Increasingly, business clients are actively leading information systems (IS) projects, often in collaboration with IS professionals, and they are exercising a greater degree of project control. Control is defined as all attempts to motivate individuals to achieve desired objectives, and it can be exercised via formal and informal modes. Much of the previous research investigating the choice of control mode has focused on direct reporting relationships between IS project leaders and their superiors in a hierarchical setting. However, the client-IS relationships may take on a variety of forms, including both hierarchical and lateral settings. Moreover, prior research has found that the knowledge of the systems development process is a key antecedent of control, yet clients are unlikely to be as knowledgeable as IS professionals about this process. It is therefore unclear whether prior findings will generalize to the client-IS pair, and the goal of this research is to examine the exercise of control across this relationship. Data were gathered from a questionnaire survey of 69 pairs of clients and IS project leaders. The results are largely consistent with prior research on the antecedents of formal control modes, but they shed new insight on the choice of informal control modes.Control, IS Project Management, IS-Client Relationships

Organizations are increasingly relying on team-based structures as work becomes more complex, nonroutine, and knowledge intensive. Teams comprised of individuals with diverse skills and expertise may be well suited to perform such work. However, as teams become more prevalent, organizations may struggle with ways to exercise control. Formal controls, with their focus on prespecified rules, performance targets, and hierarchical relationships, may be less effective in a teamwork environment than clan control, in which work-related behavior is motivated by shared norms and values, as well as a common vision, and individuals attempt to be accepted or “regular” members of a team. However, little is known about the antecedents of clan control. Much of the existing empirical research on the antecedents of control has been influenced by Ouchi's (Ouchi, W. G. 1977. The relationship between organizational structure and organizational control. Admin. Sci. Quart. 22 95–113) framework, which posits clan control is used when managers lack knowledge of means–ends relationships and are unable to measure outcomes. This paper adopts the view that clan control is a “people” or social process and argues that social capital, a construct that reflects connections and relationships among individuals, is a missing, key antecedent of clan control. In particular, we posit that the existence of social capital enables team members, as well as project managers, to facilitate clan control within a team, i.e., team-based clan control. A model is developed and hypotheses are tested using survey data collected from 95 information systems project teams. The results suggest that social capital assets are associated with team-based clan control. Recognizing that the project manager typically has a different level of organizational authority than team members, additional hypotheses are developed relating characteristics of the project manager to team-based clan control. The results of these tests suggest that team-based clan control is also dependent on the manager's knowledge of business processes and the application area, coupled with the extent to which he observes the behaviors of the project team. Thus, our results suggest that there are conditions under which team-based clan control is facilitated by the project team as a whole (including team members and project managers), as well as conditions under which team-based clan control is facilitated by project managers in their role as team leaders. Implications and suggestions for future work are discussed.

Although many organizations are implementing knowledge management systems (KMS), there is little empirical evidence about whether KMS use can improve individual performance, and how time and experience influence the value derived from KMS use. Using hierarchical linear modeling (HLM) statistical analysis, we examined the impact of using a codification-based KMS on the sales performance of 2,154 sales representatives in a pharmaceutical firm over a 24-month period. We found that KMS had significant positive impacts on individual performance and that these performance benefits grew over time. Moreover, experience moderated the relationship between KMS use and individual performance. Knowledge workers with more experience were able to more quickly absorb and apply the knowledge from the KMS than were those with less experience, who took longer to benefit from KMS use. However, over time experience played a diminishing role in leveraging performance gains from KMS use, and knowledge workers with less experience eventually derived similar performance benefits as those of their more experienced counterparts.

Online reviews are playing an increasingly important role in how patients select and evaluate health‐care providers. Physician rating websites not only act as open platforms for patients to share their experiences, but can also offer valuable feedback for physicians to improve the quality of care. In this study, we analyze over one million physician reviews across 17 medical specialties and investigate the relationship between operational efficiency and patient satisfaction. We combine econometrics models with text analytics techniques to quantify the effect using both patients' ratings of physicians and their qualitative review narratives. The results provide strong empirical evidence that operational inefficiency negatively influences patient satisfaction. Specifically, a waiting time longer than 17 min will, on average, reduce the odds of getting a high rating status by 14%. Though many health care ratings examined in this study do not mitigate the negative effects brought on by long waiting time, patient narratives reflecting the importance of technical and interpersonal qualities to patients suggest a more complex set of relationships between waiting time and patient satisfaction. Our study showcases the usefulness of online physician reviews and reveals unique insights for improving the delivery of patient‐centered health care.

Purpose -Consultants are hired for their domain expertise. For long-term engagements, the role of their expertise diminishes as the need to develop personal trust gains significance for a successful project outcome. The purpose of this paper is to examine trust and knowledge management in the context of project teams, exploring the trusting relationship between external consultants and internal clients. Design/methodology/approach -Two questionnaire surveys were developed, and a field survey of consultant-functional specialist dyads yielded 80 matching-pair responses. A regression analysis approach was used to test the hypotheses.Findings -In enterprise systems implementation projects, consultants are typically hired for their expertise in the domain -i.e. competence trust. Counter to conventional wisdom, benevolent trust influenced the success of an effective transfer of implementation knowledge.Research limitations/implications -The limitations of the study include the inability to capture temporal aspects of knowledge transfer activities (survey questionnaires), generalizability to consulting-related projects only, and application to a context-sensitive set of knowledge, i.e. implementation knowledge.Practical implications -Client organizations must no longer focus entirely on competence trust when selecting consultants; instead, they should place a greater emphasis on benevolence trust, which is critical to project success, especially in a long-term project engagement. Consulting firms must ensure that their employees exhibit ''emotional'' characteristics through hiring practices and/or training.Originality/value -The implications of the findings reported in the study are discussed for scholars and managers engaged in IT-based solution delivery utilizing external consultants.