Today employees are changing jobs more frequently than in the past, which can result in the loss of valuable knowledge and information during employee exits. This makes sharing of information and knowledge within the organisations more important than ever before, particularly during the product development process. The problem of losing knowledge during employee exits is a critical risk facing organisations.  It is worth noting that the study was inspired by the ethnographic research approach, with the purpose of understanding the nature of the phenomenon of information sharing in the product development process of small-scale complex system products and the aim to understand its implications during employee exits. The data for this study was collected through observation and interviews.  According to the results of this study, it was found that employees within the company used a range of techniques for storing and sharing information. The most common method used for finding and sharing information was informal meetings, however it was noted that there is room for improvement in this approach due to the potential impact of limited documentation. With regards to employee exits, the study revealed mixed opinions from employees regarding the existence of a formal off-boarding process. While some stated that such a process was lacking, others reported that it is indeed present. The process of transferring information and tasks to the next person seems to depend on the individuals involved, with some developing their own methods for handing over their work.  This study highlights the importance of context, reasoning, and decision-making when it comes to storing and sharing of information during the product development process, and the impact this has on the passage of knowledge during an employee exit. The knowledge transferred during an employee exit will determine the next person’s ability to work efficiently and effectively. There are numerous challenges in taking responsibility for a part or system without a comprehensive understanding of its history and background, especially when the previous employee in that role has left. Ultimately, this study emphasises the crucial importance of retaining experienced personnel and encouraging long-term employee commitment to the organisation.

Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) / Research has repeatedly shown that when groups whose members have varying expertise are combined to make a decision, they tend to discuss common information at a higher rate than unique information, hindering their ability to make the best decision. In response to these findings and the fact that organizations are increasingly using groups rather than individuals to make important decisions, a new intervention was developed based on past research to help groups make better decisions and discuss more unique information. The intervention was developed through three phases to determine which techniques were most powerful. The formal evaluation of the intervention was tested on a total of 228 undergraduate students (44 groups of four and 52 individuals). Groups were randomized into an experimental condition, receiving the intervention, or a control condition. Groups participated in a hidden profile business simulation acting as the top management team of a fictional Hollywood movie studio. Information was distributed so that there was common and unique information for each group. Groups given the intervention made significantly better decisions, shared more unique information, and performed significantly better than individuals. Unique information sharing was positively related to performance and the unique information given to one group member mediated the relationship between the condition and performance. In addition, this study revealed that within the inventory of unique information, different types of information may be more critical in reaching the best possible decision than others. Future research aims and implications are discussed.

An important post-9/11 objective has been to connect law enforcement agencies so they can share information that is routinely collected by police. This low-level information, gathered from sources such as traffic tickets, calls for service, incident reports and field contacts, is not widely shared but might account for as much as 97% of the data held in police records systems. U.S. policy and law assume that access to this information advances crime control and counterterrorism efforts. The scarcity of functioning systems has limited research opportunities to test this assumption or offer guidance to police leaders considering investments in information sharing. However, this study had access to FINDER, a Florida system that shares low-level data among 121 police agencies. The user-level value of FINDER was empirically examined using Goodhue's (1995) Task-Technology Fit framework. Objective system data from 1,352 users, user-reported "successes," and a survey of 402 active users helped define parameters of user-level success. Of the users surveyed, 68% reported arrests or case clearances, 71% reported improved performance, and 82% reported improved efficiency attributed to FINDER. Regression models identified system use, task-fit, and user characteristic measures that predicted changes in users' individual performance. A key finding was that FINDER affirmed the importance of sharing low-level police data, and successful outcomes were related to its ease of use and access to user-specified datasets. Also, users employed a variety of information-seeking techniques that were related to their task assignments. Improved understanding of user-defined success and system use techniques can inform the design and functionality of information sharing systems. Further, this study contributes to addressing the critical requirement for developing information sharing system metrics.

Organizations across work domains that utilize teams to achieve organizational outcomes experience change. Resources change. Project deadlines change. Personnel change. Within the scientific community, research has recently surged on the topic of team adaptation to address the issue of change specifically within teams. There have generally been two lines of research regarding team adaptation (task and membership). This effort is focused on membership. Teams are not static— members come and go. The membership adaptation literature has traditionally focused on the performance effects of newcomers to teams. Yet in practice, more and more teams today experience membership loss without replacement. Military units are stretched to capacity. Economic conditions have forced organizations to do more with less. When members leave, they are rarely, if ever, replaced. The very nature of some organizations lends itself to fluid team memberships. Consider an emergency room where a team of nurses and doctors work on Patient A. When a more critical Patient B arrives that requires the expertise of one of those team members, that doctor will leave the Patient A to tend to the Patient B. This practice is common in such work environments. Yet despite the prevalence of this practice, the scientific community knows very little about the impact of losing members on team performance. The current study examines the impact of membership fluidity on team performance. The purpose of this study was twofold. First, there was the need to address an empirical gap in the adaptation literature by focusing on membership changes (loss and loss with replacement) in non-creative tasks. Second was the consideration of the processes underlying adaptation—namely learning, operationalized as the development of effective shared mental models (SMMs). Thus, a primary goal was to determine the magnitude of team performance decrements associated with such changes within a decision-making task as well as the associated changes in team process. Results suggest that three-person intact teams demonstrated greater adaptive performance iv than membership loss with replacement teams. Furthermore, two-person intact teams developed more similar task and team interaction SMMs than membership loss teams when SMMs were indexed as a Euclidean distance score. There were no differences in the level of sharedness regarding task, team interaction or teammate SMMs for three-person intact teams as compared to membership loss with replacement teams. However, when teammate SMMs were operationalized as the personality facets (i.e., the Big 5) in exploratory analyses, three-person intact teams did develop more similar SMMs regarding the agreeableness facet than membership loss with replacement teams. Additionally, when operationalized as Euclidean distance, the agreeableness facet significantly predicted adaptive team performance—specifically, the smaller the distance (i.e., more similar the MMs), the greater the adaptive performance in teams. When operationalized as the similarity index, the neuroticism facet significantly predicted adaptive team performance such that the more similar the SMMs, the greater the adaptive performance in teams. Results suggest that membership fluidity does negatively influence the development of shared mental models among teammates. Furthermore, this study provides additional evidence that teammate and team interaction mental models, which are typically not examined together in team studies, are differentially influenced by membership fluidity and differentially predict outcomes like adaptive team performance. This suggests researchers should include both of these cognitive components of team performance to fully understand the nature of these constructs.

Multiteam systems are an integral part of our daily lives. We witness these entities in natural disaster responses teams, such as the PB Oil Spill and Hurricane Katrina, governmental agencies, such as the CIA and FBI, working behind the scenes to preemptively disarm terrorist attacks, within branches of the Armed Forces, within our organizations, and in science teams aiming to find a cure for cancer (Goodwin, Essens, & Smith, 2012; Marks & Luvison, 2012). Two key features of the collaborative efforts of multiteam systems are the exchange of information both within and across component team boundaries as well as the virtual tools employed to transfer information between teams (Keyton, Ford, & Smith, 2012; Zaccaro, Marks, & DeChurch, 2012). The goal of this dissertation was to shed light on enabling the effectiveness of multiteam systems. One means of targeting this concern was to provide insight on the underpinnings of MTS mechanism and how they evolve. The past 20 years of research on teams supports the central role of motivational and affective states (Kozlowski & Ilgen, 2006; and Mathieu, Maynard, Rapp, & Gibson, 2008) as critical drivers of performance. Therefore it was my interest to understand how these critical team mechanisms unravel at the multiteam system level and understanding how they influence the development of other important multiteam system processes and emergent states. Specifically, this dissertation focused on the influence motivational and affective emergent states (such as multiteam efficacy and multiteam trust) have on shaping behavioral processes (such as information sharing-unique and open) and cognitive emergent states (such as Transactive memory systems and shared mental models). Findings from iv this dissertation suggest that multiteam efficacy is a driver of open information sharing in multiteam systems and both types of cognitive emergent states (transactive memory systems and shared mental models). Multiteam trust was also found to be a critical driver of open information sharing and the cognitive emergent state transactive memory systems. Understanding that these mechanisms do not evolve in isolation, it was my interest to study them under a growing contextual state that is continuously infiltrating our work lives today, under virtual collaboration. This dissertation sought to uncover how the use of distinct forms of virtual tools, media rich tools and media retrievability tools, enable multiteam systems to develop needed behavioral processes and cognitive emergent states. Findings suggest that the use of media retrievability tools interacted with the task mental models in promoting the exchange of unique information both between and within component teams of a multiteam system. The implications of these findings are twofold. First, since both motivational and affective emergent states of members within multiteam systems are critical drivers of behavioral processes, cognitive emergent states, and in turnmultiteam system performance; future research should explore how we can diagnose as well as target the development of multiteam system level efficacy and trust. Second, the virtual communication tools that providemultiteam systems members the ability to review discussed materials at a later point in time are critical for sharing information both within and across component teams depending on the level of shared cognition that multiteam system members possess of the task.Therefore the ability to encourage the use and provide such tools for collaborative purposes is beneficial for the successful collaboration of multiteam systems.

The purpose of this study was to examine the relations among culture, information sharing, and performance among culturally-homogeneous NATO Officer teams. Forty-eight teams participated from five countries, namely, Bulgaria, Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, and USA. Teams of four participants were randomly assigned to a role and the task was an interdependent computer-based mission using an adapted version of Neverwinter Nights™ (Bioware, 2003), where they had to communicate among teammates and with non-human players to find weapons caches and other mission objectives. Not one individual had all of the information needed to perform the tasks; thus, they needed to share information with each other. The results of the study suggested that total information sharing was related to both team performance and cultural values (Power Distance, Individualism, and Uncertainty Avoidance). Specifically, Situation Update was the information sharing dimension that was significantly related to team performance. In addition, culture moderated the relations between information sharing and team performance. Specifically, there were hypotheses regarding Individualism moderating the relations between (a) Supporting Behavior, (b) Information Exchange, and (c) Reinforcement / Punishment and team performance. The results were that for high Individualists, the more supporting behavior, the better the teams performed. For low Individualists, the more supporting behavior, the worse the teams performed —a finding that was in the opposite direction than hypothesized. In support of the hypotheses, for high Individualists, as Information Exchange and Reinforcement / Punishment increased, team performance also increased. Conversely, for low Individualists, as Information Exchange and Reinforcement / Punishment increased, team performance decreased. A Task Direction x Power Distance interaction was also hypothesized and supported. Task Direction was positively related to team performance for high- iv Power Distance teams. For low-Power Distance teams, an increase in task direction was associated with a decrease in team performance. In addition, the effective teams exchanged more information and communicated similarly during the beginning, middle, and end of the missions. Moreover, high-Individualist teams were more successful and spent more time communicating about Planning in the beginning, and Situation Update for both the middle and end of the task. In contrast, teams low on Individualism spent more time communicating about Planning for all three phases of the task. There were also interesting rank differences in Information Sharing between senior and junior Norwegian Officers that are noteworthy. Study limitations, contributions, and practical implications for military teams and similar career fields were discussed.

The retail industry is today characterized by downward price pressure, and the increasedcompetition in the industry has led to pressure on profit margins. Purchasing and supply chainmanagement have become areas of increased strategic importance and play a crucial role inthe business performance. This study aims to extend previous literature in these fields byproviding the existing research with an empirical study on how the purchasing strategy canincorporate a total cost perspective of the supply chain.The purpose of this study was to suggest aspects to incorporate in the purchasing strategywith the objective to consider a total cost perspective of the supply chain. This was donethrough conducting an empirical case study at a Swedish middle sized retail company, bycollecting and analyzing both qualitative and quantitative data through interviews, meetingsand internal databases. Challenges that prohibit the case company to apply a total costperspective were identified in the purchasing process and a total cost model was built tovisualize how these affect total costs. Our findings show that there are six challenges thatprohibit the case company to include the total cost perspective in the purchasing process; theinability to reach minimum order quantities (MOQ), production specific requirements, thedifficulty to combine order suggestions on related stock keeping units (SKU), an uneven flowof orders to suppliers, inefficient time supply period and an inability to coordinate transports.Three aspects were identified as root causes for these challenges and suggested to the casecompany to incorporate in their purchasing strategy to enable the management of total costs inthe supply chain. The aspects are flexible time supply periods, internal and externalinformation sharing and coordination of transport. Furthermore, this research also gives anunderstanding of how the formation of the private label assortment fuels the challenges thatprohibit the company to take a total cost perspective.

This study aims to investigate college students' security awareness of using social media in sharing information. The two theories that have guided this study are the theory of planned behavior (TPB) and the technology acceptance model (TAM). Data was collected from both undergraduate and graduate students from the University of North Texas (UNT) in Denton. The total responses included 380 students from different majors with 291 valid responses for data analysis; The structural equation model (SEM) Lavaan package was used to find out the best fit of the model. A diagonally weighted least squares (DWLS) was used to model the variables as ordinal in this study's analysis as ordinal data made the model fit substantially. The study found that 6 factors: attitude (AB), subjective norm (SN), perceived behavior control (PBC), perceived usefulness (PU), perceived risks (PR), and security awareness (SA) influenced behavior intention (BI). Also, I found that AB was influenced by PR and SA, as well as SN influenced by SA. Self-efficacy (SE) influenced PBC. On the other hand, the study found that controllability (C) did not influence PBC; perhaps, an individual's skills do not interact with social media security settings. Perceived ease of use (PEOU) did not influence BI; perhaps this occurred because of an individual's inability to prevent his or her information from being disclosed in the future, even if they had taken the right precautions. This study contributed to literature on understanding the nature of information sharing among college students on social media. The results may help college security professionals to evaluate or revise the rules and policies regarding cybersecurity and privacy.

Background. With the increase in cyberattacks and cyber related threats, it is of great concern that the area still lacks the needed amount of practitioners. Open-source threat intelligence platforms are free platforms hosting related information to cyber threats. These platforms can act as a gateway for new practitioners and be of use during research on all levels. For this to be the case, they need to be up-to-date, active user base and show a correlation to commercial companies and platforms. Objectives. In the research, data will be gathered from a multitude of open-source threat intelligence platforms to determine if they have increased usage and correlation to other sources. Furthermore, the research will look at if there are overrepresentations for certain countries and if the platforms are affected by real world events. Methods. Platforms were gathered using articles and user curated lists, they were filtered based on if the data could be used and if they were free or partially free. The data was then, and processed to only include information from after 2017 and all be unique entries. It was then filtered through a tool to remove potential false positives. For IP addresses and domains, a WHOIS query was done for each entry to get additional information. Results. There was a noticeable increase in the amount of unique submission for the categories CVE and IP addresses, the other categories showed no clear increase or decrease. The United States was the most represented country when analyzing domains and IP addresses. The WannaCry ransomware had a notable effect on the platforms, with an increase in submission during the month of the attack and after, and samples of the malware making out 7.03\% of the yearly submissions. The Russian invasion of Ukraine did not show any effect on the platforms. Comparing the result to the annual Microsoft security reports, there was a clear correlation for some years and sources, while others showed none at all. This was the case for all the statistic applicable to, reported countries, noticeable trend increases and most prominent malware. Conclusions. While some results showed that there was an increase in cyberattacks and correlation to real world event, others did not. Open-Source threat intelligence platforms often provides the necessary data, but problems starts showing up when analyzing it. The data itself is extremely sensitive depending on what processing methods are used, which in turn can lead to varying results. / Bakgrund. Med den stora ökningen av cyberattecker och hot har det uppmärksammats att cybersäkerhets omårdet fortfarande saknar nog med utbildade individer. Open-source threat intelligence plattformar är gratis tjänster som innehåller information om cyberhot. Dessa platformar kan fungera som en inkörsport till cybersäkerhets området och ett stöd till alla nivåer av forskning samt utbildning. För att detta ska fungera, måste de vara uppdaterade, ha en aktiv användarbas och data ha liknande resultat som betaltjänster och stora företagsrapporter. Syfte. I arbetet kommer data samlas in från flertal open-source threat intelligence plattformar i syftet att avgöra om deras använding och bidrag har ökat. Vidare om informationen är liknande till det som rapporteras av företag. Utöver så kommer det undersökas om några länder är överrepresenterade bland datan och om verkliga händelser påverkade plattformarna. Metod. Möjliga plattformar samlades in genom artiklar och användarskapade listor. De filtrerades sedan baserat på om data kunde användas i arbetet och om det var gratis eller delvis gratis. Datan hämtades från plattformarna och filtrerades så enbart allt rapporterat efter 2017 och unika bidrag kvarstod. All data bearbetades genom ett verktyg för att få bort eventuella falskt positiva bidrag. Slutligen så gjordes WHOIS uppslag för IP adresser och domäner. Resultat. CVEs och IP-adresser visade en märkbar ökning av antalet unika bidrag. Resterande kategorier visade ingen direkt ökning eller minskning. Det mest överrepresenterade landet var USA för båda domäner och IP adresser. WannaCry viruset hade en märkbar påverkan på pattformarna, där månaden under attacken och efter hade ökningar av bidrag. Viruset utgjorde 7.03\% av de total årliga bidragen. Den ryska invasionen av Ukraina visade ingen direkt påverkan på plattformarna. När resultatet jämfördes med Microsots årliga säkerhetsrapporter fanns det en tydlig liknelse i resultat för vissa år och källor. Andra källor och år hade ingen liknande statistik. Den information från rapporten som kunde tillämpas var länder, märkbara ökningar i specifika kategorier och högst förekommande virus. Slutsatser. Vissa resultat visade att det fanns ökning av cyberattacker och att plattformarna hade en tydlig koppling till verkliga händelser, för andra resultat stämde det ej överrens. Open-source threat intelligence plattformar innehåller viktig och relevant data. Problem börjar dock uppstå när man ska analysera datan. Detta är eftersom datan är extremt känslig till hur den bearbetas den, som i tur kan leda till varierande resultat.

No description available.