Peter Heisig

• Prof. Dr.-Ing.
• Vice President Research and Transfer at University of Applied Sciences, Potsdam, Germany

Despite this immense and increasing interest in knowledge management, the field is still complex and there is no consensus about the further development. A multitude of different approaches exists, so it could be said that knowledge management is "one of the most ramified topics in the business lexicon, and "there exists a patchwork of subdomains i...

The Handbook on Information Sciences provides a comprehensive overview of the core themes within the discipline, including the organisation of information and how to manage data, and outlines avenues for future research. Discussions on the methodological evolution of the field are enriched by an in-depth evaluation of the use of experimental method...

Reflecting on the history and development of the knowledge management discipline from an academic and applied research perspective, this chapter will outline the KM essentials as core of the discipline and open questions to be addressed in the future. Secondly, the author will discuss in particular the role of KM within organizational practice in r...

Zusammenfassung Die Informationswissenschaften und das Wissensmanagement weisen zahlreiche Gemeinsamkeiten auf und Anknüpfungspunkte für gemeinsamen Forschungen. Praktiker des Wissensmanagements sollten die Forschungsergebnisse der Schwesterdisziplin eingehender studieren, um für Ihre Organisationspraxis relevante Ergebnisse berücksichtigen zu könn...

Purpose - This paper reviews for the first time existing research literature about the role of gender in creating, sharing and using knowledge in organizations and proposes a conceptual framework to guide future research directions. Design/methodology/approach - Based on the systematic literature review method this study collects, synthesizes, and...

This article reports the results from an information and knowledge assessment (IKA) to identify information and knowledge needs and, their coverage by information resources to derive recommendations for improvement and proposes a contingeny framework. The approach is based on a review of audit methods from information sciences and management, knowl...

Over the past two decades, knowledge management (KM) and the use of information technologies (IT) has attracted increasing interest. IT is widely considered as a vital part of KM, providing means for knowledge creation, sharing, and capture. However, failures of KM in organizational practice are often attributed to an overemphasis of IT. Although K...

Purpose Knowledge management (KM) and organization strategy are both important to the success of an organization. This study aims to assess the research needs of their interrelationship. Design/methodology/approach The research is based on a collection of over 200 interviews of KM worldwide experts. Their inputs have been categorized based on the...

Purpose This paper is examines the views of the global KM community on the research area of KM and business performance, and identifies key future research themes. Design/methodology/approach An interview study spanning 222 informants in 38 countries was launched to collect data on KM expert views concerning the future research needs of the KM fi...

Purpose – This study aims to identify and compare the knowledge and information retrieval needs from past projects and for future work among Italian and Japanese engineers. Engineering work, which is knowledge-intensive, is all the more critical as it both uses and generates knowledge for product and process innovation. Design/methodology/approach...

In the Mid 90ies, Knowledge Management (KM) emerged in the private sector, triggered by new information and communication technologies (ICTs) and pushed by its vendors and consultants (Martin, 2008). Knowledge was regarded as an important resource within the emerging knowledge society and knowledge economy (Powell and Snellman, 2004, Rooney, Hearn...

EN: In 2015, two conferences are brought together under the umbrella of „knowledge communities“ with complementary thematic priorities. While the GeNeMe deals with organisational and technical perspectives in the context of Virtual Enterprises, Communities & Social Networks, the ProWM provides a broad and inclusive overview of the organisational, c...

Information Technology (IT) is widely considered as an important part of knowledge management (KM). However, failures of KM in organisational practice have been attributed to an overemphasis of IT in KM. An improved understanding of the role of IT within KM in organisations could help to improve the design and implementation of future KM initiative...

Over the last two decades, knowledge has attracted increased interest in academia and practice. Numerous journals have dedicated special issues to knowledge in organisations and over twenty specialised peer-reviewed journals have emerged under the label Knowledge Management (KM). Every sector from manufacturing and services to public administration...

Given that the nowadays often distributed nature of product development and the tendency of engineers to rely on their colleagues and people they can easily reach, social media may offer solutions to support information seeking and efficient and effective knowledge sharing. This paper explores the use of social media in the Danish engineering indus...

The delivery of products and services or capabilities over long product life-cycles requires extended support of engineering and management tasks by knowledge and information management. Integrated models, which capture information about product, process and rationale, have been developed and proposed in the literature to support the different prod...

This paper presents the results from a UK survey about the knowledge and information requirements of managers and engineers in design and service. The survey aimed to gather requirements regarding the needs for retrieval of previous designs and the needs to capture knowledge and information from current designs to support future engineering tasks....

This first book on Modelling and Management of Engineering Processes (MMEP) presents leading national and international research in the fields of engineering design, process modelling in engineering design and product development, and innovation management selected for the first international conference MMEP 2010. Innovative processes for design of...

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to look at how knowledge management (KM) has entered into a new phase where consolidation and harmonisation of concepts is required. Some first standards have been published in Europe and Australia in order to foster a common understanding of terms and concepts. The aim of this study was to analyse KM frameworks...

Extended abstract of a paper presented at Microscopy and Microanalysis 2009 in Richmond, Virginia, USA, July 26 – July 30, 2009

Introduction Design Techniques, Tools, and Components Concepts Architectures Knowledge Management References

The increasing importance of knowledge resources to maintain the competitive edge of an enterprise is undisputed. The goal of Knowledge Management (KM) is to handle these valuable resources more systematically and efficiently to achieve organisational goals more effectively. KM frameworks describe the core elements and dimensions of KM which are us...

Im Auftrag des Bundesministeriums für Wirtschaft und Technologie wurde im Rah- men der Wissensmanagement-Barometer-Studie 2006 von der wissenschaftlichen Begleitforschung WINK ein internationaler Vergleich des IT-gestützen Wissensma- nagements durchgeführt. Befragt wurden 42 ExpertInnen aus Wissenschaft, Wirt- schaft, Verbänden, Politik, Beratung...

Im Auftrag des Bundesministeriums für Wirtschaft und Technologie wurde im Rahmen der Wissensmanagement-Barometer-Studie 2006 von der wissenschaftlichen Begleitforschung WINK ein internationaler Vergleich des IT-gestützten Wissensmanagements durchgeführt. Befragt wurden 42 ExpertInnen aus Wissenschaft, Wirtschaft, Verbänden, Politik, Beratung und Fa...

The integration of knowledge management activities into the daily business processes is supported by the GPO-WM®-Method (German: GeschäftProzess-Orientiertes WissensManagement). This approach is based on extensive empirical research and combines the template-based GPO-WM®-Process Analysis with the electronic GPO-WM®-Solution Base to support the des...

Die zunehmende Bedeutung der Ressource Wissen für die Aufrechterhaltung der Wettbewerbsfähigkeit von Unternehmen ist unbestritten. Ziel des Wissensmanagements (WM) ist es, den systematischen Umgang mit dieser wertvollen Ressource effizient und zielgeleitet zu gestalten. Wissensmanagement Frameworks, welche die wesentlichen Elemente und Dimensionen...

The effective corporate-wide application of knowledge makes the Best Practice Transfer (BPT) a powerful tool to exploit the corporate knowledge base and achieve bottom line results. While the BPT activities of US-based corporations have been described in international benchmarking studies and other empirical research, little was known about the BPT...

Als erstes deutschsprachiges Werk zum Thema Wissensbilanzierung ist dieses Buch unentbehrlich für Entscheider in Unternehmen und öffentlichen Institutionen, die sich mit der Steuerung und Kommunikation der wichtigsten Ressource der Zukunft, dem Wissen, auseinandersetzen wollen. Das Buch gibt einen umfassenden Überblick über das neue Thema und beinh...

The field of knowledge management (KM) is highly estimated in research and practice but at the same time relatively diffuse and scattered into diverging concepts, perspectives and disciplines. On that background, it was the aim of this delphi study to give more structure to the field of KM and to get an outlook on worthwhile developments for the ne...

Within a business environment, where the fast and reliable access to knowledge is a key success factor, an efficient handling of the organizational knowledge is crucial. Therefore the need for methods and techniques, which allow to structure and maintain complex knowledge bases according to the requirements emerging from the daily work have a high...

In 1886, Arthur Dehon Little, a chemistry professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, founded the company with the same name. His goal was to advise companies on how to develop more efficient production processes and organizational forms. Today, the company is a world-class consulting firm, with 3000 staff members based in 51 offices an...

In 1997, British Aerospace plc. had global sales of 25.6 billion DM (£ 8.6 billion). With its 47,900 employees, it is the fourth largest manufacturer of aerospace and defense systems in the world. In November 1999, British Aerospace merged with Marconi Electronic Systems to form BAE SYSTEMS with sales £ 12 billion and an order book of £ 36 billion....

Hewlett-Packard Ltd. Austria in Vienna (HP Austria) was founded in 1970. The company is responsible for markets in Austria, Switzerland, Central and Eastern Europe, the Near East, and Africa. In 1997, 444 employees handled a contract volume of € 1.07 billion, mainly in the telecommunications, banking, and gas and oil industries.

Knowledge management has become an integral part of the agenda in business and research. The term knowledge management first appeared in American literature in the seventies (Rickson 1976). Finally, at the beginning of the nineties, knowledge management acquired more management attention because of the structural changes in the economy and society...

Even though knowledge management is far from being a new discipline,110 the existing perceptions of knowledge management in European companies show a significant disparity of views. This can be described as follows: We have been managing our knowledge at all times. For us, there is nothing new about knowledge management. The future of our company d...

Phonak, the world’s third largest developer and manufacturer of hearing technology, was founded in 1964 by the engineer Beda Diethelm and the executive Andy Rihs. In its first years, the company copied hearing aids from other manufacturers, while improving the product’s quality. However, Phonak soon realized that hearing problems must be treated in...

IBM is one of the world’s leading information technology companies. In 2001, IBM employed 320,000 persons and had revenue of $88,3 billion. IBM Global Services, IBM’s business segment responsible for IT services, employs 149,000 persons in 160 countries and had sales of $33,2 billion. In 2001, it was the world’s leading provider of information tech...

By Leif Edvinsson Professor of Intellectual Capital University of Lund Lund, Sweden In a marketplace, characterized by the growing importance of intangibles and knowledge, as we have not only in Europe today, it has become more and more evident how important knowledge management and Intellectual Capital manage­ ment has become. Some of us who start...

Larry Prusak (Executive Director IBM Institute for Knowledge-Based Organizations ): Knowledge Management, both as a practice and as a discipline, is entering i t's second decade, happily, without all the false expectations of any beginning movement, but with a growing and solid base of practice and theory on which to b uild. The volume that follows...

The working Group investigated the relations between KM and BPM to increase the efficiency of enterprise collaborations in the virtual environment. The report presents a concept for connecting noth knowledge management (KM) and bousiness process modeling (BPM), and thus enhancing model decision support.

Ein zentrales Gestaltungsobjekt in privaten und öffentlichen Unternehmen sind die Geschäftsproze sse, die die Leistungserbringung sowohl für den internen als auch fur den externen Kunden strukturieren. Unter den Begriffen des Business Process Reegineering (BPR) (Hammer u. Champy 1993) bzw. der Geschäftsprozes soptimierung (u.a. Diebold GmbH 1993) e...

It seems logical that knowledge is an extremely important resource for business success. Therefore, the lack of theoretical understanding of knowledge and practically proven methods for efficient knowledge management is surprising. Only recently have academics and practitioners begun publishing their approaches and experiences under the concept of...

Knowledge management is an emerging field for research and business. Therefore we decided to base our research on a comprehensive survey of the German TOP 1000 and European TOP 200 companies, because large companies could usually affort the investments and effort required to develop and introduce new management methods.

Phonak, the world’s fifth largest developer and manufacturer of hearing technology, was founded in 1964 by the engineer Beda Diethelm and the executive Andy Rihs. In its first years, the company copied hearing aids from other manufacturers, while improving the product’s quality. However, Phonak soon realized that hearing problems must be treated in...

Finance and economic circles have been aware of the fact for some time that the value of a firm rests on something more than just its financial and material capital. The so-called intangible or invisible assets of a company, such as know-how, the creativity of employees, and mature relations with customers influence its value enormously. In the las...

Thomas Miller & Co. Ltd. was founded 116 years ago. Its headquarters are located in London. The company focuses on the management of mutual insurance companies. Each fund is operated as a mutual insurance association (or club) with individual rights and shared risks. Most business is conducted in the transportation industry, particularly in the shi...

Hewlett-Packard Ltd. Austria in Vienna (HP Austria) was founded in 1970. The company is responsible for markets in Austria, Switzerland, Central and Eastern Europe, the Near East, and Africa. In 1997, 444 employees handled a contract volume of € 1.07 billion, mainly in the telecommunications, banking, and gas and oil industries.

Skandia is an international financial services and insurance group that was founded in Sweden in 1855. The company operates in 24 countries and has its head office in Stockholm. Today, Skandia is the fourth largest supplier of unit-linked insurance in the world. 3,000 of the firm’s 11,000 employees work for Skandia AFS, the parent company of the Ge...

In 1886, Arthur Dehon Little, a chemistry professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, founded the company with the same name. His goal was to advise companies on how to develop more efficient production processes and organizational forms. Today, the company is one of the world’s five premier consulting firms, with 3400 staff members bas...

The multidisciplinary understanding of knowledge management has arisen the interest of a wide range of academic disciplines. We found contribution from accountants, anthropologists210 architects211, researchers in business administration, computer scientists, economists, engineers, journalists, library scientists, multimedia designers212, psycholog...

IBM is one of the world’s leading information technology companies. In 1999, IBM employed 307,000 persons and had revenue of $87,5 billion. IBM Global Services, IBM’s business segment responsible for IT services, employs 150,000 persons and had sales of $32 billion. In 1999, it was the world’s leading provider of information technology services.

In 1997, British Aerospace plc had global sales of 25.6 billion DM (£ 8.6 billion). With its 47,900 employees, it is the fourth largest manufacturer of aerospace and defence systems in the world. In November 1999, British Aerospace merged with Marconi Electronic Systems to form BAE SYSTEMS; with sales £ 12 billion and an order book of £ 36 billion....

Celemi International AB, “Celemi” is a medium-sized consulting company for change management with approximately 80 employees. Its headquarters are in Malmö and it has offices in Sweden (Stockholm), Belgium (Brugges), the UK (Guildford), the USA (Simsbury and Chicago), Australia (Melbourne), New Zealand (Auckland) and Finland (Espoo). In 1997, Celem...

In 1990, just after the unification of Germany, Fraunhofer IPK started two research projects partly funded by the German Federal Ministry of Research and Technology, with companies, universities and research institutes from both parts of Germany.2 The aim of the projects was to discover and to describe the tacit knowledge of skilled mechanical work...

This paper presents some empirical results from the first German Benchmarking Study on Knowledge Management with the survey of the TOP 1000 German and TOP 200 European companies. Cost and time reductions are reported as improvements from KM activities. Companies mainly start in R&D with KM. Critical success factors are corporate culture, processes...

The integration of business-process re-engineering and human-resource development enhances the performance of a company's business processes due to the integration of the process knowledge and empowerment of employees. This integration could serve as a basis for continuous-improvement processes. It also helps to overcome the deficits of business-pr...

This paper describes a unique design simulation game that empowers people to actively shape their work conditions. It consists of a model factory, role games, computer supported goal setting, analysis tools for material and information flow. The most creative phase of the game is the exploring or organizational alternatives while using an underlyin...

The employees should actively participate in the process of planning and optimization of sociotechnical systems and bring in their tacit knowledge in order to increase the efficiency of the sociotechnical systems. They should be able to take into consideration the quality of their working and living conditions and to contribute in their improvement...

This paper presents the development of a Case Study Library in Esprit project 8162 Qualit. The scope of the CSL is to support decision makers (e.g., managers, designers, planners, workers representatives) in private and public organisations concerning the management of change processes. The CSL includes cases which illustrate solutions and good pra...

The GPO-WM ® -Method 1 combines the template-based GPO-WM ® -Process Analysis with the GPO-WM ® -Solution Base to support process teams with the integration of knowledge management activities into daily business processes. The template-based, participative approach is easy to learn, fosters awareness about the handling of knowledge, identifies stre...