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This study aims to investigate projects as social exchange networks, focussing on identifying knowledge brokers within the project network where they are key holders and disseminators of end-user needs. The purpose is to augment current theory through a practice lens so that building end-user requirements can be better incorporated in evolving project ecosystems.

An interpretive, an inductive case study is used to map knowledge brokers during a complex construction and co-location project. During the wider study, a variety of methods including archival data, interviews and questionnaires along with social network analysis (SNA) were used. The mixed methodology used has been pivotal in the triangulation of data from various sources. However, the output of SNA presented in this paper relies mostly on interviews and questionnaires administered to the project’s core network. Network relationships were mapped with knowledge of user requirements, being the key determinant of the binary relationships between actors.

The research found certain roles to be central knowledge brokers of knowledge related to end-user processes, including real estate and strategic planning, building operations and management, human and environmental factors, planning and project management and facility and service delivery. The knowledge of the above roles, albeit in a contextually situated case study, augments current understanding of which roles to tap on during project execution for better representation of end-user needs.

The research site is representative of a complex network of construction project stakeholders, including several categories of end-users and their representatives. The study demonstrates the use of the project-as-practice approach, whereby project theory is seen to emerge directly from practice. This has impact on practice as emergent theory about knowledge transfer and knowledge brokerage is essentially practice-led and hence more useful and relate-able to practitioners.

Research presented here is novel in terms of its approach towards understanding end-user needs such as need for privacy, control, attachment and interaction during construction projects. This is done through the identification of relevant knowledge brokers. The study uses SNA as an analytical tool to map knowledge transfers through the project’s network. End-user requirements are usually captured in the front-end of projects as specifications and deliverables, as new challenges emerge during execution, changes are required to the project’s direction and outcomes. It is therefore imperative that end-user needs are re-identified through knowledge brokers holding key knowledge. This allows project managers to prepare appropriate responses to changing project ecosystems.

The purpose of this research is to investigate if, and in that case, how and what the e‐government field can learn from user participation concepts and theories in general information systems (IS) research. It aims to contribute with further understanding of the importance of citizen participation and involvement within the e‐government research body of knowledge and when developing public e‐services in practice.

The analysis in the paper is made from a comparative, qualitative case study of two e‐government projects. Three analysis themes are induced from the literature review; practice of participation, incentives for participation, and organization of participation. These themes are guiding the comparative analysis of our data with a concurrent openness to interpretations from the field.

The main results in this paper are that the e‐government field can get inspiration and learn from methods and approaches in traditional IS projects concerning user participation, but in e‐government, methods are also needed to handle the challenges that arise when designing public e‐services for large, heterogeneous user groups. Citizen engagement cannot be seen as a separate challenge in e‐government, but rather as an integrated part of the process of organizing, managing, and performing e‐government projects. Analysis themes of participation generated from literature; practice, incentives and organization can be used in order to highlight, analyze, and discuss main issues regarding the challenges of citizen participation within e‐government. This is an important implication based on this paper that contributes both to theory on and practice of e‐government.

Lessons to learn from this paper concern that many e‐government projects have a public e‐service as one outcome and an internal e‐administration system as another outcome. A dominating internal, agency perspective in such projects might imply that citizens as the user group of the e‐service are only seen as passive receivers of the outcome – not as active participants in the development. By applying the analysis themes, proposed in this paper, citizens as active participants can be thoroughly discussed when initiating (or evaluating) an e‐government project.

The paper addresses challenges regarding citizen participation in e‐government development projects. User participation is well researched within the IS discipline, but the e‐government setting implies new challenges that are not explored enough.

Many users build personal projects in co-innovation community to accomplish their innovations. However, very few projects from such communities are successful and understanding of this phenomenon is limited. The purpose of this paper is to identify the factors facilitating user projects success in online co-innovation communities.

Based on the theories of persuasion and diffusion of innovation (DOI), a conceptual model is proposed to explain how project success likelihood is affected by the creator, project and user participation characteristics. Then, the model and hypotheses are tested through binary logistic regression on a secondary data set of 572 projects collected from a typical user co-innovation community, Local Motors.

The results show that creator characteristics (prior success rate), project characteristics (project popularity, length and duration) and user participation characteristics (participation users and degree) have significant and positive impacts on project success likelihood. The number of prior projects, which can hardly represent the creator’s credibility in open and unrestricted situations, has no significant influence on the project success likelihood.

This study offers project creators the keys to increase their projects successful possibility. Besides, this study recommends a new way to attract users and helps to identify creative and effective users for community practitioners.

This study expands the research scope in online co-innovation community by focusing on user personal projects. In addition, it combines persuasion theory and DOI theory to add the holistic understanding of user project success likelihood.

The purpose of this paper is to present an evaluation of The Glasgow Story (TGS) digitisation project, funded by the UK's National Lottery's New Opportunities Fund digitisation (NOF‐Digi) programme, and a critique of the evaluation process itself. The paper emphasises the need for user impact evaluation and for results to be brought into the public domain in order to substantiate the claimed benefits of digitisation projects and programmes and inform ongoing digitisation activity. By critiquing the evaluation methods used the paper also hopes to contribute to the development of good practice in evaluation methodology.

Questionnaires, focus groups, data logs, online surveys and feedback forms were used to gather user responses and make impact assessments.

The paper suggests that whilst the evaluation can point to some positive impacts that justify the project's innovative approach, practical constraints on the evaluation and methodological flaws ultimately limit the value of the results. The paper concludes that effective evaluation of digitisation needs to extend beyond individual projects, or at the very least, employ generic evaluation tools that facilitate comparison between different projects and approaches.

Few digitisation projects attempt to assess their impact and fewer still make their results available. As one of the larger NOF‐Digi projects, the results from the TGS evaluation provide a unique window on one of the major digitisation initiatives in recent years.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the extent to which user liaison behavior and outcome control influence the process performance of information technology (IT) projects and how the IT experience, behavior observability, and outcome measurability of user liaisons affect behavior and outcome control.

A research model that integrates the IT experience, behavior observability, outcome measurability, behavior and outcome control, and performance from the perspective of user liaisons is developed. Quantitative data are obtained from 63 completed IT projects. Partial least squares technique is used to evaluate the measurement model. Hypotheses are tested through hierarchical regression analysis.

User liaisons with high IT experience exhibit decreased behavior control but increased outcome control. The outcome control of user liaisons is effective in the process performance of IT projects, whereas their behavior control insignificantly affects performance. However, the behavior observability and outcome measurability of user liaisons strengthen the effectiveness of behavior and outcome control. The behavior and outcome control of user liaisons also vary across different industries and project types.

The results of this study highlight the joint effects of the IT experience, abilities, and control decisions of user liaisons. Although the outcome control of user liaisons is an appropriate control mechanism in IT projects in consideration of the strengths of these liaisons in business knowledge and their control expenditures, the behavior control of user liaisons may also be effective in process performance if these liaisons possess high levels of behavior observability and outcome measurability.

The two‐fold purpose of this paper is identifying areas of difficulty in managing the needs of end‐users in the course of the design and delivery of construction projects and suggesting possible solutions.

The focus of the paper is the interaction between three principal parties: end‐users, project leader (a selected end‐user) and facility planner (a facilities professional). The context is two projects in the public sector: a university and a hospital. The end‐users of both are known from the start and participate in the whole process. The paper is based on a case study comprising 12 interviews – seven end‐users and five professionals.

The research shows that during the project's design and delivery, communication and attitudinal problems have to be managed alongside the inherent difficulty of understanding end‐users' real needs. To help in managing these issues, facility planners relied heavily on pedagogical and behavioural skills, rather than formalised methods as found in the literature.

The findings highlight areas of difficulty for managers and planners and how these areas were handled in practice. Suggestions on how to resolve some of the areas are presented and discussed.

Much of the research related to managing end‐users focuses on how to extract value from the construction process, for instance providing greater flexibility and improved air quality. This paper concentrates on relations between parties who are central to the briefing, design and delivery process

The MIS manager is offered a framework to help in the selection of methodologies for projects; the choice of analyst may be crucial.

This research analyzes the roles of users in innovative digital health collaborative projects from the perspective of the user by considering three dimensions: their motivation, project activities and the support of the partnership for their effective involvement.

The authors unraveled profiles of users by using a Q-methodological analysis of 24 statements and 44 service users. The statements for the three dimensions were designed according to previous models of stakeholder identification and customer participation in new product management.

The authors obtained two profiles that advocate active participation of users, though with a different degree of involvement. One of them supports the role of users as “advisors” of users' preferences and needs, and the other indicates a higher involvement of users as “cocreators” of the innovation, with the same contribution and responsibility as the other partners.

Previous research has analyzed user involvement in digital health, as part of wider research on factors leading to the success and adoption of innovations. Moreover, previous research has analyzed user involvement in innovation projects, but without differentiating between projects carried out by an individual organization and those conducted by a partnership. This research contributes to filling this gap by revealing users' expectations about their involvement and how they think they will fit in with the dynamics of collaborative projects.

Service users in Wiltshire have had the opportunity of demonstrating how they could undertake a user‐controlled Best Value review including showing the variety of ways they chose to evaluate the service ‐ in this case Direct Payments. Using the Best Value framework of the four Cs, they compared support services and costings with those in other local authority areas, designed consultation surveys and challenged care managers about their knowledge of the service. Learning from the project has implications for all those involved in social care Best Value reviews and the participation of users.

The aim of the Borges project was to develop a prototype information filtering service for Usenet news and Web‐based services. Developed as a service that could be offered by libraries, the project was user driven and emphasis was placed on user evaluation, with the results forming the basis of enhancements. This article addresses the project as it was implemented in Dublin City University, describes the three phases involved and the lessons learned.