The success of Expert Recommending Services and the part played by organizational context

Abstract

Knowledge Management (KM) practice includes services designed to reduce the difficulty of sourcing knowledge, that is, getting the right knowledge to the right people at the right time. The phenomenon addressed in the study reported in this paper is a specific type of KM service – the Expert Recommending Service (ERS) – which contributes to achieving the difficult objective of getting the right expert to the right people at the right time. The findings of the study identify the dimensions of ERS success in different organizational contexts and the organizational characteristics that influence ERS success. Research contributions of the study are therefore two-fold. On the one hand, our results show that, among all the organizational characteristics, being aware of others, and specifically of others’ knowledge domains, influences ERS success. On the other hand, our results suggest that ERS success can be significantly measured by employing the following dimensions: Quality, Use, Satisfaction, Individual Net Benefit, and Organizational Net Benefit. We also propose a set of recommendations for practitioners to help improve the success of their ERS, taking into account the informal expert recommending processes, improving the accessibility of all personnel to knowledge about their colleagues and considering the organizational characteristics, in particular awareness, before launching new ERS.

Keywords:

• information systems
• knowledge management
• success
• knowledge sourcing
• awareness
• Expert Recommending Services

Acknowledgements

The author would like to thank Aurelio Ravarini and Bernard Fallery, and two anonymous reviewers for their comments on earlier drafts of this manuscript.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Claudio Vitari

About the authors

Claudio Vitari is program director of MSc Management & Information Systems and of the MSc Business Intelligence at Ecole du Management des Systèmes d’Information and associate professor of Management Information Systems at Grenoble Ecole de Management (Grenoble, France). His research interests include Knowledge Management, Dynamic Capabilities, Expert Recommending Services, and Corporate Social Responsibility. His published research includes articles in European Journal of Information Systems, Communications of the Association for Information Systems, International Journal of Knowledge Management, Knowledge Management Research & Practice, Journal of Information Technologies: Cases and Applications and proceedings of different international, French and Italian Conferences. He has over 10 years' experience in teaching, researching and consulting. Claudio Vitari got his PhD from Montpellier University, (Montpellier, France) and the Carlo Cattaneo University (Castellanza, Italy).