نوآوری استراتژیکی در مدیریت اطلاعات و دانش : کاربرد تئوری رفتار سازمانی

A business school declares its strategy as becoming a leading European institution. As main vehicle for achieving recognition is the implementation of a top-down strategy naming five academic fields as key – (a) finance, (b) economics, (c) marketing, (d) law, accounting, and auditing, and (e) organizational behavior (OB). Top management allocates resources for research, academic activities, and positions to these five strategically chosen areas. Academic areas that are not strategically named must generate their own income through educational programs and research grants. Can OB serve as the platform to ensure the survival of IS/KMS? In our analysis, we found no other business school formulating a strategy along these lines; dominating strategic themes are internationalization, research excellence, and student environment. No academic field is singled out as strategic. We argue that selecting a few academic areas as a strategy is dysfunctional. We also found that OB is not very actively employed in research, be it positioning, theory, research model, analysis, or discussion. Hence, we do not find that OB offers any theorizing help to IS/KMS – this in contrast to innovation and change theories, for which we propose an framework as a means of defining IS/KMS research projects.

The field of information systems and knowledge management systems2 (IS/KMS) has throughout its history experienced extensive change in technology, research, and education. These renewals will continue into the foreseeable future (Galliers & Currie, 2011). Yet, being met with success in developing the field in desirable direction may quite well depend on the strategy the academic institution hosting IS/KMS develops and implements. In this article we address a true scenario in which a business school's top management enforces a top-down strategy in which the five fields of: (a) finance, (b) economics, (c) marketing, (d) law, accounting, and auditing, and (e) organizational behavior (OB) are singled out as those which shall make the business school recognized among similar top European institutions.3 The business school declares research as being the foundation for its educational programs, research efforts, and communication with the larger society. The school is relatively large, about 15,000 students, running programs on the levels of bachelor, master, and Ph.D. In May 2010 the business school's President4 forwarded the new strategy of becoming a leading European business school to the Board of Directors. The strategy further specified that these target fields may be a department but also limited to a group within a department or a network of faculty across departments. Resources for new academic positions, visiting scholars, project seed resources and project support, seminars, and other academic activities, were to be prioritized to these target fields. Fields other than those prioritized would be maintained as long as they successfully generate an acceptable level of income through the delivery of educational activities, externally funded research projects, and grants. In principle, if a field were to lose its attraction in the market, it would be discontinued. Because of these changes in focus, the faculty group of information systems and knowledge management systems (IS/KMS), in the newly renamed Department of Organizational Behavior, recognized the need for questioning its traditional thinking. Renewal and change in research and education became critical factors for future survival. It is recognized that IS/KMS is a key force in the ongoing societal and organizational renewal and change (Baskerville and Myers, 2002, Davis, 2000 and Kebede, 2010). For example, in the US business sector, IS/KMS continues to consume about a 30% of yearly total investments made (Centre for the Study of Living Standards, 2012). Recent research documents that IS/KMS supports the creation of business value, with particular emphasis on an organization's innovation and change capabilities (Aral et al., 2012 and Brynjolfsson and McAfee, 2011). Knowledge management systems is, by default, strongly related to information systems; their creation, acquisition, implementation, and use (see for example, Bera et al., 2011, Davis, 2000, Harzing, 2013 and Hirscheim and Klein, 2012). Hence, in the following material we denote the two intertwined areas of information systems and knowledge management as IS/KMS. Traditionally, research in IS/KMS has been interdisciplinary in nature – since it draws on innovation theory, models of value creation, actors’ roles and behaviors, the creation and running of task oriented groups, and how these relate to organizational structures and mechanisms (see for example, Roberts, Galluch, Dinger, & Grover, 2012). Yet, throughout its history the question of benefits from investing in IS/KMS has been lively discussed. Progress in understanding these key questions requires continued research into the role and connections among these complex issues and relationships. Organizational behavior theories may have the potential for further development of IS/KMS theories and increased understanding of its practical value. The benefits may be two-fold; first, organizational behavior (OB) focus on individuals and groups–their relationship to change and change processes, and second, organizational behavior is concerned with the interactions among individual actors, groups, and the larger organizational environment. We note that in undergraduate programs in IS in Great Britain, OB is ranked as the eighth most included business domain (Stefanidis, Fitzgerald, & Counsell, 2012). Hence, the objective of the present research project is the identification of particular promising theories and concepts in OB and how these relate to the established insights into innovation and change capabilities in IS/KMS. In particular, the project is concerned with identifying the “people” behind organizational behavior theories and concepts. Through the identification of key actors, we intend to document how promising theories and concepts have been employed in practice. Our three intertwined research questions are: RQ1: Do business schools single out some academic fields as strategic relative to others? RQ2: Will organizational behavior be one of strategic academic fields? RQ3: To what degree will organizational behavior theories and concepts support and assist in the further development of established theories and concepts in IS/KMS? We are particularly concerned with the degree of research value in OB theories and concepts when compared and contrasted with approaches in innovation and change theory. The final outcome would be propositions addressing the integration of theories, concepts, and value creation into the formulation of propositions, statements of direction, and frameworks. The article proceeds with background, methods, analysis, discussion, implications, and conclusions.

Our field is IS/KMS. Its survival may depend on the strategies the host business schools formulate and how these impact the area. To explore this issue, we analyzed a business school (BS) in which its top manager and board of directors adopted a top-down strategic approach within which five academic fields were named. These five areas were mandated with the responsibility of making the BSofEX recognized as a leading European business school. Among the five named academic areas are organizational behavior (OB) – which would be the umbrella for assisting the field of IS/KMS in contributing to the strategy. Our analysis shows that business schools do not select some academic fields as being chartered with the responsibility of obtaining recognition, leaving others to cater for themselves. Rather, in their strategy and mission formulations, business schools forward themes such as; internationalization, excellence in research, research driven educational programs, cultivating students, and participating in the fabric of society. We think that the reason why business schools avoid naming some academic areas is that negative reactions that would counter the desired strategic direction of development will occur. Among these negative reactions would be the de-motivation among the non-chosen faculty, power games to stay among the chosen, and the stifling of innovation and change processes, promoting a managerial culture of divide and conquer – reactions that would result in negative development loops (Chen, Lam, & Zong, 2007). If anything, when thinking of strategy among business schools, why are these called “business schools”? We appreciate that the term was coined when the first business schools were established in the United States in the 1920s. It has a history and tradition. Yet, as we have learnt, a business school is mandated to serve private, public, social, and professional organizations. Surely, some of these have business as their mantra, but far from all. In fact, some of these organizations may be alienated by the use of the term “business school” – for example, The Red Cross or trade union organizations. Hence, business is not the common denominator among these organizations. We suggest that what they all share area purpose, serving their constituencies, and surviving in monetary terms. To achieve these, they need leadership and management that have the acumen to handle innovation and change. When taking all “clients” into account, would not a better name for our institution be “School of Leadership and Management”? With regard to OB we found that its definition is so wide that it cannot serve any strategic purpose, other than increasing the degree of freedom for top managers to make their preferred decisions on resource allocation without interference. We also found that OB is not used in research for any specific purpose other than referencing. The term does not play a role at all in academic efforts aiming at its further development, understanding, or creation of value to academia and practice. More starkly, we found no evidence for the employment of OB in research definition, theory discussion, research model, research analysis, or discussion. We had to conclude that, based on our data, OB appears as an empty entity without specific meaning. As one of our interviewees expressed it, “If OB is just a bureaucratic convenience, it seems no worse an umbrella for IS/KMS than any other. In terms of intellectual integrity, they are as separate fields as physics and math.” Because of these negative findings, we returned to the profound need we initially expressed for the development of issues pertaining to innovation and change in IS/KMS. We suggest a macro model for key phenomena and relationships These would serve not only as the basis for further specification of the model but also as an umbrella for the definition of research in specific areas in need of attention. Indeed, we know that organizations invest more money in IS/KMS than in any other area. Organizations are increasingly exposed to risk because of the increased portfolio of IS/KMS. These undertakings carry risk. Yet we also strongly think that the future major development lines in organizations will occur between man and machine, between systems and intuition, between order and chaos, and between obedience and freedom. Indeed, despite extremely disruptive attempts at strategically engineering our value creation, the future looks bright, but not necessarily for IS/KMS in the setting similar to that of the BSofEX.