I have (finally) created a Google Scholar profile. Please see here for my profile.

I have entered into an agreement with the management team of iHear Network to join their advisory board. I am excited to help iHear Network realize their vision of developing an innovative app for smart phones. The iHear app uses text-to-speech integration to connect users to relevant stories, news, and conversations. iHear Network recently appointed Paul Simons, a former University of Washington iSchool graduate student of mine, to serve as the CEO. Please click here for the press release - iHear Network Press Release.

Virginia Tech released the following press release on my new role at the University (Click here to access the press release - LINK).

NATIONAL CAPITAL REGION, Aug. 18, 2011 – Kevin Desouza has been named director of theMetropolitan Institute, a center in theSchool of Public and International Affairs in the College of Architecture and Urban Studies at Virginia Tech.

Desouza was most recently an associate professor at the University of Washington’s Information School and has held adjunct appointments in the university’s College of Engineering and at the Daniel J. Evans School of Public Affairs.

"Dr. Desouza's experience with major international corporations and government organizations on strategic management issues will be a great asset to the college and the university," said Jack Davis, the Reynolds Metals Professor of Architecture and dean of the College of Architecture and Urban Studies.

Based in the National Capital Region, the Metropolitan Institute fosters basic and applied research on designing, planning, and governing of livable, sustainable,and economically-viable urban spaces. The institute also publishes several publications including the journal Housing Policy Debate.

Desouza’s work is internationally recognized and he has conducted research and lectured across the world. He holds a visiting professorship at the University of Ljubljana and has held past appointments at the Center for International Studies at the London School of Economics and Political Science and the University of the Witwatersrand in South Africa, among others.

In addition to his professorship, Desouza founded two research institutes at the University of Washington, the Institute for National Security and Research, and the Institute for Innovation in Information Management.

Desouza has authored, co-authored, and/or edited nine books and over 90 articles. He has also been invited to advise and consult for several major international corporations and government organizations, focusing on strategic management issues ranging from management of information systems, to crisis management. He has given over 40 invited talks and received over $1.2 million in research funding from both public and private organizations. He is also a fellow of the Royal Society of Arts (UK). Desouza received his Ph.D. from the Liatuad Graduate School of Business at the University of Illinois at Chicago.

In addition to directing the Metropolitan Institute, he will also hold an associate professor appointment at the Center for Public Administration and Policy in the School of Public and International Affairs in the College of Architecture and Urban Studies at Virginia Tech. He is also serving on the Presidential Task Force working on Virginia Tech's long range plan.

He will be moving to the National Capital Region in August to begin his new position.

After spending over 5 years at the University of Washington, I will soon be making a change. Starting this autumn, I will assume a new role as the Director of the Metropolitan Institute at Virginia Tech. I will also hold an appointment as an associate professor (with tenure) at the Center for Public Administration and Policy within the College of Architecture and Urban Studies. While I am excited to assume my new role and take on different challenges in my academic career, I also recognize that I am leaving an excellent institution. I want to thank all of my colleagues and students at the Information School, Daniel J. Evans School of Public Affairs, and the College of Engineering, who have been wonderful collaborators and friends. I also want to acknowledge the generous support that I have received from private and government sponsors for my research institutes.

Over the next few months, I will be making the move from Seattle, WA to Alexandria, VA.

My article with Nicholas D. Sweers II, Shh! It’s vive la re´sistance..., which was originally published in the Journal of Business Strategy, is featured in the current issue of Strategic Direction.

• “How Not to Silence the Resistance: Why Change Managers need Someone to Talk to,” Strategic Direction, 27(7), 2011, 28-30 [Click here to access the article]

Akshay Bhagwatwar (Indiana University), Ray Hackney (Brunel University) and I have authored a paper that appears in the current issue of Information Systems Management. The paper examines the knowledge re-integration challenges that organizations face as they try to take back previously outsourced IT operations.

Backsourcing is motivated by opportunities arising from changes in the business situation, redefinition of the character of outsourced service declining in quality or due to the discovery of flaws in the contract. The situation of backsourcing clearly has major implications for an organization in terms of monetary investments, IS infrastructure and changes in employee requirements during and after the process. The paper considers a detailed analysis of two case studies of backsourcing reported from JP Morgan Chase (USA) and Sainsbury (UK). A major contribution of the paper is to identify important strategies to be followed in backsourcing projects to ensure efficient knowledge re-integration.

Bhagwatwar, A., Hackney, R. & Desouza, K. C. (2011). Considerations for  Information Systems “Backsourcing”: A Framework for Knowledge Re-integration. Information Systems Management, 28(2), 165-173

To access the paper, please click here: LINK

Yuan Lin, my doctoral student, and I have a paper accepted for presentation at the Annual Meeting of the Academy of Management in San Antonio, Texas (August 12-16, 2011).

Individuals’ Knowledge Transfer Behaviors and Social Networks: A Co-evolution Framework

The boom of the network concept in organizational research has resulted in a growing interest in the interplay between organizational members’ knowledge transfer and their social network structure. This paper treats such interplay as a co-evolution process and lay out a theoretical framework, CO-evolution of Individuals and Networks (COIN), to facilitate its modeling. Using a simplified example, we identify the components of a co-evolution model that should be constructed based on substantive theories: cross-level causal mechanisms, network structural factors, individual heterogeneity and autonomy, the relationships among model assumption, inputs and outputs. COIN synthesizes theoretical or empirical evidence that can help construct these components from multiple disciplines (e.g., organizational research, statistics, physics, economics, and sociology). It decomposes the co-evolution process into key constructs and mechanisms and organizes existing theories around them. It also exposes gaps in related work which once filled can facilitate studies on network-behavior co-evolutio

Lin, Y.A., and Desouza, K.C. “Individuals’ Knowledge Transfer Behaviors and Social Networks: A Co-evolution Framework,” In Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Academy of Management, San Antonio, TX (August 12-16, 2011).

Shh! It's vive la résistance, co-authored with Nicholas D. Sweers II,  that appeared in Journal of Business Strategy, 31 (6), 2010 will re-printed in Strategic Direction.

My paper co-authored with Yuan Lin, Towards Evidence-Driven Policy Design:  Complex Adaptive Systems and Computational Modeling, will appear in The Innovation Journal: The Public Sector Innovation Journal.

Along with several colleagues, Jaka Lindic (University of Ljubljana), Peter Baloh (BISOL, d.o.o), and Vincent Ribière (The Institute for Knowledge and Innovation (IKI-SEA), Bangkok University), I co-authored a paper for the International Journal of Information Management.

Organizations must innovate if they are to survive in today’s fiercely competitive marketplace. In this paper, we explore how leading organizations are using emerging technologies to enable novel forms of ideation that can radically increase the sheer volume of ideas they explore. In addition, we outline how organizations use technologies to cost effectively manage this increased volume of ideas by optimizing generation, mobilization, advocacy and screening, experimentation, commercialization, and even the diffusion and implementation of ideas. Critical to this is the management of knowledge during the innovation process.

Lindic, J., Baloh, P., Ribière, V.M., and Desouza, K.C. “Deploying Information Technologies for Organizational Innovation: Lessons from Case Studies,” International Journal of Information Management, Forthcoming.