Requirements for the Summary-Reflection Paper:
For each reading article, you are responsible for writing a summary-reflection essay ( around 2 pages or more as needed) (after you read it). This essay should reflect your reflections of the concepts and theoretical frameworks discussed and the confusions you may have.Rather than simply repeat or even copy/paste from original reading materials, please focus on your understanding of the concepts and theoretical frameworks. To be more specific, besides a brief summary, you should have a major section dedicated to the confusions you have with the concepts and models in the reading materials. You should comment on those concepts and models with your own opinions based on working experiences, readings from the library, and reflections of your previous learning.
If you just repeat abstract concepts from the reading materials, you will not earn a high score. You should connect concepts with job/internship experiences.
The following rubrics of essay evaluation could be used to guide your writing. All essays are single-spaced with top and bottom margins of 1 inch and left and right-side margins of 1 inch and the font size should be 12.
Antecedents of Knowledge Transfer from Consultants to Clients in Enterprise System Implementations Antecedents of Knowledge Transfer from Consultants to Clients in Enterprise System Implementations Author(s): Dong-Gil Ko, Laurie J. Kirsch and William R. King Source: MIS Quarterly, Vol. 29, No. 1, Special Issue on Information Technologies and Knowledge Management (Mar., 2005), pp. 59-85 Published by: Management Information Systems Research Center, University of Minnesota Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25148668 Accessed: 07-03-2017 20:04 UTC REFERENCES Linked references are available on JSTOR for this article: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25148668?seq=1&cid=pdf-reference#references_tab_contents You may need to log in to JSTOR to access the linked references. JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at http://about.jstor.org/terms Management Information Systems Research Center, University of Minnesota is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to MIS Quarterly This content downloaded from 134.88.255.66 on Tue, 07 Mar 2017 20:04:03 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms Ko et al./Knowledge Transfer from Consultants to Clients Antecedents of Knowledge Transfer from consultants to clients in enterprise System Implementations1 By: Dong-Gil Ko Indiana University Kelley School of Business Bloomington, IN 47405 U.S.A. [email protected] Laurie J. Kirsch University of Pittsburgh Katz Graduate School of Business Pittsburgh, PA 15260 U.S.A. [email protected] William R. King University of Pittsburgh Katz Graduate School of Business Pittsburgh, PA 15260 U.S.A. [email protected] Abstract Enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems and other complex information systems represent criti cal organizational resources. For such systems, 1V. Sambamurthy and Mani Subramani were the accepting senior editors for this paper. firms typically use consultants to aid in the imple mentation process. Client firms expect consultants to transfer their implementation knowledge to their employees so that they can contribute to success ful implementations and learn to maintain the sys tems independent of the consultants. This study examines the antecedents of knowledge transfer in the context of such an interfirm complex infor mation systems implementation environment. Drawing from the knowledge transfer, information systems, and communication literatures, an inte grated theoretical model is developed that posits that knowledge transfer is influenced by knowl edge-related, motivational, and communication related factors. Data were collected from consul tant-and-client matched-pair samples from 96 ERP implementation projects. Unlike most prior studies, a behavioral measure of knowledge trans fer that incorporates the application of knowledge was used. The analysis suggests that all three groups of factors influence knowledge transfer, and provides support for 9 of the 13 hypotheses. The analysis also confirms two mediating rela tionships. These results (1) adapt prior research, primarily done in non-IS contexts, to the ERP implementation context, (2) enhance prior findings by confirming the significance of an antecedent that has previously shown mixed results, and (3) incorporate new IS-related constructs and measures in developing an integrated model that MIS Quarterly Vol. 29 No. 1, pp. 59-85/March 2005 59 This content downloaded from 134.88.255.66 on Tue, 07 Mar 2017 20:04:03 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms Ko et al./Knowledge Transfer from Consultants to Clients should be broadly applicable to the interfirm IS implementation context and other IS situations. Managerial and research implications are dis cussed. Keywords: Knowledge transfer, enterprise sys tems, ERP, implementation, consultants, structural equation modeling, partial least squares Introduction _ __ _ More than 60 percent of firms in the United States had implemented, or planned to implement, enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems in 2000. Since then, the sales of ERP packaged software has increased by about 150 percent per year, reaching an annual sales level of more than $30 billion in 2004. Total expenditures on ERP are certainly much more (Sheu et al. 2004). Moreover, firms that successfully implement ERPs have been shown to exhibit higher performance across a wide variety of financial metrics (Hitt et al. 2002). However, the implementation of such complex information systems (IS) continues to challenge firms. Researchers have identified many reasons for less than successful implementations, including lack of in-house expertise (Smith et al. 1998), poor employee retention (McFarlan and Nolan 1995), and difficulties in keeping up with changing tech nologies (Lacity and Willcocks 1998). Because of these issues, most organizations rely on external consultants for significant help in developing and implementing these systems (Lozinsky 1998). Since ERP systems are focused on providing a degree of functional interoperability that is "difficult and expensive to achieve with stand-alone custom-built systems" (Hitt et al. 2002, p. 72), this reliance on consultants is well-founded (DiRomualdo and Gurbaxani 1998; Quinn 1999). With the growing application of outsourcing to ever more sophisticated levels in development and inte gration projects, new opportunities are also rapidly opening for such vendor-client processes in the broader field of information systems. In using consultants, organizations typically have goals that go beyond the successful implemen tation of a new system; they also have the less tangible goal of acquiring new implementation, operational, maintenance, and training knowledge. The successful transfer of this knowledge from consultants to business clients is critical for meeting the perceived needs of the client organization (Bancroft et al. 1998; Soh et al. 2000). Knowledge is usually defined as a justified belief that increases an individual's capacity to take effective action (Alavi and Leidner 2001). It exists in two primary forms: explicit, which is trans mittable in formal, systematic language, and tacit, which "'indwells' in a comprehensive cognizance of the human mind and body" (Nonaka 1994, p. 16). Commercial knowledge, which may be explicit or tacit, or both, "is not truth, but effective perfor mance: not 'what is right,' but 'what works' or even 'what works better'" (Demarest 1997, p. 375). The knowledge domain of this study is a specific variety of commercial knowledge?complex information systems implementation knowledge? sets of rules, tools, and guidelines and ways to employ them that produce effective systems implementation. ERP implementation knowledge, which is both explicit and tacit, embodies those activities associated with configuring and testing ERP modules, installing software and hardware, and training client employees in preparation for on going operation, maintenance, and support of a vendor-supplied system that is typically custom ized (Bancroft et al. 1998; Lozinsky 1998). Such knowledge includes, for example, guidelines for manipulating configuration tables so that they align with business processes and knowledge of how a sales-order transaction flowing through to another functional area might trigger a change in inventory stock levels or in the generation of invoices. The ERP context is prototypical of Swanson's (1994) most demanding innovation domain (Type lllc) since ERP focuses on the fulfillment of "the enterprise needs of an organization by tightly integrating the various functions of an organization using a process view" (Sadagopan 2003, p. 169). 60 MIS Quarterly Vol. 29 No. 1/March 2005 This content downloaded from 134.88.255.66 on Tue, 07 Mar 2017 20:04:03 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms Ko et al./Knowledge Transfer from Consultants to Clients Swanson notes that both users and consultants play important roles in the successful implemen tation of Type III innovations, and that the transfer of knowledge is important in the ERP context (Soh et al. 2000). However, not much is known about knowledge transfer from consultants to business users (i.e., clients) in the context of Type III innovations?a setting that is knowledge intensive and in which the knowledge structure of the participants is asymmetric. Initially, the consultant primarily possesses technical knowledge, whereas the client primarily possesses business knowledge (Rus and Lindvall 2002). Such knowledge asym metry can be problematic because it creates knowledge barriers that inhibit the adoption of complex technologies (Attewell 1992). Trans ferring knowledge from consultants to clients is one mechanism to lower such knowledge barriers. Hence, the knowledge initially possessed by the consultant must be integrated and embodied (Faraj and Sproull 2000) in the system and/or in the knowledge of the client (Soh et al. 2000). In comparison to the implementation of internally developed IS applications, business clients play a larger and more significant role in ERP implemen tations (Markus and Tanis 2000; Soh et al. 2000). Indeed, business clients typically out-number IS specialists on ERP "mixed" project teams (Bancroft etal. 1998). Hence, understanding how knowledge transfer effectively occurs in such instances is important. Many factors have been identified in non-IS contexts to be favorable to, or deleterious to, successful knowledge transfer. The first step of this study was to identify such factors from the general knowledge transfer literature. Unfortu nately, empirical results regarding antecedents of knowledge transfer in non-IS contexts have not been consistently strong and robust, prompting a call for additional studies (Argote 1999). In the ERP context, developing these understandings is especially difficult because it is quite different from environments in which the theories usually have been developed and tested. Further, the ERP context is different from the traditional IS develop ment-implementation situations because of the greater importance and complexity of the systems, the crossing of firm boundaries, and the high degree of asymmetry of the knowledge of participants. Therefore, the research questions for this study are: What are the antecedents of knowledge transfer from a consultant to a client, and to what extent do these antecedents explain knowledge transfer in the context of ERP implementations? The approach taken to address these questions involves the integration of the theory of information