Not many years ago both academics and practitioners were discussing about the significant role of the IT driven organisational transformation, crucial to the flexibility and constantly changing needs of a business organization. The highly competitive business environment is forcing organizations to re-evaluate totally their processes and structures, indicating an increasing need for networking and cooperative arrangements. Although Information Technology (IT) is often emphasized as an important enabler for this organisational transformation, however there is a great propensity to overplay the role of IT in this restructuring.

In the information era artefacts connected through networks and constituted through IT applications demand our ability to transact and interact through them, demonstrating a crucial way of how we understand technology and how it dynamically interferes with and interweaves in to our everyday activities. The diversity, complexity and volume of interests in using digital artefacts leads up to re-evaluate established practices and structures from peoples' perspectives and their consideration of use. Bellow we introduce a more detailed approach to the nature of these artifacts that trigger OIS research interest. In particular our interest lies in exploring the effects of ERP adoption, the management of the ERP implementation process and related issues of organisation change.

Today's organizations, whether private or public, are using sophisticated communication and collaboration technologies in order to provide networking co-operation environments for their employees, partners and customers. Interorganisational systems exist to support and implement cooperation and strategic alliances, between two or more organisations. Economies of scale, specialisation, rationalisation, and in some cases the motive of neutralising competition by co-opting it are also cited as possible reasons for these partnerships. Information technology is referred to as the enabling means that will not only support, but also enable interorganisational coordination activities. By using sophisticated IT applications (e.g. web-based technologies), co-ordination, collaboration and the accomplishment of the work itself may become independent of time and space and can be carried out by distributed groups and organisational settings. The notions of co-ordination and collaboration may imply increased complexity of tasks and processes, but also leads up to re-think taken-for-granted ideas such as management, strategy and alignment. Our aim is to provide both to academic and the business communities with a constructive critique of mainstream thinking in these areas.

Collaboration technologies are also forming virtual workspaces, enabling geographically distributed employees and work units to coexist synergistically by bridging physical and social proximity and creating an organisational knowledge repository. This formalized form of organisation memory stores accumulated knowledge and provides dynamic and personalized contend. Within such knowledge rich environments, people cope with complex tasks and seek new innovative ways of practicing, while people with same interests working in same processes are creating Communities of Practice. The introduction of these alternative virtual 'realities' have also introduced new challenges for Human Resource Management and new communication and collaboration practices supported by new forms of socialization and knowledge distribution. The emerging self-organized communities are characterized as the cornerstone of the learning organisation while their members are participating and exchanging experiences online, regardless their overlapping and sometimes conflicting cultures.

Many advanced technological solutions focus primarily in training and development interventions, which are also challenging Human Resource Management regarding the use of e-Learning and knowledge management technologies. Distance Learning and especially workplace learning - consists an important issue for research in knowledge, training and human resources.

The process of learning transforms and empowers the use of advanced technological solutions in a manner that exploits Human Resource Development issues. Many training interventions fail due to inadequate or inaccurate identification of training needs. Our research interests are focused on the determination and development of methodologies and tools for the identification of training needs, in the context of empowering organisations in their adoption of e-Learning and knowledge management technologies. Finally, we investigate their relation with workforce performance improvement.

Least but not last, the group is focusing on studying Enterprise Resource Planning Systems (ERP), one of the most frequently discussed types of Information Systems worldwide. These products enable an integrated approach to managing information and resources, offering many capabilities in new forms of organization and managing of modern enterprises.

Research Streams

• Strategies for Knowledge Management
• IT-enabled Knowledge Management Interventions
• Semantic Knowledge Engineering
• E-Learning courses design and evaluation
• Development of needs analysis frameworks for corporate e-learning
• Management practices in organizational networks
• Organisational impacts of business networking
• The social study of ICT enabled organisational interventions
• Technology enabled communities of practice
• Social impact of ICTs
• Business Models for the Digital Economy.
• Business Process Models for the extended enterprise.
• Electronic Marketplaces.
• Enterprise systems and organizational capabilities.
• ERP adoption factors and Implementation Practices

• Investigate the organizational implications of KM assumptions and technologies in the management of contemporary firms.
• Methodologies and practices concerning the capture and dissemination of knowledge within and across work teams, business units, corporate levels and entire organisations. conducting secure and resilient eBusiness transactions.
• Exploit software reusability and component-based methods through development processes that capitalise on existing eBusiness design, and software artefacts based on components and design patterns.
• Explore the potential of domain-specific languages by designing focused, flexible, and efficient languages for expressing eBusiness rules, models, processes, and applications. These are used to bridge the gap between an information system's specification and implementation.
• Organizational and business attributes of network organisational forms.
• Collaborative business processes social interaction and change management: emphasis on the electronic retailing, educational services and construction industry sectors.
• Skills and competencies, transformation strategies for sustainable employment in the information society
• To improve the quality of purchasing decisions while taking advantage of existing information asymmetries.
• Express easily and evaluate efficiently complex, ad hoc OLAP/decision support queries.
• Analysis of the role and interests of stakeholders in eBusiness and ICT implementation environments
• Management practices in organizational networks.
• Organisational impacts of business networking.
• The social study of ICT enabled organisational interventions.
• Technology enabled communities of practice.
• Social impact of ICTs t of the technological intervention embodied in most Knowledge Management initiatives in industry on organisational arrangements, namely on skills and competencies development, and organisational structures.