wissenschaft, um Störungsquellen in interorganisationalen Wissensflüssen zu identifizieren und liefern eine Grundlage für die Ableitung gezielter Maßnahmen.

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Yes / The utilisation of artificial intelligence (AI) is progressively emerging as a significant mechanism for innovation in human resource management (HRM). The capacity to facilitate the transformation of employee performance across numerous responsibilities. AI development, there remains a dearth of comprehensive exploration into the potential opportunities it presents for enhancing workplace performance among employees. To bridge this gap in knowledge, the present work carried out a survey with 300 participants, utilises a fuzzy set-theoretic method that is grounded on the conceptualisation of AI, KS, and HRM. The findings of our study indicate that the exclusive adoption of AI technologies does not adequately enhance HRM engagements. In contrast, the integration of AI and KS offers a more viable HRM approach for achieving optimal performance in a dynamic digital society. This approach has the potential to enhance employees’ proficiency in executing their responsibilities and cultivate a culture of creativity inside the firm.

In the competitive environment, organizational knowledge became one of the most valuable strategic resources for a company. Indeed, it is said to be the only resource that cannot be imitated, and thus, that provides a reliable competitive advantage. Hence, knowledge management has become a highly investigated field of study. In fact, knowledge sharing, one of the facets of knowledge management is considered as a helpful leverage within a company’s strategy. Knowledge sharing has been studied widely, it is found to be a powerful process to ensure that the developed knowledge within the company is kept in the company and made usable. Even though knowledge sharing has been investigated by researchers, when looking at the practices within organizations, it appears that those are not as efficient as they could be, due to organizational, technical, as well as individual hindrances that affect the establishment of such processes.   This thesis aims to increase the understanding of which factors influence individuals’ sharing behavior and which role a knowledge sharing policy takes. Therefore, interviews have been conducted with the employees within the communications department of the Alstom group. Alstom France is multinational company, which is providing transportation and energy producing solutions; this implies that the communication is a support function and needs to work efficient, which makes the matter of knowledge sharing even more important. It was found that the strategic importance of knowledge sharing is highly acknowledged within Alstom, since the company has introduced a knowledge transfer department, which has released the “Alstom Knowledge Management Transfer Handbook”, the company’s internal knowledge sharing policy. It provides a guideline for the managers within the departments. The perceived motivations and hindrances to share knowledge are mainly about the manager’s role, language and the team culture.

Befintlig forskning på området har dragit slutsatsen att Knowledge Sharing är av stor vikt för ett företags framtida överlevnad och att små och medelstora företag i många fall inte tagit de åtgärder som behövs för att främja en ökad kunskapsdelning mellan medarbetarna. Studien belyste därför Knowledge Sharing inom små och medelstora, projektbaserade företag. Syftet med studien var att öka förståelsen och bidra med kunskap gällande hur medarbetarna inom små och medelstora företag arbetar med och kan stimulera Knowledge Sharing. Forskningsansatsen var en kvalitativ design med semistrukturerade intervjuer där utgångspunkten var att studera Knowledge Sharing utifrån medarbetarnas inställningar och erfarenheter. Studien visade att den praktiska delningen av kunskap inom små och medelstora företag skedde genom informella metoder såsom möten och personlig kommunikation. Den explicita kunskapen föredrogs att delas genom personifiering och dialog. Det ansågs generera djupare kunskap att dela genom personifiering än genom kodifiering. Individer vill dela expertis naturligt, och den bästa organisatoriska policyn kan vara att skapa tillfällen för människor att diskutera och utbyta kunskaper. Bonussystem för att motivera de anställda till att dela kunskaper i högre utsträckning fanns implementerade inom vissa utav de undersökta företagen. Medarbetarna drevs dock av andra motiv för att dela kunskap än rent monetära incitament. Kunskapsdelningsbeteendet motiveras av delarens önskan att hjälpa andra och bidra till organisationen. Andra starka motiv till Knowledge Sharing var att dela kunskap för att i sin tur få kunskaper returnerade och att det var roligt. / Research has concluded that Knowledge Sharing is essential for a company's future survival and that small and medium-sized enterprises have not taken the necessary steps to promote greater Knowledge Sharing between employees. Therefore the study highlighted Knowledge Sharing in small and medium-sized, project-based businesses. The aim of the study was to increase the understanding and contribute knowledge regarding how employees in small and medium-sized businesses are working with and can stimulate Knowledge Sharing. The research approach was a qualitative design with semi-structured interviews where the starting-point was to study employees' preferences and experiences of Knowledge Sharing. The study showed that the practical sharing of knowledge within small and medium enterprises was through informal methods such as meetings and personal communications. The explicit knowledge was presented to them by the personalization and dialogue, rather than by monologue. It was considered to generate deeper knowledge by impersonation than through codification. Individuals want to share expertise naturally, and the best organizational policies may be to create opportunities for people to talk and share knowledge through dialogues. Bonus systems were implemented to motivate employees to share knowledge in some of the surveyed companies. Furthermore, employees were motivated to share knowledge by other motivations than purely monetary incentives. Knowledge Sharing behavior was motivated by the desire to help others and contribute to the organization. Other strong motives to Knowledge Sharing was to share knowledge in order to, in turn, get knowledge returned and that it was fun.