Information systems development knowledge sharing-organizational justice, physical distance and social interdependence.(Report)

INTRODUCTION

It is predicted that the coming of the knowledge economy in which the knowledge resident in society or organizations would represent value for the organization more than other means of production such as equipment and plant facilities. With the increasing importance of knowledge, the management of human capital and the associated knowledge capital has moved from a secondary role, where it rested until the end of the 20th century, to a primary and central role that, if properly managed, can be a source of competitive advantage and innovation for organizations. As business is no longer confine by national boundaries, it is invaluable to organizations to manage their knowledge and to sharing existing skills, knowledge and expertise effectively within an organization in order to be competitive. In other words, convert individual knowledge to organizational knowledge. From ISD perspective, business users need to share their business requirements and processes with IT professionals hence Information Systems (IS) developed could meet their expectations. On the other hand, IT professional must share the technical features and possibilities of the new IS hence business could realise the potential of the technology. Lacking of knowledge sharing from either side could lead to the new IS fails to meet business objective.

The primary research objective of this study is to explore new factors which impact ISD knowledge sharing in RE. This leads to two research questions:

* What are the existing factors impact ISD knowledge sharing in RE?

* What are the new factors potentially impact ISD knowledge sharing in RE?

Knowledge: Knowledge is a justified belief that increases an entity's capacity for effective action, which requires physical skills and competencies, or cognitive or intellectual activity, or both the competencies and cognitive activity to perform that particular action. In an organizational setting, knowledge comprise all cognitive expectancies-observations that have been meaningfully organised, accumulated and embedded in a context through experience, communication, or influence that an individual or organizational actor uses to interpret situations and to generate activities, behaviour and solutions no matter whether these expectancies are rational or used intentionally.

Knowledge is often distinguished from information and data. Data is the representation of raw numbers and facts. Once it is systematically processed, organised, or given structure, it become information. When individual view and possess such information into their brain, it is in the process to become knowledge. Knowledge could be broadly grouped into individual knowledge and organizational knowledge. Individual knowledge is knowledge that resides in an individual mind. Organizational knowledge, on the other hand, is knowledge that is formed through interactions between technologies, techniques and people. The pattern and form of interactions depend on an organization's history and culture. Organizational knowledge could be further classified into explicit knowledge and tacit knowledge. Explicit knowledge can be documented and shared through information technologies in the form of data, scientific formula, specifications and manuals. This type of knowledge can migrate in the business community and be accessible for most companies regardless of their cooperative activity. It is codified and stored in databases where it can be accessed and used easily by anyone in the company. Tacit knowledge is the exact opposite of explicit knowledge. Tacit knowledge resides in the human mind, behaviour and perceptions. It is highly idiosyncratic, cognitive, hard to formalise and context-sensitive in nature, making it difficult to communicate and share with others. Examples of tacit knowledge are intuitions, hunches, insights, beliefs and values. From ISD perspective, business requirement is a combination of tacit and explicit knowledge.

Knowledge sharing definitions: Knowledge sharing has received a major attention because it is one of the primary pillars in knowledge management efforts. More organizations are now addressing the issue of knowledge sharing because of their growing awareness of the importance of knowledge to organizational success. Knowledge sharing is a deliberate act in which knowledge is made reusable for one party through its transfer by another. Knowledge sharing is a process taking place between two actors and the process may involve one or more people. It may take place between two people in a one-to-one relationship such as a conversation over a cup of coffee. Or it may be a one-to-many interaction such as in a meeting or a presentation. Knowledge sharing can also be seen as a process of knowledge exchange. It has been argued that the motivation for these different exchanges is related to the expectation of receiving something in return.

In knowledge sharing situations, reciprocal knowledge exchanges instead of one-way knowledge transfers. Nonetheless, even in reciprocal exchanges, each party is at times either a source or a recipient with respect to what they are sending or receiving. Thus knowledge sharing is a process of bidirectional exchange of knowledge. The author define knowledge sharing in this study context as the extent to which business users and IT professionals consciously reveal the presence of knowledge and exchange pertinent knowledge with one another during RE.

The importance and challenges of knowledge sharing: Today and increasingly in the future, in a knowledge age where national boundaries are of less importance to business, the transfer of knowledge and expertise and the creation of a learning organization has become a critical factor to organization success and competitiveness. As companies move forward, they must negotiate difficult paths between serving existing markets and developing new initiatives to meet the challenges of new competitors and opportunities. The key to negotiating between these opposing forces successfully is knowledge, specifically the knowledge assets each firm holds within.

Many countries have an ageing population which implying a greying workforce for many organizations. Drucker (2002) observed that by 2030, people over sixty-five in Germany, the world's third largest economy, will account for half of the adult population, while the population of those under thirty-five will shrink about twice as fast as the older population will grow. These figures are similar to those in several developing countries as well. This implies that more people will be retiring soon with not enough workers of the next generation of …