Search

In both developed and developing countries, innovation in higher education improves decision-making capabilities and contributes to institutional growth. Similarly, all higher education institutions naturally store and access knowledge in some manner and these institutions are expected to be at the cutting edge of such innovation. To this date, institutional recognition determines if a higher education institution meets or surpasses the minimum standards of quality education across the globe. Knowledge-sharing builds collective knowledge, retains knowledge and increases innovation capabilities. Higher education institutions in developing countries should be comparable to their counterparts in developed countries. The study therefore explores the key drivers to innovation in higher education institutions of developing countries using a survey strategy. The study collected different views from academics on the core drivers to innovation. An adequate sample of 240 participants was carefully chosen from 4 state universities in Zimbabwe, a developing country in Africa, with a 66.6% response rate. The research participants were actively involved in higher education functions of teaching, learning and research. After performing reliability tests on the data collection instruments, the researcher performed a descriptive analysis to measure the effect of the drivers towards the much needed innovation in higher education institutions. The empirical findings confirm that the most important driver for innovation in higher education institutions is Knowledge Management, followed by technological advances, competitive advantage and globalisation. It was established that technology is an enabler to higher education functions and is now embedded into teaching, learning and research. This educational transformation empowers academics with technical skills. The adoption of Knowledge Management practices supported by up-to-date technology will certainly improve the capabilities of these institutions. Because knowledge cannot be imitated by institutions to gain a competitive advantage, properly investing in Knowledge Management should certainly strengthen an institution into more competitiveness. The study therefore recommends the adoption of Knowledge Management practices for all higher education institutions in developing countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the Information Age, organisations have to keep abreast of competition, in terms of technological development. Technology is at the core of modern business; hence, Strategic Information Systems Planning is increasingly becoming one the investigated concepts. In keeping up with competitors, organisations commit to Information Technology investment. On the other hand, an organisation would not realise a return on investment if technology has not been applied adequately and efficiently - and that is dependent on the users of the system. The purpose of this paper, is to investigate factors that influence users' decisions to adopt a new Information System (IS) in L+GSA. They will also propose a diffusion strategy that can be used by management, or system owners, in the implementation stage of the system's acquisition, where user buy-in is critical to ensure that the L+GSA achieves its strategic objective. A survey study will be conducted at L+GSA-the only unit of this multinational organisation situated in Africa. Most of the L+GSA units are situated in developed countries, where adoption of a new IS could be different in many ways. A questionnaire will be distributed randomly to all employees who are affected by the adoption of a new IS within the South African unit of the organisation. The authors will perform correlation to determine association between all variables, and then perform a regression analysis to evaluate predictability of the user intention against dependent variables. The results reveal a strong relationship between user intention and both perceived ease of use and perceived usefulness. However, evaluation of predictability reveals that under the current circumstances, perceived ease of use is not a significant predictor of user intention to adopt the new IS. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The source of competitive advantage has shifted rapidly in the knowledge economy from machinery to knowledge. Meanwhile the knowledge lifespan is shorter due to the advent of Information Technology, which facilitates rapid knowledge creation and transfer. Similarly, software development models have improved over time, making software development easier and quicker (faster). Software developers must have the ability to acquire and transfer the necessary knowledge in order to keep up with skills demand in the software development environment. For this knowledge to be usable and useful, it has to be of good quality. The quality of the knowledge is as important as the quantity in the shared knowledge. This study investigates the factors that influence quality knowledge sharing within a software development community of practice (CoP). The unit of analysis is a software development community of practice that is focusing on socially relevant computing in the Gauteng province of South Africa. A survey design was employed to collect CoP member's opinions. The researchers performed predictive analysis and analysis of association to measure magnitude of association and predictability of knowledge quality shared by CoP members based on social identity, reputation and reciprocity. Results reveal that reputation has less predictive power and it is insignificant. Social identity and reciprocity yield the most predictive power on the quality of knowledge shared. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One of the goals of Information Systems (IS) is to solve business related problem with the appropriate use of relevant technologies. However, to solve the problem, people must be able to identify and articulate the problem. In the context of Governmental Agencies, for example, Ministers try to champion some type of technology change. They for example issue directives to their agency to implement particular systems within a defined time period (usually attached to their term of office). The Information Technology (IT) personal, who do not want to disappoint the Minister, hastily try to develop solutions. The current researcher sees a fundamental flaw with this approach. The proposed problem may have not been well defined and articulated. From the current IS literature there is currently no acceptable framework for identifying and articulating 'business' related problem. A survey of the current Information Systems literature shows that there is very little written about problem-based research (PBR). There exists no frameworks, guidelines or theoretical models. In the business context, practitioners may be using PBR tools and techniques, but are not aware of it. Ellis and Levy (2008) propose a framework for problem-based research. They, however, fall short of defining problem-based research. The current researcher conceptualize problem-based research in systems as 'an approach/methodology/mode that is engaging a business environment, focused/rooted on a particular even/problem, is practice focused and attempts to provide a practical solution.' The current researcher postulates that most IS projects fail or go over budget because the actual problems that the IS projects is meant to address in essence has never been well describes and well defined. The researcher further argues that problem-based research will reduce that gap between research and practice. There is a perception that people may not be aware that they use PBR, it is important that people are led through all four of the phases of the levels of competency (Klopper, Lubbe, & Rugbeer, 2007) (i.e. from unconscious incompetence, to conscious incompetence, then to conscious competence and finally to unconscious competence). This is to ensure that people follow a proper PBR approach. It is important to distinguish the mind set, managers always look for a solution to a problem were as scientists have a solution and then look for a problem they can use it on. The researcher argues that by following the PBR approach, the documentation of the research project will be shortened, more precise and focused. The researcher further argues that problem-based research techniques are being used in industry, it is at an unconscious incompetence (Klopper et al., 2007) (Unconscious incompetence: being unaware of something, its relationship to other things, and how it can be used in conjunction with other things.) Practitioners use a 'gut feeling' approach or it is based on sparks of commercial insight. The researcher further argues that the time factor (Saunders, 2007), complexity, uncertainty and ambiguity influence the timing of PBR. PBR in industry may be a satisfying approach and not an optimizing approach. In order to unpack and address these problems the current researcher proposes using a grounded theory approach to investigate the problems. Grounded theory allows one to build theory around the data that has been gathered form knowledgeable informants. The purpose of this paper is to outline the proposed approach that the current researcher will use to develop a framework for focused PBR in information systems development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]