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The purpose of this paper is to present the development of the relationship management maturity model (RMMM), the output of an initiative aimed at bridging the gap between business units and the IT organisation. It does this through improving and assessing knowledge sharing between business and IT staff in Finco, a large financial services organisation.

The objectives were achieved by undertaking ethnographic research with the relationship managers (RMs) as they carried out their activities, and developing the RMMM by visualizing the development of a community of practice (CoP) between business and IT.

The RMMM demonstrates a learning mechanism to bridge the business/IT gap through an interpretive approach to knowledge sharing by defining knowledge sharing processes between business and IT and defining the tasks of the relationship managers as facilitators of knowledge sharing.

More research is necessary to determine whether the RMMM is a useful tool on which Finco can base the development of RM over the next few years.

The RMMM acts as a practical knowledge management tool, and will act as a future reference for the RMs as they attempt to further develop the business/IT relationship.

The findings provide an initial endorsement of the knowledge sharing perspective to understand the business/IT relationship. Also, the RMMM can be used to identify problematic issues and develop processes to address them.

The twin aims of this paper are to explore the differences in the consumption process between the traditional in‐branch and web‐based (e‐mortgage) service channels and how the differences relate to any problems identified in the electronic service environment, with respect to information search and product evaluation.

A process‐oriented approach comparing the two service channels (in‐branch vs e‐mortgage) was conducted in two study phases. Data from the e‐mortgage process were collected using protocol analysis with 12 first‐time buyers (FTBs) applying on a website belonging either to a hybrid or to an internet‐only bank. Results of the e‐mortgage process were mapped on to stages of the in‐branch process, which was captured by observation of six FTB mortgage interviews to determine the level of correspondence and emergent issues.

Support for the FTB in the e‐mortgage process was problematic and service provision was found to be product‐ rather than consumer‐oriented.

The study highlights the importance of design issues in the electronic service environment for creating confidence in the online advice and information available on home mortgages for FTBs.

The paper promotes increased understanding by financial service providers of the characteristics that support the consultative selling process for complex products such as mortgages and inform multichannel retailing.

This paper aims to examine the impact of developing more active web sites and increasing e-commerce on the relationship between innovation and growth performance in SMEs. Using the existing literature and empirical analysis the study seeks to consider the potential of engagement with the internet to achieve the often hard to attain ambition of both innovation and growth.

In order to examine the relationship, data are drawn from the Federation of Small Businesses' Lifting the Barriers to Growth Survey. In order to establish whether the use of more sophisticated web sites are associated with being an innovative high performance business, while controlling for other firm and entrepreneurial characteristics, multivariate analysis in the form of multinominal logits and discriminant function analysis are utilised.

The results suggest that although theoretically web sites with tools allowing interaction with customers or suppliers could benefit SMEs through a reduction in transaction costs and wider access to information, enabling them to jointly experience innovation and growth, in practice there is less evidence that this occurs. Those firms with active web sites are more likely to be innovative, but less likely to be both innovative and achieving growth.

The paper suggests a framework for analysing the impact of e-business at process level that can be used with other SME case studies.

These results suggest that further work must be undertaken to establish whether SMEs should be encouraged to make such investments and if so what additional help is required to ensure that investments in this digital infrastructure achieves an appropriate return on investment.

The results are of importance to both SMEs and policy makers providing insight into the nature of potential benefits from web site development using a large dataset. A clear need to investigate further how more innovative SMEs can benefit from company web sites and ecommerce to grow is identified.

Though Blockchain has been studied in numerous contexts, the understanding of the impacts of Blockchain in achieving competitive advantages remains unexplored. Many industries, organizations and firms are still in a “wait and see” mode. This study aims at examining the effects of the technological, organizational and environmental factors drawn from the TOE framework in generating competitive advantage.

A dual-staged deep learning structural equation modeling artificial neural network analysis was conducted on 211 samples of small and medium enterprises. Four neural network models were engaged to rank the normalized importance of each of the predictor variables.

The research model can expound 57.99 and 47.33% of the variance in Blockchain adoption and competitive advantage correspondingly. The study successfully identified nonlinear relationships. The theoretical and managerial contributions are useful to scholars and practitioners such as industrial players, investors, chief executive officers (CEOs), managers, decision-makers and other stakeholders that intend to use Blockchain technology.

Unlike the existing technological–organizational–environmental (TOE) framework that uses a linear model and theoretically assumes that all relationships are linear, this has been the first study, which has successfully validated that there exist nonlinear relationships in the TOE framework. Further, very little has been theorized on the impacts of Blockchain adoption on competitive advantage, especially in the context of SMEs. Therefore, this study is the first one to provide the necessary theoretical foundation that may further extend the current knowledge of Blockchain technology adoption and its impacts.

The purpose of this research is to investigate student engagement in guided web‐based learning systems. It looks into students' engagement and their behavioral patterns in two types of guided learning systems (i.e. a fully‐ and a partially‐guided). The research also aims to demonstrate how the engagement evolves from the beginning towards the end of the interactions; which enables analysis to be performed on the quality of engagement.

An experimental study was conducted on 41 students from a public university in Malaysia using two web‐based systems as the main learning tools. The students' engagement data were captured three times during the interactions and once at the end of the experimental study using student self‐report.

The main outcome of this study suggests that student engagement was changing over time either in positive or negative patterns. The directions of change in both types of guided learning were mainly influenced by the students' background of knowledge.

This study demonstrates that student engagement is dynamic. Therefore, progressive assessment is a practical approach to obtain the engagement data which can be used to regulate and improve student engagement in web‐based systems. As a result, an adaptive and intelligent web‐based learning environment can be created.

This research proposes a new approach to improve students' engagement in web‐based instruction, that is, through a progressive assessment of their current experience.

The challenge facing knowledge management (KM) professionals is how to leverage knowledge for improving organizational performance. From a management perspective, it is important to utilize KM systems for improving communication, and collaboration to enhance employee skills with a focus on improving productivity. From a leadership perspective, it is critical to ensure that KM investments result in promoting collaborative culture both at individual and organizational levels to encourage knowledge sharing for better decision making and innovation. Ultimately, the purpose of KM is to leverage knowledge in order to improve organizational performance internally and externally. This paper aims to address these challenges from leadership perspective.

This research addressed the following questions: how does an organization manage knowledge resources to gain and sustain competitive advantage? What is the role of KM leadership in making effective use of KM? A literature review was used to understand the role of leadership and the relation between KM and organizational performance. Further, two research studies, which employed interpretive structural modeling (ISM) were used to answer these two questions.

The study finds that selection of a competent leader is critical first step establishing an effective KM initiative as the leader plays an important role in obtaining top management and budgetary supports and in building technology infrastructure to accomplish KM goals. Further, KM leadership assumes greater importance during its initial implementation phase.

Effective KM leadership is a prerequisite to implementing a KM initiative and organizations will experience better results if they choose a leader before a detailed plan for KM initiative is developed and implemented.

This paper provides useful information on the effective KM leadership role.

Contemporary offshore information system development (ISD) outsourcing is becoming even more complex. Outsourcing partner has begun “re-outsourcing” components of their projects to other outsourcing companies to minimize cost and gain efficiencies. This paper aims to explore intra-organizational information asymmetry of re-outsourced offshore ISD outsourcing projects.

An online survey was conducted to get an overall view of information asymmetry between principal and agents (as per the agency theory).

Statistical analysis showed that there are significant differences between the principal and agent on clarity of requirements, common domain knowledge and communication effectiveness constructs, implying an unbalanced relationship between the parties. Moreover, the authors' results showed that these three are significant measurement constructs of information asymmetry.

In this study the authors have only considered three main factors as common domain knowledge, clarity of requirements and communication effectiveness as three measurement constructs of information asymmetry. Therefore, researches are encouraged to test the proposed constructs further to increase its precision.

The authors' analysis indicates significant differences in all three measurement constructs, implying the difficulties to ensure that the agent is performing according to the requirements of the principal. Using the agency theory as theoretical view, this study sheds light on the best contract governing methods which minimize information asymmetry between the multiple partners within ISD outsourcing organizations.

Currently, to the best of the authors' knowledge, no study has undertaken research on intra-organizational information asymmetry in re-outsourced offshore ISD outsourcing projects.