The use of social media for knowledge acquisition and dissemination in B2B companies: an empirical study of Finnish technology industries

Scholars and practitioners of knowledge management have paid increasing attention to the adoption of social media in business-to-business (B2B) setting for knowledge sharing; however, both the theoretical and empirical research in this domain are quite fragmented. The aim of this research is to deepen the understanding about the B2B companies’ awareness of the potentials of social media in improving their absorptive capacity and, consequently, if and how such companies deploy knowledge strategies based on social media adoption. We carried out an empirical survey of Finnish technology companies operating purely in B2B markets. Results highlight that social media adoption is still in a prelim…

Clustering the IMP thought : searching roots and diversities in IMP research

Educational Hackathon : Innovation Contest for Innovation Pedagogy

This paper addresses the educational hackthon as innovation pedagogy method for teaching fuzzy front end of innovation (FFEI) in higher education institutions (HEIs). Specifically it focuses on the process design and execution. This study is based on the idea that educational hackathons are a specific type of innovation contest aimed at teaching and learning, thus incorporating a set of design variables. Therefore, the paper reports a case study according to those variables in HEI teaching in university-industrycollaboration. This paper presents both the process description along with students’ learning and feedback, i.e. the development suggestions for the method. Presenting conclusions fo…

Replacement of the Project Manager Reflected Through Activity Theory and Work–System Theory

Replacement of the project manager (RPM) is a known phenomenon in information systems (IS) projects, but scant attention is given to it in the project management or IS literature. Given its critical effects on the project business, the organization, the project team, and the project manager, it should be studied in more depth. We identified factors which make RPM occurrences inherently different and we show that work-system theory and activity theory give comprehensive lenses to advance research on RPM. For the future research on RPM we identified three objectives: experiences on RPM, process model for RPM, and organizational culture’s influence on RPM occurrences.

Replacing Project Managers in Information Technology Projects

According to anecdotal evidence, project managers working on information technology (IT) projects are occasionally replaced, although the literature on information systems (IS) and project management (PM) makes little mention of it. With a view to narrowing this knowledge gap the authors examined the reasons behind the practice. The authors took an interpretive approach to the data gathering and analysis, and collected descriptions about replacing project managers (RPM) from interviews and questionnaires (n=43). The concept of contradiction served as a lens through which to identify the underlying reasons. Contradiction refers to statements asserting or expressing the opposite of another st…