Abstract
Systems development in organizations is well recognized as a knowledge-intensive effort. Since the relevant application domain knowledge is thinly spread across an organization, the acquisition, sharing, and integration of knowledge are significant activities during the development process. Advocates of computer-aided software engineering tools (CASE) claim that these tools offer a potentially valuable feature/'or facilitating such knowledge integration and management activities: the central repository', which is a location for storing, retrieving, and maintaining a variety of applications development information. Yet, the effects of the CASE repository on the diffusion of the technology have received limited attention in prior research. This study exmnines whether the embedding ofapplications developmentknowledge withintheCASErepositoryinfluencesthediffusionoftheCASE technologyacross apphcations projects in organizations. We develop a consmmt called knowledge embeddedness, which refers to the extent to which relevant applications development knowledge is systematically populated within the CASE repository. Based on data gathered from 168 organizations, through a large-sample survey of CASE user groups, we found strong support for the relationship between kalowledge embeddedness and diffusion of CASE technology. These results have interesting implications for future research and practice.
Recommended Citation
Purvis, Russell; Sambamurthy, V.; and Zmud, Robert, "The Effects of Knowledge Embeddedness on the Diffusion of Case Technologies within Organizations" (1995). ICIS 1995 Proceedings. 20.
https://aisel.aisnet.org/icis1995/20