Knowledge that Transforms

Zale Corporation once melted down most of its damaged, returned, or repossessed jewelry, resulting in substantial lost revenues. It was determined that additional revenue could be produced from salvageable jewelry if the value of the items could be accurately determined. This meant the jewelry had to be appraised by experienced gemologists to determine the most profitable disposition. The gemologists’ productivity suffered because the appraisal was extremely labor intensive. To address this problem, an automated multimedia system utilizing electronically linked measuring instruments, voice recognition, and interconnected LAN databases was developed. Although the unique voice recognition feature of the system was later abandoned, the use of the system enhanced productivity. This paper describes the systems development, its subsequent evolution, and the lessons learned from the process.

Against the backdrop of a brief history of communities of scholars, the shortcomings of the current intellectual infrastructure are discussed in this paper. This system is deeply rooted in printed matter, the postal system, and physical knowledge stores. As a result of the deficiencies of this infrastructure, many scholars, practitioners, and students have limited opportunities to participate in creating and sharing information. The Internet is put forward as the foundation of a new intellectual infrastructure that will overcome many of the problems of the old system. The significant benefits to be gained from redesigning the intellectual infrastructure are discussed. Some of the possible implications for universities and scholarly careers are considered. We have an opportunity to transform the basic infrastructure of the MIS community. By changing the way we store, process, and distribute information, we can create a broader, more collaborative, and more productive community of MIS scholars, students, and practitioners. This paper first briefly traces the history of scholarly communities and examines their development of an infrastructure for knowledge creation and distribution. After the shortcomings of our present infrastructure are addressed, some of the possibilities and the consequences of creating an MIS electronic community are discussed. In particular, the redesign opportunities made possible by the Internet (Kehoe, 1993) are investigated.

This study provides an account of how richness occurs in communication that uses electronic mail. In examining actual e-mail exchanged among managers in a corporation, the study interprets the managerial use of the communication medium of electronic mail as the users themselves understand and experience it. Employing the research approach of inter- pretivism in general and hermeneutics in particular, the study finds that richness or leanness is not an inherent property of the electronic-mail medium, but an emergent property of the interaction of the electronic-mail medium with its organizational context, where the interaction is described in terms of distanciation, autonomization, social construction, appropriation, and enactment. Conclusions and recommendations are that managers who receive e-mail are not passive recipients of data, but active producers of meaning; that the best or just an appropriate communication medium is not determined through an individual manager’s exercise of rational decision making, but emerges as best or appropriate over time, over the course of the medium’s interactions with many users; that systems professionals need to treat the managerial user of an e-mail system not merely as a client of information services, but also as a processor or co-processor to be integrated into the system design; and that information systems researchers need to dedicate attention to the actual processes by which the users of a communication medium come to understand themselves, their own use of the medium, and their organizational context.

Computer-aided software engineering (CASE) tools have generated much interest as potential means for easing the software development and maintenance bottleneck. To date, the picture regarding their contribution is incomplete and confused, particularly concerning the realization of productivity and quality gains. An in-depth study of one company’s experiences with the introduction of CASE is described. Quantitative data is available to allow objective comparison of changes in productivity and IS quality consequent upon the CASE introduction. Questionnaires were used to determine the perceptions of both developers and their customers to the new methodology and tools. The importance to the successful introduction of CASE of the human resource, technical, and managerial infrastructural factors are also investigated.

The emerging technology of group support systems has the potential to enhance the effectiveness of team work in organizations. One critical factor that has received little attention in technology-supported environments is that of the roles participants fill in meetings. This paper develops a theoretical model of roles in computer- supported meetings and examines the impact of a group support system on roles. An exploratory field study of 10 work teams was conducted to investigate the perceptions of participants about their own roles and the roles that the group support system technology might fill. The study found a gap between the role expectations of meeting initiators and meeting participants, as well as between participants’ role expectations and actual roles filled. The group support system technology was perceived to fill an unexpectedly large variety of roles. The study also showed that the group support system assumed some of the roles that participants expected to fill, resulting in fewer roles filled by participants.

To differentiate its customer service, Brun Passot, a small French company specializing in the distribution of office supplies, developed a set of telepurchasing applications. In 1982, it launched Bureautel, a videotex-based service that allows customers to electronically place their orders. In 1986, at the request of its large customers, it developed a PC-based service, then in 1989 an advanced electronic data interchange (EDI) application linking customers to its supply information system. These services allow data on product availability, price lists, orders, acknowledgement receipts, delivery notices, invoices, and related bank payments to be electronically transmitted. Using ISDN, they also make it possible to look up the photos of the 12,000 products that Brun Passot markets. This article illustrates how a small-sized company has used IT to improve the quality of its customer service, shorten lead time and reduce management costs, as well as create new business opportunities in France. It also raises some issues related to the adoption and diffusion of EDI and presents Brun Passoťs ambitions to use this technology as an essential enabler to expand its geographical coverage. The 1993 fall of mobility barriers within the European Community, leading to the formation of the single European market, presented for Brun Passot a unique business opportunity to further leverage its IT infrastructure and gain new markets.