Knowledge has been considered as the important resource to the competitive advantage of an organization. Knowledge sharing is critical because intellectual assets, unlike physical assets, increase in value with use. Knowledge and intellect grow exponentially when shared. However, Professionals¡¦ reluctance to exchange knowledge inhibits sharing. Knowledge always could not be allocated well. Therefore, this paper is based on an empirical investigation of knowledge-sharing from information system (IS) professionals. Through a social perspective, it explores the important affecting factors on Knowledge-sharing behavior. The main contribution of this study is to adopt a well-established social theory, i.e., Social Exchange Theory (Blau, 1964¡FThibaut &Kelley, 1959¡FHomans, 1958) to construct a knowledge-sharing research model, which provides some practical and academic suggestions for the future.

In recent years, people have paid much attention to IS functions outsourcing in organizations. Outsourcing of information system (IS) functions is growing rapidly. Most of the researchers draw on the resource-dependence theory, transaction-cost theory, and agent cost theory to conduct their studies from the economic viewpoint. Economic theories aim at explaining the characteristics of governance or contract. However, explaining the relationship between organizations from a purely economic point of view is unjustifiable because inter-organizational relationships also involve the social learning experiences based on specific sequential interactions. While IS outsourcing can generally be divided into three stages, such as evaluation stage before outsourcing, outsourcing on-going stage, and outsourcing ending stage. The purpose of this study, departing from the social viewpoint, intends to use the social theories to investigate the affecting factors of outsourcing partnerships between firm and the IS functions outsourcing service providers in the outsourcing on-going stage. This study employs social exchange theory to establish the research model. In addition, the triangulation research method is also adopted to verify the research model. First of all, the research model derived from social exchange theory has been revised according to the result of multiple-case deeply interview. Then, the survey research is included to verify the revised research model and test the 12 hypotheses. Finally, among these 12 hypotheses, 11 of them are supported statistically significant and one hypothesis was rejected. The main contribution of this study to academia is to provide a research model of the IS functions outsourcing partnerships to the future researchers who are interested in this domain. Besides, practically speaking, the firm can also adopt the study outcome to ensure the success of the IS functions outsourcing.

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The movement towards open access has allowed academic researchers to communicate and share their scholarly content more widely by being freely available to Internet users. However, there are still issues of concern among faculty in regards to making their scholarly output open access. This study surveyed Virginia Tech faculty (N = 264) awareness and attitudes toward open access practices. In addition, faculty were asked to identify factors that inhibited or encouraged their participation in open access repositories. Findings indicate that while the majority of Virginia Tech faculty are seeking to publish in open access, many are unaware of the open access services provided by the university and even less are using the services available to them. Time, effort, and costs were identified as factors inhibiting open access and data sharing practices. Differences in awareness and attitudes towards open access were observed among faculty ranks and areas of research. Virginia Tech will need to increase faculty awareness of institutional open access repositories and maximize benefits over perceived costs if there is to be more faculty participation in open access practices. / Master of Arts / The movement towards open access has allowed academic researchers to communicate and share their scholarly content more widely by being freely available to Internet users. However, there are still issues of concern among faculty in regards to making their scholarly output open access. This study surveyed Virginia Tech faculty (N = 264) awareness and attitudes toward open access practices. In addition, faculty were asked to identify factors that inhibited or encouraged their participation in open access repositories. Findings indicate that while the majority of Virginia Tech faculty are seeking to publish in open access, many are unaware of the open access services provided by the university and even less are using the services available to them. Time, effort, and costs were identified as factors inhibiting open access and data sharing practices. Differences in awareness and attitudes towards open access were observed among faculty ranks and areas of research. Virginia Tech will need to increase faculty awareness of institutional open access repositories and maximize benefits over perceived costs if there is to be more faculty participation in open access practices.

Kunskapsöverföring har ansetts vara av vikt inom företag och organisationer för att bevara kunskapen, informationen och för att kunna förmedla den vidare till andra medlemmar. Studiens primära syfte var att genom forskningsteorier och intervjuer effektivisera Rädda barnens Ellen och Allan projekt i deras kunskapsöverföring. 5 aktiva medlemmar inom Ellen och Allan projektet intervjuades samt 1 kontrollintervju genomfördes med en rutinerad projektledare från Svenska kyrkan, för att få fram dennes syn på projektets nuvarande situation gällande kunskapsöverföring.      Resultatet visade att det finns en viss otrygghet i rollerna och framförallt hos projektledarna, som inte har någon specifik roll- eller uppdragsbeskrivning. Genom resultatet kunde vi även se att kunskapsöverföringen bör vara ett ingående moment i organisationens projektbeskrivning för att det ska fungera på bästa sätt. Fysiska möten och god kommunikation mellan deltagarna bör även prioriteras för att effektivisera kunskapsöverföringen inom projektet.

In the development of knowledge economy, knowledge is recognized as the most important resource for enhancing or sustaining competition advantage. It is also a key factor for maintaining the long-term success of organizations. The beginning and an important stage of knowledge management is knowledge sharing which is the key to organization creation, learning, performance, and the prediction of successful knowledge management. It will increase the accumulation of organizational knowledge and advance the organizational ability. Knowledge management is traditionally dominated by the viewpoint of information technology. Researchers have emphasized the importance of information technology infrastructure and application in knowledge delivery. However, while explicit knowledge sharing is depended on the utilization of information technology, studies also indicated that tacit knowledge sharing is mainly depended on informal interaction between co-workers¡¦ emotional and the degree of trust. Drawing on the perspective of social exchange theory, this research considers knowledge sharing as a social activity which is an exchange relationship between knowledge contributors and knowledge recipients¡]refer to team-member exchange, TMX¡^. In addition, the interaction between knowledge contributors and knowledge recipients is affected by the relationship between organization-member exchange¡]OMX¡^and leader-member exchange¡]LMX¡^. Therefore, this article investigates the factors which affect the willingness of knowledge sharing by considering the interaction and exchange relationship among individuals and organizations, managers, and other members in organizations. The individual and organization exchange relationship includes the challenging job characteristic and incentive system which provide by the organizations to motivate employees¡¦ knowledge sharing. Moreover, the inter-personal social exchange includes the interaction between co-workers and the interaction between individuals and managers. Employees would share their knowledge if they perceived the benefit of the interaction (either intrinsic or extrinsic) exceeded the cost (losing the power of holding the critical knowledge) of sharing the knowledge. This research investigated how organizational factors (including job characteristics and incentive system), inter-personal factors (including trust and social support between co-workers and leader-member interaction), and team commitment effect the willingness of knowledge sharing. Further, the article also took the team commitment as the mediator and the account of the knowledge characteristics (both importance and taciturnity) into consideration as the moderators. The hypotheses were tested using a sample of R&D team members who work at Hsinchu Science Park or Southern Taiwan Science Park. The twenty-eight technology firms were selected using convenience sampling. Out of the 1,220 questionnaires had been sent, the 650 of them were completed. The data were tested using one way ANOVA, correlation, and hierarchical multiple regression. The results indicated that organizational factors, inter-personal factors, and team commitment have positively related to the willingness of knowledge sharing. The team commitment fully mediated the relationship between willingness of knowledge sharing and incentive system, and leader-member interaction. The team commitment partially mediated the relationship between willingness of knowledge sharing and job characteristics, and co-worker interaction. In addition, the article also found that job characteristics, co-worker interaction, leader-member interaction, and team commitment were more strongly, positively related to the willingness of knowledge sharing when knowledge importance and taciturnity were being driven.

Cities and countries increasingly seek mega-events to boost tourism, update local infrastructure, and improve the international standing of the host community. Benefits are actively promoted by the organizing committees, but these large-scale events also create significant economic, environmental and social costs for the host community. Measuring resident support is necessary because their support is required to secure the rights to the event, and to provide the necessary economic and human resources needed for hosting the event. This study utilized existing data on the 1996 Atlanta Olympic Games to investigate the impact of a mega-event on the host community, and to measure resident support for the event. Social exchange theory provided the theoretical background for this dissertation. The theory states that the costs and benefits of an exchange are continually re-evaluated by the actors in the exchange relationship. The primary contribution of this study is support for the notion that social exchanges are temporal in nature; residents continually monitored the positive and negative impacts of the event on themselves and on their community. To reach this conclusion, this study utilized four data points in the year leading up to the Olympics to assess the changes in residents’ perceptions of the impacts of the event over time. These changes were evaluated in light of residents’ support for the event. A factor analysis reduced the fifteen impact statements into three factors: Benefits, Local Problems, and External Problems. Residents were segmented according to their assessment of the event impacts, resulting in three clusters: Supporters, Cynics, and Realists. Proximity to the main event location also was evaluated since this variable has had mixed results in previous resident studies. Results showed that resident perceptions varied over time, thus providing support for monitoring residents over multiple time periods. In addition, residents’ support and residents’ plans to attend the event were contributing factors in the assessment of the Benefits and Local Problems. Supporters, Cynics, and Realists demonstrated significant differences over time in their assessment of External Problems, and proximity to the event was found to be a significant factor in residents’ assessment of Local Problems. / Ph. D.

Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) / In the realm of BDSM there are a few different roles. There is a dominant, which is a person who controls a BDSM scene. There is a submissive, which is a person who gives up control to the dominant during a scene. In a BDSM scene, there must always be a person who is playing the role of a dominant and a person who is in the role of the submissive. This study looks at two different identities associated with the dominate role, lifestyle and professional. This study aims to compare and contrast the two identities on their backgrounds, how they identify themselves, and their views on tribute. Tribute is receiving either gifts or money in exchange for BDSM services. Two theories, social constructionism and exchange theory, were used to create the interview questions for this survey. For this study I interviewed four lifestyle dominatrices and three professional dominatrices. Data from six blogs, three lifestyle dominatrices’ blogs and three professional dominatrices’ blogs, were used as well. My findings suggest that in discovery of, and in BDSM play, the dominatrices are similar and that the defining difference between lifestyles and professionals is the acceptance of money. My findings also conflict a little with Viviana Zelizer’s theory that the receiver of a gift is necessarily submissive to the giver.

In this study I assessed a causal model between caregivers’ prior relationship to care-receivers, commitment to the relationship, and depression in parental and spousal caregiving, based on social exchange and commitment theory. Data (N=695) from the National Survey of Families and Households (NSFH) were used to test a path model examining the effects of relationship quality and commitment, as well as ace, gender, income, education, health, living arrangement, emotional support, and adult children's marital¥ status on depression. This study began the process of combining the social psychological concept of commitment and the gerontological caregiving literature. The expected effects of commitment on depression were not statistically significant for either spousal caregiving or parental caregiving. As for spousal caregiving, caregivers’ health and relationship quality were negatively associated with caregivers’ depression. In parental caregiving, caregivers’ education and health had negative effects on caregivers' depression. The quality of the relationship with spouse or parent was notable for explaining commitment to the relationship. The predicted positive effect of relationship quality with parent on moral commitment was contradicted by a Statistically significant finding of a negative effect. Spousal caregivers’ structural commitment to marital relationship was positively affected by the quality of the relationship with spouse. / Ph. D.