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The purpose of this paper is to identify and explain the role of individual learning and development in acquiring tacit knowledge in the context of the inexorable and intense continuous change (technological and otherwise) that characterizes our society today, and also to investigate the software (SW) sector, which is at the core of contemporary continuous change and is a paradigm of effective and intrinsic knowledge sharing (KS). This makes the SW sector unique and different from others where KS is so hard to implement.

The study employed an inductive qualitative approach based on a multi-case study approach, composed of three successful SW companies in China. These companies are representative of the fabric of the sector, namely a small- and medium-sized enterprise, a large private company and a large state-owned enterprise. The fieldwork included 44 participants who were interviewed using a semi-structured script. The interview data were coded and interpreted following the Straussian grounded theory pattern of open coding, axial coding and selective coding. The process of interviewing was stopped when theoretical saturation was achieved after a careful process of theoretical sampling.

The findings of this research suggest that individual learning and development are deemed to be the fundamental feature for professional success and survival in the continuously changing environment of the SW industry today. However, individual learning was described by the participants as much more than a mere individual process. It involves a collective and participatory effort within the organization and the sector as a whole, and a KS process that transcends organizational, cultural and national borders. Individuals in particular are mostly motivated by the pressing need to face and adapt to the dynamic and changeable environments of today’s digital society that is led by the sector. Software practitioners are continuously in need of learning, refreshing and accumulating tacit knowledge, partly because it is required by their companies, but also due to a sound awareness of continuous technical and technological changes that seem only to increase with the advances of information technology. This led to a clear theoretical understanding that the continuous change that faces the sector has led to individual acquisition of culture and somatic knowledge that in turn lay the foundation for not only the awareness of the need for continuous individual professional development but also for the creation of habitus related to KS and continuous learning.

The study reported in this paper shows that there is a theoretical link between the existence of conducive organizational and sector-wide somatic and cultural knowledge, and the success of KS practices that lead to individual learning and development. Therefore, the theory proposed suggests that somatic and cultural knowledge are crucial drivers for the creation of habitus of individual tacit knowledge acquisition. The paper further proposes a habitus-driven individual development (HDID) Theoretical Model that can be of use to both academics and practitioners interested in fostering and developing processes of KS and individual development in knowledge-intensive organizations.

The purpose of this study is to identify and explain the role of individuals’ awareness and motivation in facilitating knowledge sharing (KS) in the real world of practice, as well as to establish areas of convergence between theory and practice that can be of use to both academics and practitioners involved in knowledge intensive organisations.

This study used Grounded Theory (GT) as an inductive methodology to collect, analyse and interpret data from multiple case-studies. 44 participants from Chinese software organisations were selected on the basis of their role in SW design and development and were interviewed using a semi-structured interview script. The data analysis followed a Straussian approach to coding, which consists of open coding, axial coding and selective coding. The analysis focused on the impact of individuals’ awareness and motivation to share knowledge.

The findings of this research show that the motivation for KS – a time consuming and demanding activity – is indeed related to awareness by managers and developers of the benefits of KS in their professional practice. Practitioners shared their experiences and tacit knowledge with others, partly because it was required by their companies, but also because they have a sound awareness of the need to share knowledge both inside and outside their organisations.

As a typical social science inductive study, this research is bounded by the context in which the theory proposed emerged from. Further research should be conducted into a richer variety of organisational and national contexts, as suggested by good theoretical sampling practice, which could provide further insights or contrasts.

Despite a number of theoretical propositions found in the literature, there is a clear lack of implementation strategies and models that explain the role of awareness and motivation in facilitating KS in the world of practice. This issue of applicability of theoretical propositions is now recognised as one of the fundamental key issues in KS. This study provides new and practice grounded insights in this area and is of interest to both practitioners and theoreticians as it explains and bridges the individuals’ awareness and motivation for tacit KS.

This study aims to present a meta-analysis of the use of serious educational games in museums. The analysis is based on a critical literature review that maps educational roles of museums against serious educational games used in support of those roles. The meta-analysis focuses on the specific context of informal learning in museums.

The research design presented in this study is based on a meta-analysis research design that consists of a critical literature review, a multi-matrix representation of findings of the literature review and a conceptual visualization of the multidisciplinary area of the usage of serious games in support of educational roles in museums.

Clear and detailed categorizations of educational roles and serious games types for informal learning are presented. These are followed by matching these educational roles with published reports of the use of serious games within museums. The study concludes with observations and a conceptual map of the design of serious games for museums.

This study presents the first meta-analysis of research in this emergent multidisciplinary field. It will help serious game designers, museum educators and educational practitioners to make decisions regarding the choice of game type, customization and content design to support informal learning in the specific context of museum educational activities.

This paper aims to examine how academics enact trust in e-learning through an inductive identification of perceived risks and enablers involved in e-learning adoption, in the context of higher education institutions (HEIs).

Grounded Theory was the methodology used to systematically analyse data collected in semi-structured interviews with 62 academics. Data analysis followed the constant comparative method and its three-staged coding approach: open, axial and selective coding.

The resulting trajectory of trust factors is presented in a Grounded Theory narrative where individual change and integration through shared collective understanding and institutionalisation are discussed as stages leading to the overcoming of e-learning adoption barriers.

The paper proposes that the interplay between institutionalism and individualism has implications in the success or failure of strategies for the adoption of e-learning in HEIs, as perceived by academics. In practical terms, this points to the need for close attention to contextually sensitive trust-building mechanisms that promote the balance between academics’ commitments, values and sense of self-worth and centrally planned policy, rules, resources and exhortations that enable action.

The purpose of this paper is to propose a systematic and customisable framework, titled the 9D approach, aiming to evaluate the enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems as well as to identify potential socio-technical problems, misfits and deficiencies that can cause ERP failure during the system post-implementation phase.

The proposed 9D ERP evaluation framework includes nine dimensions and 85 evaluation criteria. This theoretical framework is then used in a six-step evaluation process based on a mixed-methods design. A case study involving a large-size private company in China was used as an exemplification to illustrate how the proposed 9D approach can be applied in practices.

The findings of the study clearly demonstrated that after the ERP “go-live” point, companies still experience many challenges and problems in the post-implementation phase. These problems can be located in very diverse organisational, systemic and personnel aspects of the company, as well as across different functional areas and organisational levels. The proposed 9D approach was demonstrated to be an efficient and systematic tool to investigate and explore such ERP problems in an in-depth level within the organisational context.

This study contributes to the theory of IS evaluation in general, and provides valuable insights into the ERP post-implementation evaluation in particular.

The proposed ERP evaluation approach forms a sound base for continuous ERP improvement and contributes to sustain seamless alignment between ERP and its organisational context. The customisable feature of the framework offers flexibility and enables its use by companies of all sizes, any sector, and any country.

To the best of the researchers’ knowledge, this is the most extensive and comprehensive framework for the post-evaluation of ERPs proposed hitherto. The need for this new framework was grounded on the argumentation of the drawbacks of existing ERP measurement and evaluation studies that simply focus on success rather than the more critical failure factors.

Higher education (HE) institutions create, disseminate, share and exchange knowledge through relationships among people, processes and technologies. Knowledge sharing (KS) in academia enables people within the institute to develop practices which allow them to collect and share what they know. This often leads to actions that improve services and outcomes. Despite the opportunities, this sharing is not without implications as it exposes the knowledge sharer and recipient to a number of vulnerabilities and risks, which hinders the knowledge-sharing process. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

This paper adopted a constructivist approach, which utilised focus group discussions within three UK universities. These were identified to improve the usefulness and effectiveness of the knowledge-sharing process.

The paper concluded by purporting that by developing an understanding of the risks and opportunities of sharing HE, institutions will continue to grow, regenerate and develop knowledge. The results highlighted the plethora of risks and opportunities resulting from KS. These were further grouped into the political, social and organisational culture.

This paper addresses the gap of risks perceptions of KS in HE institutions.

The purpose of this paper is to present and discuss the process of doing qualitative inductive research in China, drawing its conclusions from a grounded theory study. To be more specific, this paper reflects on the process of approaching interviewees, guaranteeing their participation, conducting the interviews and encouraging responses in the context of Chinese culture.

The discussion in the paper uses Hofstede's cultural dimensions as a tool in the interpretation and understanding of both the behaviour and the preconceptions of the interview participants involved in a research project focused on exploring and explaining barriers and enablers to knowledge sharing between traditional and Western healthcare professionals in China. The context for the study was a public hospital in the province of Hubei in Central China. A total of 49 semi-structured interviews were carried out and analysed.

Despite the grounded theory methodology being applicable in different cultural contexts, the culture itself may present challenges and barriers at both the data collection and analysis stages. These cultural problems may hinder interaction with informants, misunderstanding of responses and behaviours, and thus significantly impair the research validity and reliability.

The paper provides advice and recommendations to researchers aiming at doing this type of study in China.

The paper is of interest to inductive researchers, in particular those using grounded theory, as it describes and discusses the actual application of the methodology in a non-Western context. The paper is also of interest to any researchers intending to undertake participative research in China.

The purpose of this paper is to identify, assess and explore potential risks that can affect long‐term viability of enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems in the post‐implementation and exploitation phase.

The research took a large Chinese private group as a case study. A theoretical ERP risk ontology, which was adopted from the literature, was used to frame the study and generate data collection tools. Two questionnaires were thus designed and used to explore ERP post‐implementation risks in the case company.

The study identified 37 risk events, of which seven were identified as the most critical for ERP exploitation in the case company. The findings show that organisational and human‐related risks are the crucial factors for potential ERP failure and not the usually suspect technical risks.

This study contributes to the knowledge of ERP in general, and provides valuable insights into ERP post‐implementation risks in large companies in particular.

The findings will not just be useful in supporting ERP risk identification and management in the large Chinese companies, but will also be beneficial to other large companies in general, which may be confronted with similar ERP exploitation challenges.

The majority of large companies in China and in the West have implemented ERP systems and engaged in the system post‐implementation phase. Most of the existing literature in the field focuses on the process of implementation. This paper looks forward to the risks involved in the post‐implementation phase. Understanding potential risks that may occur during ERP exploitation is vital for these large firms to achieve and sustain business success through their ERP systems.

ERP systems are not the exclusive concern of large companies anymore. More and more small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) are now engaging with the implementation and exploitation of this type of system. However, reports of ERP failure are numerous and frequent. Very often, this failure results from technical and implementation problems. But even more frequently, it is due to lack of preparation, by the companies themselves, for the implementation process. The purpose of the study reported in this paper was to identify and explore ways in which SMEs may need to prepare themselves before implementing ERP systems.

The research took a Cypriot SME as a case study and adopted an inductive approach supported by in-depth interviews as the main method of data collection. The qualitative data collected were analysed by using a thematic analysis approach. Subsequently, a rich picture and concept maps were used to represent the findings generated.

The study identified that business deficiencies and problems, which can impact potential ERP adoption and usage in SMEs, can be localised across business processes boundaries, such as sales order processing, stock control, and bill of materials management, etc. These business problems were found to be attributed to a variety of organisational, technical and human-related reasons. Therefore, this study established that in order to implement ERPs successfully, organisations may require changes in people's work practices and understanding of technology, ownership and control of business processes, as well as organisational wide policies.

This study contributes to the knowledge of ERP preparation and business process improvement in SMEs.

The findings of the paper provide useful insights for both academic and practitioners who are thinking of implementing ERP systems. The paper contributes to the body of literature on issues that SMEs may need to reflect upon before embarking in a costly and resource intensive process of ERP implementation.

Business process improvement is traditionally considered as the result of an ERP project phase. This is how the large majority of the academic literature and the totality of marketing information by ERP vendors portray it. In fact, the reality of practice shows a different scenario with frequent reports of failure and inadequate ERP implementation. This paper aims at breaking with this myth, by proposing that ERPs cannot resolve the large variety of deficient business processes and internal problems that may exist in SMEs. Therefore, this study argues that SMEs need to prepare in advance by engaging in business process reviews prior to the ERP implementation that is engaging in a pre-implementation or preparation phase.

This paper presents an educational management model to support action research into issues relating to the management of distance learning programmes. The educational management action research (EMAR) model proposed, is grounded on a practitioner action research approach as the guide for everyday work and professional life. EMAR is based on four basic building blocks: the organisational context, the pedagogic model, the educational setting and the evaluation process. The model presented in this paper enabled the maintenance, improvement and update of a CPDE course in IT, a fast moving and highly competitive field. The model emerged as an invaluable tool to implement and understand management issues and research in CPDE. It enabled both tutors and students to be actively involved in course development and delivery, and resulted in a highly motivated staff and satisfied cohort of students.