Although there is substantial research on learning that occurs before adoption of a new information system, there is a dearth of research on postimplementation learning when a new system is assimilated as a routine element of users' work. Hence, during the postimplementation period of a bank's new work flow system, we conducted a longitudinal participant observation study to observe knowledge transfers of users and information technology (IT) professionals assigned to a help desk. We found that although users turned to IT professionals to obtain knowledge related to conceptual understanding and procedures to use the system, they most often turned to other users to obtain knowledge that allowed them to adapt the system to their work. IT professionals, on the other hand, often turned to their colleagues to obtain knowledge that helped them modify the system to emerging innovative uses. These patterns of knowledge transfers can be explained based upon source expertise. Our findings indicate that organizations must sustain designated sources of knowledge such as help desks, but must also establish conduits for users to acquire knowledge from other users and develop innovative uses of the system. A substantial amount of critical knowledge transfers relevant to system adaptation occurred during face-to-face discussions between users and IT professionals, and therefore future research should examine how this would be affected by the outsourcing of technical support functions.
Researchers have emphasized that existing training strategies must be modified in order to adequately prepare users to employ collaborative applications. We utilize findings from the vast amount of training research conducted thus far and point to some problems that might occur when existing strategies are applied to train users of collaborative applications. We test our ideas by conducting a longitudinal field study of a collaborative work flow application. As proposed in a recent knowledge-level framework, our findings indicate that training programs must not solely focus on developing users' system proficiency skills but must also educate users about the business processes that the collaborative application will support. This additional knowledge will enable users to deal with technology-induced changes in the business processes due to the deployment of the collaborative application. Furthermore, we find that training programs should sensitize users to the interdependencies that exist among their tasks and make them aware of the collective consequences of their individual actions. We also found that users have to engage in collective problem solving efforts and continuously learn new knowledge during the process of appropriation of the collaborative application. We propose a training framework that integrates these ideas to prepare users to make effective use of collaborative applications. The proposed framework calls for trainers to be continuously engaged with users and help refine their knowledge during the process of appropriation. We suggest that theoretical foundations rooted in collective learning be adopted to guide training research in collaborative applications.