Preface for the Third Edition - Read

530 C. State of Practice
tem, direct call of other systems possible (category 3) or multiple systems, data
transfer possible (category 2) on the other hand. In these cases organizations supposedly
had many different systems in place, some of which were more integrated
than others. Some might have been integrated within an Intranet environment and
might have been accessible with the help of a Web browser while others might not
have been integrated into this environment.
The lowest level of integration was taken as the common denominator because
the question asked for the level of integration of the whole set of KMS or KMrelated
systems in an organization. Thus, if an organization marked categories four
and three, category three was the correct answer for this question. The case was
clearer if all functions integrated in one system (category 5) was one of multiple
answers to this question. In this case it was clear that the lower level of integration
was the correct answer as every category lower than five assumed more than one
system which contradicted category five. Again, the lower level of integration was
the correct answer.
It was also expected that especially KMS bought on the market should contribute
to a better integration. These systems integrate a large amount of functionality
and also regularly provide access to a variety of systems and media. Table C-42
shows a comparison of the mean level of integration for organizations using KMS
and more specifically using organization-specific KMS and KMS bought on the
market and the means of organizations without KMS. Thus, the mean for organizations
with KMS bought on the market is slightly lower as the mean of organizations
without KMS or with organization-specific developments.
TABLE C-42. Comparison of mean levels of integration for organizations with or
without KMS
group of organizations n mean a
std.dev
.
organizations without KMS 23 3.30 1.43
organizations with KMS 25 3.20 1.22
KMS bought on the market 12 3.00 1.35
organization-specific developments 16 3.31 1.20
a. A lower mean value means a higher level of integration.
However, the correlations are statistically insignificant (Spearman’s rho: 0.112,
significance: 0.450, n=48). Thus, Hypothesis 19: ’KMS functions in organizations
with KMS bought on the market are more integrated than KMS functions in organizations
without KMS’ was not supported.
14.1.3 Résumé
During the past couple of years, organizations have busily implemented a modern
information and communication infrastructure spanning in most cases a large part