Purpose -The purpose of this research is to investigate the impact of team climate and empowering leadership on team members' knowledge-sharing behavior.Design/methodology/approach -A research model was developed based on prior knowledge management studies. Survey data were collected from 434 college students at a major US university, who took courses that required team projects. The partial least squares technique was applied to test the research model.Findings -Team climate and empowering leadership significantly influence individuals' knowledge-sharing behavior by affecting their attitude toward knowledge sharing. These two constructs also have significant direct effects on the knowledge-sharing behavior.Research limitations/implications -The student sample and US setting might limit the generalizability of the findings. Nonetheless, this study is based on and extends prior research, which provides a deepened understanding of knowledge sharing in the team context.Practical implications -This research has practical implications for how to design teams to facilitate knowledge sharing. It suggests that cohesive, innovative teams with members trusting one another and led by empowering leaders will have a higher level of knowledge sharing.Originality/value -This research originally examines the effects of both team climate and empowering leadership on knowledge sharing. Little prior research has carried out such an integrated analysis. This paper will have significant value for organizations trying to redesign teams to enhance knowledge management.

Team approach to IS developmentThe development of innovative solutions to complex problems has become increasingly challenging. The modern information systems (IS) development model includes the use of cross-functional teams, which comprise both users, such as accountants and salespeople, and IS professionals such as systems analysts and programmers. Team members must work together effectively to produce successful systems. In the past, IS departments perceived themselves as autonomous units that provided specific expertise to user departments. With the team approach, IS professionals are no longer autonomous but are equal members of a group of professionals, each with a specific contribution to make. Their responsibility is no longer independently to design an IS, but instead to carefully direct the users to design their own systems. Expected benefits of successful teams include increased motivation, greater task commitment, higher levels of performance, ability to withstand stress, more innovative solutions[1], and decreased development time [2]. Research is currently underway to find appropriate measures for these factors so team effectiveness can be accurately evaluated [3].One example of the use of teams in the IS development process is the steering committee, a team composed of the heads of major departments in the organization. In one study, 71 per cent of the respondents reported using a steering committee to determine which new systems would be developed. Almost 83 per cent of these were either satisfied (66.8 per cent) or very satisfied (16 per cent) with the steering committee's performance [4]. While these results suggest the popularity of the team approach to IS planning, the finding that only 16 per cent were very satisfied with the performance is not an overwhelmingly positive evaluation of their effectiveness. If the team approach is truly preferred, as the team-building literature proposes, then one would expect a higher level of satisfaction with team performance.Ineffective teams may be the product of inappropriate team composition. Deciding to use a team approach is only the first step. Great care must be exercised in building the team to ensure its ultimate effectiveness. There are a number of pitfalls involving group dynamics that can undermine a team's effectiveness [5]. This paper proposes a model of the impact of the personalitytype composition of a team on overall team performance. The model applies personality-type theory to the team-building process and then illustrates the importance of this theory by evaluating a case example of two software development teams. One of the teams was considered to be very productive by

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The purpose of this research is to examine the relationships between changes to computer selfefficacy (CSE) and computer anxiety and the impact on performance on computer-related tasks in both online and face-to-face mediums. While many studies have looked at these factors individually, relatively few have included multiple measures of these factors concurrently and assessed the effects over a period of time in a realistic environment. Transactional Distance Theory and previous research are used to develop a theoretical model integrating these factors. Transactional distance can be viewed as an outcome of the culture within an educational environment. As such the three transactional distance variables -structure, dialogue, and learner autonomy -may be measured by certain aspects of that culture. Describing the two mediums in terms of transactional distance allowed us to explore the interrelationships between the changes in CSE, Anxiety, and Performance in face-to-face and online classes.Data are drawn from students in a junior level Management Information Systems (MIS) class at a medium-size public University in the Southeast U.S.A. Classes in both mediums completed a real life computer-based project in which previously validated instruments are used to longitudinally measure perceptions of computer self-efficacy (CSE), computer anxiety, and transactional distance. Partial Least Squares (PLS), a structural equation modeling technique, is used to compare the results of these factors on performance in both the face-to-face and online mediums.The results show transactional distance was indeed acting as an anxiety-reducing mechanism.A comparison of differences between mediums suggests that the various aspects of transactional distance influence each differently. The findings highlight the importance of structure and innovation in the online medium while aspects of dialog were shown to be important in the face-toface medium. In effect, the interactive or emotive characteristics of transactional distance were more important in the face-to-face medium, while the structure and individual autonomy aspects were more influential in the online medium. Thus, one implication for face-to-face instructors is the need to continually maintain free-flowing dialog with the students to enhance learning. On the other hand, logical organization is very important in an online medium. Finally, the significance of the innovation component illustrates the importance of using new techniques and technologies to improve the interaction aspect of online education. Understanding these differences and implementing measures to accommodate these differences could increase teaching effectiveness and ultimately result in improvements in performance on computer-related tasks.Material published as part of this publication, either on-line or in print, is copyrighted by the Informing Science Institute. Permission to make digital or paper copy of part or all of these works for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that the copies are ...

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Researchers have studied interpersonal interventions as a means of increasing the performance of work teams. However, for short-term teams working on contrived tasks of short duration—a combination common in research studies—interpersonal interventions do not seem to affect team performance as much as task interventions. Yet, for short-term teams working on real tasks of longer duration and for ongoing teams, the effects of interpersonal interventions on team performance are more positive. This article presents a temporal framework of teams and tasks that predicts the expectation of benefit, which in turn mediates the effectiveness of interpersonal interventions on team performance.

Knowledge acquisition is a critical aspect of the knowledge engineering approaches that are used in complex diagnostic problem-solving. Experience with a machine diagnostic problem pointed to difficulties in mapping the acquired knowledge to the fault tree representation and with obtaining an overall picture of the system. We also found that use of the prototype for interactive knowledge elicitation required extremely structured interviews to allow the knowledge engineer time for on-line changes. A knowledge acquisition methodology was developed that works in conjunction with a fault-tree diagnostic tool. The methodology employs task analysis, process analysis, structured interviews, and analogies in a process that focuses on the relationships between symptoms and faults.To correct the problems encountered during task analysis of the fault tree, we used a systems approach to modify the original knowledge acquisition methodology. In the modified methodology, knowledge comprising the symptom and component trees is acquired independently in an almost mechanical fashion. Information to link the symptoms to the components is then obtained from the most capable experts using standard knowledge acquisition techniques. This process has the advantage of providing a framework of symptoms and components that focus the knowledge acquisition activities toward identifying the relationships between these objects as well as assisting in verification and validation during later knowledge acquisition sessions. The new methodology also helps to structure the placement of faults, and questions about faults, to avoid replication and to fit easily into the tool logic. We believe that the symptom-component approach to knowledge acquisition for component diagnostic problems is a significant improvement on our original approach and that it can have general applicability to fault-tree diagnosis.

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