Week 5 Reading Summary – Kang et al. (2017) -Xi Wu

Kang, K., Hahn, J., & De, P. (2017). Learning Effects of Domain, Technology, and Customer Knowledge in Information Systems Development : An Empirical Study. Information Systems Research, 28(4), 797–811

Investigation of ISD performance by identifying the factors associated with its increase (or decrease) has recently been the focus of much attention in the information systems literature. Some literature proposes that ISD performance can be improved by taking advantage of learning curve (or experience curve) effects. This study examines how ISD project teams learn and under what conditions the learning effects are stronger or weaker. The authors conceptualize ISD as the application of various elements of domain, technology, and customer knowledge, and propose that the units of the same experience should be these knowledge elements.

The research questions are: (1) Do ISD project teams benefit from prior experiences in domain, technology, and customers in increasing project performance? (2) whether and how experiences in the three types of knowledge relate to one another. (3) How does ISD project complexity moderate the learning effects of these three types of experience?

From a dataset collected from a prominent global IT services company, this study finds that ISD project teams’ experience in prior projects translates into performance gains for the current ISD project when the prior and current projects share the same domain, technology, or customer knowledge elements. In addition, learning effects of domain, technology, and customer knowledge are substitutive for one another and that these learning effects become stronger or weaker depending on the extent of ISD projects’ team and task complexities.

The study makes significant contributions to the ISD literature on learning effects and the roles of domain, technology, customer knowledge, and project complexity, as well as to the general organizational learning literature. It also provides important managerial insights into practical concerns such as project staffing and knowledge acquisition for ISD organizations.