Managing the Complementarity of
Knowledge Integration and Process Formalization for Systems Development
Performance
Patnayakuni, Ravi r.patnayakuni@email.uah.edu
Ruppel, Cynthia P. ruppelc@email.uah.edu
Rai, Arun arunrai@gsu.edu
Journal of the Association for Information
Systems; Aug2006, Vol. 7 Issue 8, p545-567
Abstract
Systems development processes have received
significant negative publicity due to failed projects, often at large costs,
and performance issues that continue to plague IS managers. This study
complements existing systems development research by proposing a knowledge
management perspective for managing tacit and explicit knowledge in the systems
development process. Specifically, it proposes that collaborative exchange and
integration of explicit knowledge across phases of the development process
positively influence the performance of systems development. It also suggests
that process formalization not only directly impacts development performance
but also moderates the performance effects of the knowledge integration
factors. Data for the empirical study were collected from 60 organizations that
are part of a user group for one of the world's largest software development
tool vendors. Empirical results provide strong evidence of the importance of
supporting tacit and explicit knowledge processes in systems development as
well as process formalization. The findings suggest that: (i)
collaborative exchange among IS employees that integrates their tacit knowledge
positively impacts development performance, (ii) explicit knowledge integration
in development artifacts across different phases of the systems development
process positively impacts development performance, (iii) formalization of
processes that establishes routines and discipline yields performance gains,
and (iv) the performance effects of both collaborative exchange and explicit
knowledge integration are moderated by the formalization of the process. These
results have implications for how both tacit and explicit knowledge integration
can be managed during systems development, and how formalization of processes
complements their relationship with development performance.