Knowledge networking within complex business systems
- Publication Type:
- Thesis
- Issue Date:
- 2007
Open Access
Copyright Clearance Process
- Recently Added
- In Progress
- Open Access
This item is open access.
Within the last few decades, Information and Communication Technologies
(ICTs) have transformed business, prompting the evolution of a more complex
and dynamic digital environment. Today, organisations exist within a networked,
diverse and e1J1ergent ecology; a transformative landscape demanding continuous
adaptation and innovation. While many businesses are still coming to terms with
the impacts of the first Internet revolution, a new collective breed of interactive,
online social ICTs called Web2.0 threatens to again alter the rules of engagement.
No longer serving functions of mere utility, the new Internet platform is now
being employed to extract more value out of everyday human interactions. It
promises to improve personal networking and relationships, stimulate the
exchange of ideas and values, amplify personal opinions, build reputations and
catalyse the development of new products and services. By fostering the
socialisation of experience and the exchange of user-generated content deeply
seeded within personal judgements and contexts, Web2.0 is stimulating what could
be argued as knowledge (and not just information) transfer. Subsequently, online
social ICTs are transforming members of general society into active participants
in the genesis of new value, a usage pattern employing tightly-coupled interactive
technologies to promote purposive business progression in structure (form),
function and behaviour.
However, the interactive Internet platform is in its infancy, with little in the way
of a tailored theoretical framework available for directing such complex digital
business systems' design. Consequently, knowing what, where and how to employ
new Internet technologies to assist business development and innovation is an
ambiguous endeavour. Many Web2.0 technologies and approaches are somewhat
new and most are employed in close correlation to business models and modes of
operation. To help comprehend the intricacies of this participative organisational
reality, this thesis adopts an exploratory and reviewing approach, synthesising the
multidisciplinary complexity sciences literature to produce the theoretical framework
of Complex Business Systems (CBS). Offering an alternative ontological
perspective for business systems development, this framework accommodates the
relative interconnection and influence of self-reflective human agents within the
ever-construction of organisational and market outcomes. Finally, preliminary
steps toward a demonstration of the suitability of the CBS framework as a
heuristic guideline underpinning the analysis, design and development of complex
digital business systems is performed, by employing it toward an online knowledge
networking application within the Small to Medium Enterprise (SME) space. Early
indications are that the CBS framework offers tremendous insight into both
requirements selection and the design of interactive, online social ICTs.
Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: