Chris Kimble

• Professor (Associate) at Kedge Business School

The article examines the process of innovation and knowledge sharing from a perspective that focuses on the influence that local circumstances can have. In particular, it looks at the problems of knowledge sharing between groups of professionals. It presents a comparative analysis of two studies, one involving two groups of IT professionals; the ot...

This article explores some of the challenges faced when managing virtual teams, in particular the role played by trust and identity in virtual teams. It outlines why teams and virtual teams have become a valuable part of the modern organization and presents ten short case studies that illustrate the range of activities in which virtual teams can be...

This article returns to a theme addressed in Vol. 8(1) October 2002: knowledge management and the problem of managing tacit knowledge. The article is primarily a review and analysis of the literature associated with the management of knowledge. In particular, it focuses on the works of a group of economists who have studied the transformation of kn...

Offering unprecedented levels of intelligence concerning the habits of consumers and rivals, big data promises to revolutionize the way enterprises are run. And yet, the concept of big data is one of the most poorly understood terms in business today. The implications for big data analytics are not as straightforward as they might seem—particularly...

The term knowledge management (KM) first came to prominence in the late 1990s. Although initially dismissed as a fad, KM continues to be featured in articles concerning business productivity and innovation. And yet, clear-cut examples that demonstrate the success of KM are few and far between. A brief examination of the history of KM explores the r...

Depending on the type of business, the core activity of knowledge management can take different forms. An analysis of high‐sociability organizations shows that in those enterprises, second‐generation knowledge management—which emphasizes the role of groups, such as communities of practice—appears to be well matched to the way in which those entitie...

Most large, modern, information systems are built from standard software modules that need to be configured before they can be used. Implementing such systems requires contextualization—adjusting predefined parameters and adapting standardized templates to the organization's requirements. A key challenge for the users of these systems is to ensure...

The aim of this paper is to provide a perspective on the sources of innovation that underlie the creation of low-cost products in emerging economies. It differs from previous analyses in its emphasis on the influence that country specific factors can have, opening the possibility that similar firms, with similar products and similar goals may follo...

This chapter contains an analysis of a case study of how a French water services company, Eau Méditerranée, approached the problem of Knowledge Management for sustainable water systems by a policy based on openness and transparency. The case is viewed from three different Knowledge Management perspectives: technology based, autopoietic and Foucauld...

Objectives: The evaluation of telemedicine from the patient's point of view has focused on the patient pathway and patient satisfaction. However, research in this field does not provide us with the means to assess a patient's perception of the procedure if their reasoning ability is impaired. In this study, we use direct observation of a patient's...

How can democratic oversight of deregulated public services be provided without running the risk of reintroducing the layers of bureaucracy that deregulation was to remove? A study of the deregulation of water services provided by Eau Méditerranée in the south of France shows how a reworking of an 18th-century concept for increasing visibility in a...

This article describes an architecture suitable for use in a competence management system for knowledge intensive organizations (KIOs). The underlying motivation for this work is to explore the practical problems of the use of codified knowledge in knowledge management systems (KMS) in KIOs. We explore some of the key issues associated with the use...

In a commercial environment, where downsizing, reengineering, restructuring and high rates of organisational turnover are common, businesses have recognised how easy it is to lose a vital element of their intellectual property: organisational knowledge (Hildreth et al. 2000). An organization’s knowledge is built upon the experience of the people th...

Adapting existing business models for use in developing economies poses particular challenges for established firms. Yet, few studies have separated stable internal factors from the novel external factors that drive change in the existing business model. The Bosch Group's investment in the Chinese automobile aftermarket highlights the impact of fou...

In complex software development projects, consistent planning and communication between the stakeholders is crucial for effective collaboration across the different stages in software construction. Taking the view of software development and maintenance as being part of the broader phenomenon of software evolution, this paper argues that the adopti...

Over the last two decades, Chinese firms have grown quickly even in a complicated and conflicting institutional environment. Prior explanations focus on either government support at the institutional level, or imitation strategy at the firm level. We argue that these accounts are empirically inconclusive and theoretically insufficient in that they...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper was to gain a better understanding of the nature of online communities, the relationships within them and the relationship between such communities and the host organization. Knowledge sharing via participation in online communities is a central part of many multinational organizations’ business strategies; howev...

The application of for-profit business practices to nonprofit organizations, social enterprises are a way for nonprofit organizations to find funding in a time of rising costs, falling donations, and increased competition from for-profit businesses in the social sector. Although well established in the mature economies of the West, these enterprise...

An increasingly aging population and spiraling healthcare costs have made the search for financially viable healthcare models an imperative of this century. The careful and creative application of information technology can play a significant role in meeting that challenge. Valuable lessons can be learned from an analysis of ten innovative telemedi...

Les communautés de pratique virtuelles sont reconnues depuis longtemps comme étant une forme spécifique de réseau intra-organisationnel permettant les échanges et le développement des connaissances et des pratiques. L’objectif de cet article est de mettre en exergue les enjeux de la participation à une communauté de pratiques virtuelles dans le cad...

Computer-based information systems feature in almost every aspect of our lives, and yet most of us receive handwritten prescriptions when we visit our doctors and rely on paper-based medical records in our health care. Although electronic health record (EHR) systems have long been promoted as a cost-effective and efficient alternative to this situa...

Purpose – Data from social media (SM) has grown exponentially and created new opportunities for businesses to supplement their business intelligence (BI). However, there are many different platforms all of which are in a constant state of evolution. The purpose of this paper is to describe a generic methodology for the gathering of data from SM and...

names used in this set are for identification purposes only. Inclusion of the names of the products or companies does not indicate a claim of ownership by IGI Global of the trademark or registered trademark. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data British Cataloguing in Publication Data A Cataloguing in Publication record for this book i...

It is widely accepted that information technology (IT) plays a central role in creating and maintaining a firm's competitive advantage. When discussions turn to strategic breakthroughs—innovations that are so fundamental that they disrupt the way an existing market operates—however, the role played by IT appears less clear‐cut. The experiences of t...

History provides numerous examples of incumbent market leaders being leapfrogged by newcomers that have exploited the opportunities offered by new technologies. In light of the growing number of ecological threats linked to the use of the internal combustion engine, can Chinese auto manufacturers, which are newcomers to the industry, beat out the e...

Purpose The overarching theme is the importance of innovations that are created within the emerging economies. More specifically, the article looks at the development of various alternatives to vehicles powered by the internal combustion engine, new energy vehicles (NEVs) within China. Design/methodology/approach The broad strategic approach of two...

History provides numerous examples of incumbent market leaders being leapfrogged by newcomers that have exploited the opportunities offered by new technologies. In light of the growing number of ecological threats linked to the use of the internal combustion engine, can Chinese auto manufacturers, which are newcomers to the industry, beat out the e...

Purpose The goal of the article is to use the concepts of catching‐up and leapfrogging that are most often found in the literature on developmental economics to explore the process by which newcomers overturn an established market leader. Design/methodology/approach The article uses two case studies, one of the initial development of the transisto...

Most articles on strategic breakthroughs tend to concentrate on large, high-tech organizations. Yet the French firm 1001 Listes, which creates and manages wedding lists, has shown that it is possible for even a relatively small organization to generate strategic breakthroughs with standard off-the-shelf information technology. Its experience highli...

This paper discusses the emerging market for Low-Speed Electric Vehicles (LSEVs) in China and examines the various constraints and challenges it faces. It looks at some of the problems faced by those developing LSEVs and highlights the role that institutional factors play. The paper concludes with three scenarios for how the market for LSEVs in Chi...

It is argued by many in the field of sustainable development that the need to use cleaner, more energy efficient and less environmentally damaging technologies has never been more urgent (Goldemberg, 1998), particularly in relation to transport and mobility (Romm, 2006). The problems of global warming and pollution, as well as issues of energy secu...

This article reports on a study of learning and the coordination of activities in a geographically distributed community (a research consortium) using survey / Social Network Analysis methods combined with interviews. This article comments on and expands some of the important issues that were raised. After outlining the wider context, it highlights...

This article examines the problem of how to discover hidden Communities of Practice (CoPs) inside electronic networks and whether it is possible to nurture them into fully fledged Virtual Communities of Practice (VCoPs). It discusses the characteristics of hidden communities and the relationship between virtual communities, Distributed Communities...

The idea of leapfrogging, where a newly industrialising nation moves directly to the use of advanced technologies without needing to follow the trajectory of its predecessors, is an attractive one, particularly for the automobile industry where there is an urgent need to develop more sustainable technologies. China now has the highest level of auto...

Communities of Practice are recognized as specific form of "intra-organizational" network for the exchange and development of knowledge and practices. The ob-jective of this communication is to understand motiva-tion of members to participate in a community of prac-tice. For this, our empirical section presents users pro-files within an intra-organ...

This chapter analyzes behaviour in on-line games from a practice-oriented perspective and focuses on how individuals create and sustain social structures. It reports on research based in MMOGs (Massively Multiplayer Online Games) that investigates how what the players do in the gaming environment can give rise to structures that continue to exist o...

This paper explores the role of Information Systems in breakthrough strategies and offers an alternative perspective to that found in most of the literature on this topic, which tends to be dominated by large, high-tech organizations. It presents a longitudinal case study of a comparatively small French based company that creates and manages weddin...

This chapter examines the possibility of discovering a “hidden” (potential) Community of Practice (CoP) inside electronic networks, and then using this knowledge to nurture it into a fully functioning Virtual Community of Practice (VCoP). Starting from the standpoint of the need to manage knowledge and create innovation, the chapter discusses sever...

This article reports on a study of learning and the coordination of activities in a geographically distributed community (a research consortium) using survey / Social Network Analysis methods combined with interviews. This article comments on and expands some of the important issues that were raised. After outlining the wider context, it highlights...

Purpose The article shows how changes in product architecture have become the driving force behind a breakthrough strategy that has enabled Chinese carmakers to produce vehicles that are broadly equivalent to the products of western carmakers but at a fraction of the price. Design/methodology/approach The article presents an analysis of the develo...

This paper looks at what happens when Communities of Practice are used as a tool for Knowledge Management. The original concept of a Community of Practice appears to have very little in common with the knowledge sharing communities found in Knowledge Management, which are based on a revised view of 'cultivated' communities. We examine the risks and...

This article will examine some of the reasons why the automobile industry in China has become the subject of so much interest in recent years. In particular, it will focus on its capacity for innovation through an in-depth study of one company: the BYD group. The article will examine the growth of the group and trace the development of the innovati...

Although Communities of Practice have become a core concept in understanding how knowledge is managed within organizations, there have been few studies of the praxis of formation of Communities of Practice. In this article, we report on a Grounded Theory study of the members of a previously identified Community of Practice within the UK Higher Educ...

This chapter will explain how changes in product architecture have become the driving force behind a breakthrough strategy that has enabled Chinese automobile manufacturers to produce vehicles that are broadly equivalent to their western counterparts but at a fraction of the price. It will trace the evolution of this strategy, which is based on an...

Globalization is an issue currently affecting many organizations and is one that has profound consequences for the nature of work (Karimi & Konsynski, 1991; Ives & Jarvenpaa, 1992; Sachs, 1995). In order to work effectively in an international setting, companies are increasingly turning to trans-national teams (Castells, 1996; Lipnack & Stamps, 199...

The concept of an Enterprise Information System (EIS) has arisen from the need to deal with the increasingly volatile requirements of modern large-scale organisations. An EIS is a platform capable of supporting and integrating a wide range of activities across an organisation. In principle, the concept is useful and applicable to any large and SMEs...

In this paper, we will analyze a massively multiplayer online game in an attempt to identify the elements of practice that enable social interaction and cooperation within the game’s virtual world. Communities of Practice and Activity Theory offer the theoretical lens for identifying and understanding what constitutes practice within the community...

A user’s clickstream, such as that which is found in server-side logs, can be a rich source of data concerning the ways in which a user navigates a site, but the volume and level of detail found in these logs makes it difficult to identify and categorise specific navigational patterns. In this paper, we describe the three-step automatic pattern dis...

This paper describes a novel web usage mining approach to discover patterns in the navigation of websites known as Unexpected Navigation Behaviours (UNBs). The approach provides a web designer with a means of identifying and classifying patterns of browsing and, by reviewing these patterns, the designer can then choose to modify the design of their...

This paper puts forwards a new way to view how Communities of Practice (CoPs) form in environments that make heavy use of information systems. It uses a concept from Physics to suggest a new type of CoP that can exist in workplaces. In order to do that, the paper uses a simplified taxonomy for CoPs to outline the 'Quantum-CoPs'. These Communities a...

This paper describes the ongoing project to develop a knowledge-engine architecture that is being specified and developed by a Portuguese software development company called Shortcut. The primary goal of this work is create an architecture suitable for use, initially, in a Competence Management System (CMS) but also scalable for later use in more g...

This chapter examines the possibility of discovering a 'hidden' (potential) Community of Practice (CoP) inside electronic networks, and then using this knowledge to nurture it into a fully functioning Virtual Community of Practice (VCoP). Starting from the standpoint of the need to manage knowledge and create innovation, the chapter discusses sever...

The concept of an Enterprise Information System (EIS) has arisen from the need to deal with the increasingly volatile requirements of modern large-scale organisations. An EIS is a platform capable of supporting and integrating a wide range of activities across an organisation. In principle, the concept is useful and applicable to any large and SMEs...

This chapter examines the possibility of discovering a "hidden" (potential) Community of Practice (CoP) inside electronic networks, and then using this knowledge to nurture it into a fully functioning Virtual Community of Practice (VCoP). Starting from the standpoint of the need to manage knowledge and create innovation, the chapter discusses sever...

This paper argues that applying the idea of a meta-model, derived from modeling in computer science, to the more informal notions of business models found in the management literature provides researchers with a useful lens through which to view the relationship between IT and business strategy. It provides a brief description of the concepts of a...

Globalization is an issue currently affecting many organizations and is one that has profound consequences for the nature of work (Karimi & Konsynski, 1991; Ives & Jarvenpaa, 1992; Sachs, 1995). In order to work effectively in an international setting, companies are increasingly turning to trans-national teams (Castells, 1996; Lipnack & Stamps, 199...

This chapter examines the possibility of discovering a “hidden” (potential) Community of Practice (CoP) inside electronic networks, and then using this knowledge to nurture it into a fully functioning Virtual Community of Practice (VCoP). Starting from the standpoint of the need to manage knowledge and create innovation, the chapter discusses sever...

This paper explores the contribution of communal structures such as Communities of Practice (CoPs) on intraorganizational Knowledge Management (KM). First, we look at intraorganizational knowledge management and explore the role that information systems can play. We introduce the idea of “Systèmes d’Aide à la Gestion des Connaissances” SAGC (System...

This paper examines the possibility of discovering 'hidden' (potential) Communities of Practice (CoPs) inside electronic networks, and then using this knowledge to nurture them into a fully developed Virtual Community of Practice (VCoP). Starting from the standpoint of the need to manage knowledge, it discusses several questions related to this sub...

Although the gulf between the theory and practice in Information Systems is much lamented, few researchers have offered a way forward except through a number of (failed) attempts to develop a single systematic theory for Information Systems. In this paper, we encourage researchers to re-examine the practical consequences of their theoretical argume...

This paper explores the links between Knowledge Management and new community-based models of the organization from both a theoretical and an empirical perspective. From a theoretical standpoint, we look at Communities of Practice (CoPs) and Knowledge Management (KM) and explore the links between the two as they relate to the use of information syst...

The stated aim of this conference is to debate the continuing evolution of IS in businesses and other organisations. This paper seeks to contribute to this debate by exploring the concept of appropriation from a number of different epistemological, cultural and linguistic viewpoints to allow us to explore 'the black box' of appropriation and to gai...

The stated aim of this conference is to debate the continuing evolution of IS in businesses and other organisations. This paper seeks to contribute to this debate by exploring the concept of appropriation from a number of different epistemological, cultural and linguistic viewpoints to allow us to explore 'the black box' of appropriation and to gai...

This chapter describes an ontology based competence management model that can be used to support distributed collaborative working and facilitate organisational leaning. The chapter begins by examining the concepts of collaborative working and organisational learning in the context of knowledge management and competence management systems. It descr...

The objective of this research is to propose an alternative theoretical model that goes beyond the well-accepted separation between adoption and appropriation. The theoretical analysis of appropriation ignores the question of adoption of the technology. As mobile technologies can be used for private or business purposes, and because employees have...

This paper discusses extending the Unified Modelling Language by means of a profile for modelling knowledge-based system in the context of Model Driven Architecture (MDA) framework. The profile is implemented using the eXecutable Modelling Framework (XMF) Mosaic tool. A case study from the health care domain demonstrates the practical use of this p...

The Knowledge engineering (KE) techniques are essentially based on the knowledge transfer approach, from domain experts directly to systems. However, this has been replaced by the modelling approach which emphasises using conceptual models to model the problem-solving skill of the domain expert. This paper discusses extending the Unified Modelling...

Clickstream can be a rich source of data for analysing user behav- iour, but the volume of these logs makes it difficult to identify and categorise behavioural patterns. In this paper, we introduce the Automatic Pattern Discov- ery (APD) method, a technique for automated processing of Clickstream data to identify a user's browsing patterns. The pap...

In this paper, a web usage mining based approach is proposed to discover potential browsing problems. Two web usage mining techniques in the approach are introduced, including Automatic Pattern Discovery (APD) and Co-occurrence Pattern Mining with Distance Measurement (CPMDM). A combination method is also discussed to show how potential browsing pr...

Knowledge modelling techniques are widely adopted for designing knowledge-based systems (KBS) used for managing knowledge. This chapter discusses conceptual modelling of KBS in the context of model-driven engineering using standardised conceptual modeling language. An extension to the Unified Modeling Language (UML) for knowledge modelling is prese...

Axe de Recherche : Systèmes d'information

Purpose – The goal of this paper is to re-evaluate the role of knowledge-based systems (KBS) in knowledge management (KM). While knowledge-based systems and expert systems were widely used in the past, they have now fallen from favor and are largely ignored in the knowledge management literature. This paper aims to argue that several factors have c...

Introducción. Las estrategias que las personas usan para hojear sitios web son difíciles de analizar y comprender: los datos cuantitativos pueden carecer de la información sobre lo que un usuario en realidad intenta hacer, mientras que los datos cualitativos tienden a estar localizados y son imprácticos para recoger grandes muestras. Método. Este t...

This paper describes an ontology based competence management model that can be used to support distributed collaborative working and facilitate organisational leaning. The paper begins by examining the concepts of collaborative working and organisational learning in the context of knowledge management systems and competence management systems. It d...

This paper discusses platform independent conceptual modeling of a knowledge intensive application, focusing on the use of knowledge-based systems (KBS) in the context of model-driven engineering. An extension to the Unified Modeling Language (UML) for knowledge modeling is presented based on the profiling extension mechanism of UML. The UML profil...

This paper was prompted by the growing ambiguity about what is meant by the term Community of Practice and what such communities are supposed achieve. Like John Lewis' famous tag-line "Never Knowingly Undersold", the term "Communities of Practice" has proved to be both durable and capable of holding many levels of meaning and seems like an appropri...

This paper explores Knowledge Management (KM) practices for use with portal technologies in Non- Governmental Organizations (NGOs). The aim is to help NGOs become true Civil Society Organizations (CSOs). In order to deal with more donors (at the top) and more beneficiaries (at the bottom), NGOs working in Humanitarian Aid and Social Development inc...

Introduction. The strategies that people use to browse Websites are difficult to analyse and understand: quantitative data can lack information about what a user actually intends to do, while qualitative data tends to be localised and is impractical to gather for large samples. Method. This paper describes a novel approach that combines data from...

This chapter describes an ontology based competence management model that can be used to support distributed collaborative working and facilitate organisational leaning. The chapter begins by examining the concepts of collaborative working and organisational learning in the context of knowledge management and competence management systems. It descr...

This paper describes a novel Web usage mining approach to discover patterns in the navigation of Web sites known as unexpected browsing behaviours (UBBs). By reviewing these UBBs, a Web site designer can choose to modify the design of their Web site or redesign the site completely. UBB mining is based on the continuous common subsequence (CCS), a s...

Conceptual modelling is an important aspect in designing systems. However, the use of conceptual models in knowledge-based system (KBS) is limited as there is no particular consensus on which modelling language should be used and most of these systems are developed in a’ problem to code’ manner. This paper focuses on the use of a Unified Modeling L...