Maria Binz-Scharf

Publications of Maria Binz-Scharf

• Lending a Helping Hand: Voluntary Engagement in Knowledge Sharing

  Authors: Ines Mergel, David Lazer, Maria Binz-Scharf

  11/2008;

  Knowledge is essential for the functioning of every social system, especially for professionals in knowledge-intensive organizations. Since individuals do not possess all the work-related knowledgeKnowledge is essential for the functioning of every social system, especially for professionals in knowledge-intensive organizations. Since individuals do not possess all the work-related knowledge that they require, they turn to others in search for that knowledge. While prior research has mainly focused on antecedents and consequences of knowledge sharing and understanding why people do not share knowledge, less is known why people provide knowledge, and what conditions trigger voluntary engagement in knowledge sharing. Our paper addresses this gap by proposing a multi-level framework for voluntary engagement in knowledge sharing: individual, relational, group, and informational. We provide illustrations from a particular knowledge-intensive community, DNA forensic scientists who work at public laboratories.

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• A New Order of Things: Managing Novelty and Cooperation on E-Government Projects

  Authors: Maria Binz-Scharf, David Lazer

  Harvard University, John F. Kennedy School of Government, Working Paper Series. 01/2008;

  In this paper, we explore the challenges of managing e-government projects. In particular, we highlight two extraordinary managerial challenges that e-government poses: novelty and cross-agencyIn this paper, we explore the challenges of managing e-government projects. In particular, we highlight two extraordinary managerial challenges that e-government poses: novelty and cross-agency cooperation. E-government is novel because it offers some fundamentally new possibilities for how government does business. The management of e-government is, in significant part, the management of ideas, creativity, and knowledge. E-government requires cross-agency cooperation because of functional needs for scale, consistency, and integration. We examine how four governments that have adopted a project-based approach to the introduction of e-government have coped with the challenges of novelty and cross-agency collaboration. Our findings indicate that e-government projects experience different activities and coordination mechanisms according to the stage of completion of the project and the complexity of the task at hand. We discuss the implications of our findings for the management of e-government projects.