No full-text available
To read the full-text of this research,
you can request a copy directly from the author.
If only HP knew what HP knows: The roots of knowledge management at Hewlett-Packard
Abstract
While the term “knowledge management” is relatively new, many of the concepts have deep historical roots. Hewlett-Packard’s strong culture and traditional business practices established an environment that encouraged innovation and the sharing of knowledge throughout the company. However, the reliance on local and informal approaches eventually became a weakness when the company had to deal with rapid growth and increased competitive pressures. The growing gap between the potential and actual value of HP’s collective intellectual assests was reflected in a widely quoted management complaint from the 1980s, “If only HP knew what HP knows.” However, the need for more explicit and deliberate strategies for managing knowledge has only recently become clear, as the disruptive technology of the Internet and the World Wide Web triggered an explosion in the availability of information and knowledge, but did nothing to expand our limited attention capacity.
... The ability to recognise and make connections is clearly important to humans, animals and computers. At an organisational level, the importance is captured in the title of [9]-"If only HP knew what HP knows". ...
... In [6], Burgin says that: "the information in a message is a function of the recipient as well as the message." Logan reviews the relativity of information in [9] and concludes that: "information is not an absolute but depends on the context in which it is being used." The approach of MfI supports this assertion, so we can naturally deduce, as Table 5 shows, that the amount of information is a relative concept-it is relative to combination of IAs and IEs (and Ecosystem) in question. ...
This paper builds an integrated framework of measures of information based on the Model for Information (MfI) developed by the author. Since truth is expressed using information, an analysis of truth depends on the nature of information and its limitations. These limitations include those implied by the geometry of information and those implied by the relativity of information. This paper proposes an approach to truth and truthlikeness that takes these limitations into account by incorporating measures of the quality of information. Another measure of information is the amount of information. This has played a role in two important theoretical difficulties-the Bar-Hillel Carnap paradox and the "scandal of deduction". This paper further provides an analysis of the amount of information, based on MfI, and shows how the MfI approach can resolve these difficulties.
... KM is, therefore, being recognised as a vehicle through which innovation and improved business performance is possible . Success of various KM initiatives in other industries -mainly pharmaceuticals (Normann and Ramirez 1993;Powell 1998), electronics (Sieloff 1999), and manufacturing (Andrews 1996) -provides a model for the construction industry. ...
... The construction industry must accept the challenge to change and modernise if it is to match the performance of industries that generate higher profits and can more easily attract high-calibre talent (DETR 1998). Success of various KM initiatives in other industries -mainly pharmaceuticals (Normann and Ramirez 1993;Powell 1998), electronics (Sieloff 1999), and manufacturing (Andrews 1996) -provides a model for the construction industry. ...
... The analytic and facilitative activities, which aim at supporting experience modelling, reuse, evaluation and maintenance, can be termed as knowledge intermediation. The personnel who steer, enable and support these multidimensional experience knowledge sharing activities can be characterised as knowledge intermediaries (Ehrlich and Cash, 1999;Sieloff, 1999;Markus, 2001). A knowledge intermediary is a person who serves as a boundary spanner and gatekeeper, whose responsibility is to enhance knowledge transfer and communication of knowledge among groups within the organisation. ...
... The KM professional dedicated to the knowledge reuse support tasks was profiled and first named as a knowledge intermediary in the analysis of the KM processes of Hewlett-Packard (Sieloff, 1999). In the academic KM literature, one of the first elaborators of the concept of knowledge intermediary was Markus (2001). ...
Effectively collecting, sharing and cultivating experience-based knowledge in work organisations is demanding. As the challenges are getting more intensive, there is a need for dedicated personnel who are able to steer, enable and support knowledge sharing activities. In the knowledge management literature, these types of individuals may be characterised as knowledge intermediaries. This paper presents results from an empirical study of an inquiry into the work tasks of knowledge intermediaries. The study focused on exploring the challenges and demands knowledge intermediaries experienced in enabling experience knowledge sharing and reuse. The study was conducted in two industrial enterprises that both manufacture complex machinery products and provide after sales installation and maintenance services for the machines at clients' sites. Empirical data were collected through interviews with technical support personnel who serve as knowledge intermediaries in after sales services. The study analyses and describes prototypical activity episodes that illustrate the nature of knowledge intermediary work and the information interaction challenges faced in their work. Typical demands and challenges for the management of experience knowledge include the following: (i) problem space assembly and narrowing in urgent support request situations; (ii) assembly of the hidden experience-based knowledge; and (iii) new component and product knowledge acquisition and updating. The paper contributes to the understanding of the needs for and practices of knowledge intermediaries, and it offers some guidelines for the enhancement of experience knowledge sharing in workplaces. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
... For instance Debra Amidon (1997) has illustrated the genesis of Knowledge Management, identifying the contribution of a combination of Asian, US and European forces, involving interests in artificial intelligence, learning organisation, innovation and technology. Other important factors are the dramatic success of knowledge-based initiatives by some major international corporations such as Shell, BP (Prokesh 1997), Hewlett-Packard (Sieloff 1999), 3M, Johnson &Johnson and a variety of other organisations (O'Dell andGrayson 1998:p8, Keeble 1999). The identification and popularisation of these cases have been principally by consultants, with a resulting growth in industry initiatives and consulting practices. ...
... This information user behaviour research can underpin Knowledge Management as a field of practice in a variety of ways: understanding of information needs, approaches to needs analysis, approaches to knowledge and information identification, information seeking behaviours, patterns of information utilisation, as well as an understanding of the contextual factors that predict information seeking and utilisation. The need for a better understanding of these areas are now being recognised (Sieloff 1999). ...
Knowledge Management is interpreted through a social perspective, both in terms of the development of the concept, and in its major components. This perspective is demonstrated as an effective means of interpreting the confusion that surrounds the topic, and of exploring questions about its character, its genesis, the nature of its literature and its future development. There are also important social perspectives in the key issues of the subject itself, involving the concept of knowledge, the human and social dimensions, the role of technology, measurement, top management and the professions involved. Adaptation of the principles to other organisational and social contexts also needs consideration. Finally, the various social disciplines, in particular Information Sciences, have much to offer the field of Knowledge Management. Knowledge Management is the latest wonder theory. In a few short years it has appeared, apparently from no- where, and is now spawning masses of books, articles, conferences and Internet sites, gathering up any vaguely associated activity into a whirling mass of visions, ideals, ideas, practices, technologies, consultancies and case studies. Whether it is communications, data bases, artificial intelligence, HRM, organisational design, organisational culture, work groups, learning organisations, training, system engineering or information technology and services, they are all being caught up and carried along in the whirling dervish. It is easy for the cynic to pass it off as a fad - we have had PPBS (Program Planning and Budgeting Systems), MBO (Management by Objectives), MBWA (Management by Walking around), Excellence, TQM (Total Quality Management), CQI (Continuous Quality Improvement), BPR (Business Process Re-engineering), Downsizing, Benchmarking, Outsourcing - and now Knowledge Management - what's next - What will they do with wisdom? The term Knowledge Management is being attached to so many different systems, practices and technologies that many are bewildered and confused by its meaning and significance. People are seeking definitions and explanations - what is Knowledge, what is Management, can you manage knowledge, what is a Knowledge Management system, how do you measure Knowledge, is Knowledge Management cost beneficial, will it last? This paper addresses this confusion by looking at Knowledge Management as a social dynamic, rather than as a set of tools and techniques. It looks at the complex of attitudes, ideas, beliefs, cultures and political forces that mould and develop what is seen as Knowledge Management.
... Abundance of information, however, can represent its own ''resource course'' challenge. One could paraphrase the famous corporate knowledge-management adage (Sieloff, 1999) by saying: ''if only science knew what science knows.'' In this respect, the field of literature-based discovery (LBD) has propounded the existence of ''undiscovered public knowledge'' concerning facts that have never been put together before because of the disparate venues in which they were published (Swanson, 1986;Bekhuis, 2006;Thilakaratne, Falkner & Atapattu, 2019). ...
Delays in the propagation of scientific discoveries across scientific communities have been an oft-maligned feature of scientific research for introducing a bias towards knowledge that is produced within a scientist’s closest community. The vastness of the scientific literature has been commonly blamed for this phenomenon, despite recent improvements in information retrieval and text mining. Its actual negative impact on scientific progress, however, has never been quantified. This analysis attempts to do so by exploring its effects on biomedical discovery, particularly in the discovery of relations between diseases, genes and chemical compounds. Results indicate that the probability that two scientific facts will enable the discovery of a new fact depends on how far apart these two facts were originally within the scientific landscape. In particular, the probability decreases exponentially with the citation distance. Thus, the direction of scientific progress is distorted based on the location in which each scientific fact is published, representing a path-dependent bias in which originally closely-located discoveries drive the sequence of future discoveries. To counter this bias, scientists should open the scope of their scientific work with modern information retrieval and extraction approaches.
... The well-known quote: "to know what you know and what you do not know, that is true knowledge" is ascribed to the Chinese philosopher Confucius. Indeed, organizations often "do not know what they know" (Sieloff, 1999). This means that knowledge exists somewhere within the organization, but its existence, location, and the circumstances under which it was acquired are unknown. ...
This paper presents our proposal for an exploratory research study. The objective of the research is to develop a conceptual framework of the interpretations, meanings, perceptions, and beliefs related to the role, development, and future of the knowledge management (KM) discipline. We propose to develop a holistic model that will depict professionals' perceptions of this issue: the combined perceptions of both KM consultants and knowledge managers. The proposed qualitative research will be based on three research tools: Semi-structured in-depth interviews, focus groups, and content analysis. The data will be analyzed using a thematic analysis method based on the grounded theory approach. We collected preliminary empirical evidence from international KM experts during 2020. The findings revealed a remarkable variety of issues that exist at the core of the KM discipline. These issues include the role and purpose of KM in knowledge-intensive organizations, the implications of the existence or absence of KM, and views about future avenues for its development. Our intention is to explore these issues further by expanding the research to other KM professionals. Through this, we hope to assist in the positioning of the discipline in the age of knowledge. This research may contribute significantly to both the theoretical and practical aspects of KM. Its uniqueness is reflected in the voices of KM professionals. We foresee that our research will enable a better understanding of the evolution of KM as a discipline, its contemporary role, and its future possibilities.
... "If only KSB knew what KSB knows."adopted from Sieloff (1999) Engaging employees to contribute to corporate innovation is vital for the future success of companies. Employees create, introduce, and apply new ideas within their organizations to improve their own organizational position and the performance of their group and/or the whole organization ( de Jong & den Hartog, 2010;Janssen, 2000;Scott & Bruce, 1994;Wu et al., 2014). ...
Engaging employees to contribute to corporate innovation is vital for the future success of companies. In particular, incumbent companies face severe barriers in involving employees from various organizational locations. Long-term employments, highly specified organizational units, and hierarchical management structures are designed to preserve the status quo rather than promoting transformational changes. Thus, such companies often struggle with engaging their employees constantly and breaking down three kinds of innovation barriers: limited meaning, allowance, and/or capability.
In this paper, we present innovation nudging as a novel approach, aiming to overcome the limitations of traditional corporate innovation management approaches. Such approaches largely pretend how employees should behave. Since such approaches are not part of employees’ common behavior, prior research has well explored the limits of such approaches. In contrast, nudging addresses subtly persons’ cognition by presenting rewarding behavior options in a way that individuals can easily deal with.
Based on a 3-year observation of the introduction of innovation nudging at a leading German manufacturer of pumps, our results answer how different nudging types can be systematically used to create innovation engagement and to propel transformations in incumbent companies. Practical implications as well as avenues for future research are discussed.
... Abundance of information, however, can represent its own "resource course" challenge. One could paraphrase the famous corporate knowledge-management adage (Sieloff, 1999) by saying: if only science knew what science knows. In this respect, the field of literature-based discovery (LBD) has propounded the existence of "undiscovered public knowledge" concerning facts that have never been put together because of the disparate venues in which they were published (Swanson, 1986;Bekhuis, 2006;Thilakaratne et al., 2019). ...
Information silos have been an oft-maligned feature of scientific research for introducing a bias towards knowledge that is produced within a scientist's own community. The vastness of the scientific literature has been commonly blamed for this phenomenon, despite recent improvements in information retrieval and text mining. Its actual negative impact on scientific progress, however, has never been quantified. This analysis attempts to do so by exploring its effects on biomedical discovery, particularly in the discovery of relations between diseases, genes and chemical compounds. Results indicate that the probability that two scientific facts will enable the discovery of a new fact depends on how far apart these two facts were published within the scientific landscape. In particular, the probability decreases exponentially with the citation distance. Thus, the direction of scientific progress is distorted based on the location in which each scientific fact is published, representing a path-dependent bias in which originally closely-located discoveries drive the sequence of future discoveries. To counter this bias, scientists should open the scope of their scientific work with modern computational approaches.
... Knowledge transfer is important also because it allows avoiding the need to reinvent an already successfully applied solution. To this point, it can be recalled the famous saying of an HP top executive, "if we only knew what we already know" (Sieloff, 1999), that exactly indicates where the heart of the matter resides. It must be specified that the literature makes a distinction between the terms knowledge transfer, sharing, and exchange (Boyd, Ragsdell, & Oppenheim, 2007;King, 2006aKing, , 2006bLindsey, 2006). ...
This chapter discusses the role of online knowledge mediator, an entity that occupies an intermediate position in a knowledge transfer/exchange between a source and a receiver, and whose task is to assist and facilitate the knowledge transfer process, when performed through the use of Internet-based technologies to a significant degree. In the present rapidly evolving world of Internet, many types of virtual knowledge mediators continue to come out with different features and functions. Despite their growing diffusion, little effort has been devoted to examine their practices thoroughly. In light of this, the chapter aims to develop an analytical framework that could be of use to a deeper and more systematic investigation of these new economic agents. It is a two-dimensional framework, since it is based on two complementary, conceptual views of the knowledge transfer process, that is, the cognitive and the economic one.
... Elas são alvo de estudos em vários campos, tais como: educação, engenharia, saúde e gestão, dentre outros. CoPs podem englobar desde pequenos grupos de estudo até associações corporativas patrocinadas pela organização (GONGLA; RIZZUTO, 2001), tendo a tecnologia por mediadora da interação virtual das pessoas, superando distâncias entre filiais de organizações localizadas em várias partes do mundo, por meio das comunidades de prática virtual (VCoPs 1 ) (ARDICHVILI; PAGE;WENTLING, 2003;PROBST;BORZILLO, 2008;SIELOFF, 1999;WEISSNBERGER;EBERT, 2011). ...
In the 21st century most organizations, whether public or private, look at
innovation as a survival factor. Innovation comes from the recombination of
existing knowledge or from the creation of new knowledge which may
occur in the context of knowledge sharing. Hence, knowledge sharing has a
leading role in the context of innovation. Among the strategies for sharing
knowledge both Communities of Practice (CoPs) and Virtual Communities
of Practice (VCoPs) stand out for their possibility to act as catalysts for
innovation processes. The aim of this study is to identify characteristics of
VCoPs that influence innovation processes in a Brazilian public entreprise.
To achieve this, an exploratory qualitative research -a kind of case study–
was conducted in three VCoPs who helped to carry out incremental
innovations in the Brazilian Postal Service (Correios). The data were
collected in semi-structured interviews with members of the surveyed
VCoPs. After comparing the characteristics of VCoPs that influence
innovation processes found in the reviewed literature and the ones
identified in the case study, it was found that those characteristics are
related to the structural configuration of VCoPs, to their domain, to their
dynamics, and to the people in the group – both members and moderators.
This research shows that most of those characteristics are associated with
the presence of persons that are open to share what they know and to create
something new: the topic of VCoPs for innovation entails an
anthropocentric approach. This Master’s thesis contributes to the theoretical
area with a study to understand how VCoPs have supported innovation
processes in a Brazilian company of the public sector. This research may
also contribute to practical applications of innovation management by using
VCoPs in organizations in spite of the main limitation of the study: the
results cannot be generalized. Nevertheless the results can be used as
starting point for future studies with the aim to generalize the subject.
... We live and die on our intellectual property, acquiring knowledge quickly, moving it around the company very quickly, it's all about knowledge transfer; starting with the customer" (Sieloff, 1999). The growing importance of knowledge in general and tacit knowledge in particular within businesses and CoPs presents a challenge to define methods that can improve upon the discovery of relevant sources so that it is possible to tap into tacit knowledge within organizations and CoPs. ...
Today's modern enterprises are entities that strive to create, share, and consume knowledge effectively with the least amount of overhead possible. The endeavor is to enable business performance using all the resources that are available to it. Businesses organize themselves into different groups, each performing specific tasks or projects, and each member defined by the roles and responsibilities of its management. Individuals and groups clearly make use of knowledge, both explicit and tacit, in what they do. Communities of practice, or CoPs, are custodians of knowledge that an enterprise aspires to, but which they do not directly create. Individuals within the communities create the knowledge; it is the job of communities to integrate and institutionalize it. Even though organizations think of knowledge in organization, groups, and CoPs, it is necessary to focus in this study on individuals in the context of knowledge creation. Enterprises roll out knowledge management initiatives for these purposes but have met with limited success because individuals are incentivized to use the knowledge to achieve business goals; there is no (or very little) incentive to share or seek knowledge. Most of the knowledge management systems have an emphasis on the codification of knowledge. Codified knowledge is important, but real productivity enhancers in groups and organizations are sources of tacit knowledge that exist within the groups and individuals within those groups. In this study, the knowledge within CoPs, groups, and individuals, is examined. Primarily, a knowledge ontology is defined that is appropriate in the context of CoPs, groups, and individuals while keeping in mind creation, codification, and usage of knowledge by individuals within the context of CoPs and groups. iii It is established through quantitative analysis that organizations and their members miss the knowledge which goes along with employees who leave an organization. Enterprises cannot codify all the knowledge that they desire. One of the ways to access the tacit knowledge of an individual is socialization. A mechanism is defined to build knowledge networks based on the communication patterns across individuals as part of their interaction in a CoP. These knowledge networks are then examined using social network analysis reveals the fact that each group has leaders, matchmakers who hold on to their position for long periods based on their contribution. These results are valid across multiple domains. Enterprises may have their taxonomies it makes the content unsuitable for natural language processing. Even synonyms for words may be unsuitable. We define the concept of knowledge adjacency to find more appropriate alternative phrases for a candidate query that user may want to search. The information communication system is sometimes used by the organization members to advance their aims giving rise the phenomenon of cliques. We look at communities of practice for the existence of the similar phenomenon. Additionally, a methodology is proposed to identify these cliques and evaluate their characteristics. We also look at what is holding these communities of practice alive. We define a mechanism to identify these individuals whose attrition may be most damaging to the community. Finally, we propose a system architecture that can be the foundation for next generation of knowledge management systems which is more helpful in identifying the knowledge and source of knowledge within a community of practice.
... Knowledge sharing also enables knowledge transfer, which is concerned with the flow of knowledge between larger organisational entities such as departments and organisations themselves (see Ipe 2003). That famous lament by a former executive of the Hewlert-Packard Company -'if only HP knew what HP knows' (see Sieloff 1999) -was an endorsement of the importance of knowledge sharing to organisational effectiveness. As it has already been noted, effective knowledge sharing has a positive impact on organisational performance (Chen 2006;Du, Ai & Ren 2007;Jacobs & Roodt 2007;Lin 2007;Pai 2006;Yang 2007). ...
The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationships between knowledge sharing behaviour and the demographic variables gender, age, organisational tenure and professional tenure. Following a correlational survey approach, the study sourced its data from senior secondary school teachers in and around Gaborone, Botswana. Knowledge sharing behaviour was measured using an instrument sourced from the extant literature. No statistically significant relationship was detected between knowledge sharing behaviour and gender, age, or professional tenure. Only organisational tenure weakly negatively correlated with knowledge sharing behaviour. Thus, according to these findings, demographic variables do not appear to be important determinants of knowledge sharing behaviour.
... KM that offers systematic methods in leveraging and management of organisations assets has been accepted as a new management tool to sustain organization's competitive advantage. Large corporations such as Siemens, and Hewlett Packard have embarked in KM and have reaped the benefits of KM [1] [2]. Since KM plays a critical role in organisations, KM professionals are now becoming more popular in many organisations. ...
Knowledge management (KM) is an area that has captured the attention of many organisations that are concerned with the ways knowledge is managed more effectively. KM offers systematic methods in leveraging and managing organisational knowledge through KM processes of creation, storing, sharing, and application of knowledge. Due to the importance of KM, the increasing demand of employees with KM skills is growing. However, KM curriculum is still scarce in universities. This study describes the introduction of KM as a course at the undergraduate level of Information Systems programme. This study is hoped to guide other universities in developing their own KM course or curriculum.
... This paper takes us from the clarity of map-like abstractions into the messiness of the walkable environment; where general concepts run against locally specific conditions and the proper places of power (De Certeau, 1988) are offset by practical and metic local awareness (Scott, 2008). We consequently seek to explore multiple interactions and power relationships between facilitator and delegate between social actors within the walked environment. ...
An outline short paper written with Associate Professor Gareth Edwards of the University of the West of England and Professor Mike Zundel of Liverpool University
... Again, it becomes clear that internal commitment and outward reputation overlap in practice; these are positions on continua rather than exclusive contradistinctions. For example, even though Sieloff (1999) and Fleming (2002) both trace innovation at Hewlett Packard from largely internal perspectives, the company clearly used their new-found internal direction and cohesion to influence wider audiences. A related case is provided in Seegeret al. (2005) study of Cantor Fitzgerald, a brokerage firm who lost almost 700 of its then 1000 employees in the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Centre. ...
Organizations frequently draw on history as a resource, for instance when attempting to establish or maintain identity claims. However, little has been done to review the advantages and problems of such use of history and it is not clear how using history impacts on the appreciation of history itself and, ultimately, on the insights that may be gained when engaging with the past. To begin to address these questions we distinguish two related uses of history as a resource for organizational identity: as a means of committing external audiences and, as a way of finding inward commitment. We theorize these two uses by drawing on speech act theory to develop a taxonomy of uses of history and to elaborate the opportunities and challenges that come when historical narratives are fashioned in the service of identity. We conclude with a further insight gained from speech act theory that suggests an engagement with history that requires sensitivity to prevailing conventions at the moment of these historical acts. We argue that appreciation of asynchronous historical conditions and contexts affords new insights through the difference these pose to current and instrumental concerns that otherwise guide the fashioning and interpretation of historical ‘facts.’
... Knowledge management (KM) has been widely analyzed and discussed in the last decade in different fields and contexts (Lopez et al., 2004) such as the construction industry (Maqsood & Finegran, 2009), pharmaceutics (Normann & Ramirez, 1993;Powell, 1998), electronics (Sieloff, 1999), information and communication technology (Rantapuska & Ihanainen, 2008) as well as manufacturing (Andrews, 1996;Lu et al., 2008;Moshen & Khadem, 2010).Similarly, it has been identified as an essential element that greatly facilitates the innovation and performance of the Firms (Kamara et al., 2002). ...
The transformation of the current society from an industry-based economy to a knowledge management and innovation-based economy is changing the design and implementation of business strategies and the nature of the competition among the organizations which are mainly small and medium-size enterprises (SMEs). They struggle to survive in a market which is more demanding and competitive, so they seeknowledge management as one of the most effective strategies that may help to enable the innovation activities into the businesses. For these reasons, this research paper has as a main goal to analyze the relationship between knowledge management and innovation in Mexican SMEs. The empirical analysis used 125 manufacturing SMEs (each SME having from 20 to 250 employees) as a sample to be carried out. The obtained results indicate that knowledge management has a positive impact in products, process, and management systems innovation.
... Finally, ecosystem conventions are linked with the availability and use of information sources and channels. For example, organisations use particular processes and systems to acquire, distribute and use IAs but the difficulty of the challenge is captured in the title of [14]: "If only HP knew what HP knows". Making information available where is it needed is a difficult challenge. ...
Digital information changes the ways in which people and organisations interact. This paper examines the nature of this change in the context of the author’s Model for Information (MfI). It investigates the relationship between outcomes and value, selection processes and some attributes of information and explores how this relationship changes in the move from analogue to digital information. Selection processes shape the evolution of information ecosystems in which conventions are established for the ways in which information is used. The conventions determine norms for information friction and information quality as well as the sources of information and channels used. Digital information reduces information friction, often dramatically, and changes information quality. The increasing use of analytics in business increasingly delivers predictive or prescriptive digital information. These changes are happening faster than information ecosystem conventions can change. The relationships established in the paper enable an analysis of, and guide changes to, these conventions enabling a more effective use of digital information.
... Some early approaches attempted to build expert databases that contains the description of people's skills within an organization. For instance, Hewlett-Packard's CONNEX knowledge management system [Sieloff, 1999] consisted of a centralized database of user knowledge profiles, allowing users to find profiles within the company. User profiles contained a summary of their knowledge, skills, education, and interests. ...
Social media platforms are increasingly used in recent years to support learning activities, especially for the construction of activity- and learner-centric personal learning environments (PLEs). This thesis investigates the solutions to four essential design requirements for social media based PLEs: support for help seeking, privacy protection, identity management and activity monitoring, as well as context awareness. Three main components of the thesis, reputation, privacy, and identity, are built upon these four design requirements. We investigate the three components through the following research questions. How do we help learners to find suitable experts or peers who they can learn from or collaborate with in a particular learning context? How can we design a proper privacy mechanism to make sure the information shared by learners is only disclosed to the intended audience in a given context? What identity scheme should be used to preserve the privacy of learners while also providing personalized learning experience, especially for teenage learners? To tackle the design requirement of support for help seeking, we address the reputation dimension in the context of personal learning for doctoral studies, where doctoral students need to find influential experts or peers in a particular domain. We propose an approach to detect a domain-specific community in academic social media platforms. Based on that, we investigate the influence of scholars taking both their academic and social impact into account. We propose a measure called R-Index that aggregates the readership of a scholar's publications to assess her academic impact. Furthermore, we add the social dimension into the influence measure by adopting network centrality metrics in a domain-specific community. Our results show that academic influence and social influence measures do not strongly correlate with each other, which implies that, adding the social dimension could enhance the traditional impact metrics that only take academic influence into account. Moreover, we tackle the privacy dimension of designing a PLE in the context of higher education. To protect against unauthorized access to learners' data, we propose a privacy control approach that allows learners to specify the audience, action, and artifact for their sharing behavior. Then we introduce the notion of privacy protocol with which learners can define fine-grained sharing rules. To provide a usable application of the privacy protocol in social media based PLEs, we exploit the space concept that provides an easy way for users to define the privacy protocols within a particular context. The proposed approach is evaluated through two user studies. The results reveal that learners confirm the usefulness and usability of the privacy enhanced sharing scheme based on spaces. In the last part of the thesis, we study the identity dimension in the context of STEM education at secondary and high schools. To support personalization while also preserving learners' privacy, we propose a classroom-like pseudonymity scheme that allows tracking of learners' activities while keeping their real identities undisclosed. In addition, we present a data storage mechanism called Vault that allows apps to store and exchange data within the scope of a Web-based inquiry learning space.
... These communities face the challenge of avoiding the reinvention of knowledge and artifacts already known by someone. This hurdle is articulated in the slogan "If only HP knew what HP knows" [Sieloff, 1999] indicating that cultures of participation are negatively impacted by a lack of awareness what others have done. ...
The first decade of the World Wide Web predominantly enforced a clear separation between designers and consumers. New technological developments, such as the participatory Web 2.0 architectures, have emerged to support social computing. These developments are the foundations for a fundamental shift from consumer cultures specialized in producing finished goods to cultures of participation in which all people can participate actively in personally meaningful activities. End-user development and meta-design provide foundations for this fundamental transformation. They explore and support new approaches for the design, adoption, appropriation, adaptation, evolution, and sharing of artifacts by all participating stakeholders. They take into account that cultures of participation are not dictated by technology alone: they are the result of incremental shifts in human behavior and social organizations. The design, development, and assessment of five particular applications that contributed to the development of our theoretical framework are described and discussed.
... Rapid increase in technology within the workplace requires new skills and flexibility on the part of the employees. Thus, there is a need for companies to "know-what-they-know" [18]. This desire to improve knowledge in the organisation led to the emergence of knowledge management. ...
In today's knowledge economy, competitive advantage is achieved through proper and efficient knowledge management (KM). KM is critical for organisational well-being. Research has shown that Africa has not explored knowledge management practices much. As a continent, Africa is being transformed economically, yet its knowledge economy is to be explored and developed. However, on a Development Community's members, Mauritius is now a rather positive note, being one of the South African developing country and aiming to be a cyber-island. Therefore, in line with the country's economic development, this paper aims at investigating knowledge management practices in IT project-based companies in Mauritius. It presents the findings of small-scale research conducted in ten IT project-based companies in Mauritius. The findings revealed that the adoption of KM among the IT firms in Mauritius is still at an immaturity stage. Based on the analysis of the results, recommendations are made to suggest a way forward for the companies in Mauritius.
... Having knowledge-of-expertise means that individuals and groups are aware of the expertise available within their organisation, although this expertise may be socially distributed among a great number of individuals and teams. In the case of HP, the problem of social distribution of expertise has been captured in the phrase "If only HP knew what HP knows" (Sieloff 1999), which symbolises the challenge of supporting global sharing of local knowledge. ...
or many organizations and countries alike, innovation and knowledge management (KM) are no longer luxury items, but rather necessities and a means of sustaining economic development and competitiveness. KM plays a vital role supporting innovation in the sense that innovation often draws upon lessons from the past, sometimes those that have been forgotten, or that can be put together into new combinations to produce new results.
Project-based collaboration gained a new dimension within the Internet era. Sharing and capitalisation of knowledge within a project can be highly amplified through the use of Internet services, since it can reach a bigger audience in a more effective way. Thus, research have tackled these aspects providing good models and tools to support knowledge cycle (capture, creation, cleansing, sharing, dissemination, and capitalisation) in a project-based context.
Providing functionalities to share best practices and lessons learned from previous projects can be an effective means of implementing lean processes inside organizations as a response to organizational business problems. Knowledge is generated in a continuous flow involving sharing and conversion, considering individuals, communities, and the organisation itself.
KM is more than a balanced emphasis on knowledge creation and sharing. It must also recognize the presence of learning systems in organizations. How people and groups, in complex social systems, organise themselves around learning and problem-solving, or even to detect problems may have nothing to do with how and what they do at their operating level, and usually does not.
The work presented here describes a conceptual model focused on collaborative work performed in a project-based context, where the knowledge transformation processes proposed by Nonaka and Takeuchi in their SECI (Socialization, Externalization, Combination, and Internalization) model within the knowledge spiral, are used in an evolving way by the knowledge workers involved in a given project. Each project represents a potential environment for the generation of new knowledge which can be capitalised on new projects.
Our approach, which is being validated under the scope of the CoSpaces Integrated Research Project, intends to support professionals and working teams by enhancing decision making on co-located and distributed project meetings, improving project conduction through the anticipation of problems, deviations, solutions, etc., relying on two main elements: (i) ontology-based classification and indexation of similarities among projects; and (ii) historical data analysis through data mining techniques (issues & solutions) produced at each decisional gate. This can be achieved by a knowledge system based on collaboration models and contextualized information which is shared and used by knowledge workers. Results achieved so far and future goals pursued by this work are also presented here.
... The specific contribution to this research study will be in the areas of KM, SC, and the development of IS projects (Gray & Larson, 2008;Kuruppuarachchi, Mandal, & Smith, 2002;Maylor, 2004;OGC, 2005;Sieloff, 1999;Tenkasi & Boland, 1996). The current concept of a system requirement is ill-suited to develop clear "smart" requirements for large projects. ...
This article investigates the gap of diverse knowledge and misunderstanding between different parties in supply chain procurement in two West-London hospitals. The case studies identified communication as an issue in sharing and transferring the different knowledge between the two parties at the requirements stage and throughout the supply chain management. The developed framework facilitates sharing both tacit medical knowledge and tacit technical knowledge to be treated as continuous processes in matching requirements and specifications.
... A commonly reported complaint at Hewlett-Packard was " If only HP knew what HP knows, " reflecting the " growing gap between the potential and actual value of HP's collective intellectual assets . . . " [4]. This clearly demonstrates that large organizations face the challenge of keeping up with and organizing the volume of information that is produced, sent, received, and archived daily. ...
Information overload is one of the greatest challenges to individuals and organizations today. It affects productivity and therefore significantly impacts corporate costs. Additional challenges include mental overload and stress on individuals and the need for improved resources such as search engines and spam blockers. Possible solutions to this problem include knowledge management techniques, better strategies for maximizing use of the software and technological issues, and more careful text organization and design for all media.
... Its value is magnified by it being closely related to another important organisational resource in today's dynamic global markets – time. Today's organisations are viewed as ''wellsprings of knowledge'' (Leonard, 1995) and thus cannot afford to lose time ''reinventing the wheel'' (Dani et al., 2006) or looking for old knowledge they are unable to retrieve by trying to ''know what they know'' (Sieloff, 1999). Such knowledge losses, which can have detrimental consequences for any organisation, can occur as a result of many internal and external factors such as lay-offs, resignations, retirements, restructuring and outsourcing (Delen and Al-Hawamdeh, 2009). ...
Purpose
Knowledge is the currency of the current economy, a vital organisational asset and a key to creating a sustainable competitive advantage. The consequent interest in Knowledge Management (KM) has spurred an exponential increase in publications covering a broad spectrum of diverse and overlapping research areas. The purpose of this paper is to provide a literature review and categorised analysis of the rapidly growing number of KM publications, and offer a comprehensive reference for new-comers embarking on research in the field with a particular focus on the area of Knowledge Measurement.
Design/Methodology/Approach
A total of 350 articles published in peer-reviewed journals and conferences over the last decade are carefully reviewed, analysed and categorised according to their specific subject matter in the KM context.
Findings
KM research tends to fall in one of five categories: (1) Ontology of Knowledge and KM, (2) Knowledge Management Systems, (3) Role of Information Technology, (4) Managerial& Social issues, and (5) Knowledge Measurement. Despite the accumulation of extensive publication efforts in some areas, a series of disagreements and a theory-practice gap are revealed as challenging issues that need to be addressed.
Research Limitations/Implications
The scope of this study does not cover KM research in its entirety due to the vast nature of the research field.
Originality/Value
This paper presents a new birds-eye view of the KM landscape through a comprehensive taxonomy of KM research providing researchers with new insights for future applied research, and offers a critical review of major knowledge measurement frameworks.
... Similarly, in what was called the 'HP way', walking got instilled as a key aspect of organisational culture. Management by walking (wandering) around, informal communication and an open door policies were amongst the points of a visionary document developed by Hewlett-Packard managers as early as 1957 (Sieloff, 1999). Open-plan office layouts with managers and other employees sharing the same spaces and frequently encouraged coffee breaks meant staying in 'direct touch ... with the folks who do the work!' (Peters, 2005) so as not to solely rely upon figures as proxies for oversight of growing businesses and to avoid excessive abstraction and detachment from frontline activities. ...
This article investigates possibilities for reflection when understood from within a world that is practically experienced rather than theoretically contemplated. Based on an analysis of space and time in Descartes, it suggests that prominent conceptions of reflection in management learning remain static and lifeless. Drawing on the work of Heidegger it introduces the metaphor of ‘walking around’ to suggest an alternative understanding of reflection which is sensitive to the worldly immersion and finitude of being and begins to outline implications for management learning.
... Indeed, recent studies suggest that managing knowledge properly leads to higher performance (Collins and Smith, 2006;Goll et al., 2007;Tanriverdi, 2005;Tanriverdi and Venkatraman, 2005;Thornhill, 2006). Consequently, one of the leadership tasks in the police precinct is to encourage the sharing of knowledge between organizational members (Lee et al., 2010;Politis, 2001;Srivastava et al., 2006) and thus effectively utilize existing knowledge (Sieloff, 1999). ...
The interplay between culture and leadership styles has been widely acknowledged in both academic research and practitioner-based literature. While it has been established that culture influences leadership styles, it is clear that other contextual factors also determine the appropriate leadership approach. The contingency theory of leadership posits that effective leadership behaviour is contingent on a number of contextual or situational factors, and yet there is little agreement on exactly how these factors influence leadership effectiveness (Lorsch, 2010). This study attempts to fill that void by analysing leadership as depicted in Italian author Andrea Camilleri’s Inspector Montalbano novel series. The main contingency factors herein identified are key organizational activities, cultural context, the source of leader influence and the leader–follower relationship. The empirical material consisted of 11 novels in which 803 leadership situations were identified and analysed. The findings add to our understanding of leadership as a contingent phenomenon by linking a contingency theory of leadership with leadership’s cultural context.
... Where introduced, communities of practice and of purpose are attributed with many benefits – keeping the organization's knowledge at the leading edge in the area of community focus, speeding up problem resolution , providing a sense of belonging to the organization, creating knowledge assets in their areas of interest Develop knowledge and lessons learnt systems for specific areas or as a core component of your portfolio of tools and techniques. Failure to learn from experience is, for senior managers, one of the most common stimuli to instigating an interest in knowledge management, 'If only HP knew what HP knows' (Sieloff, 1999) Help support and nurture a knowledge sharing environment for the survivors. In situations of redundancy, whatever the cause, survivors can feel threatened and guilty. ...
A knowledge rich or knowledge enabled organization is one in which knowledge flows — through creation, sharing, transfer and retention activities — seamlessly from the parts that have it, to the parts that need it. Any restriction or blockage to the flow of knowledge can cause partial or total failure of the organizational system. Equally, any restriction or blockage to the flow of knowledge within an organization’s supply chain, including its business partnerships and relationships with others, can cause a partial or total failure of the organizational environment in which it operates. Knowledge is the lifeblood of an organization and knowledge and information managers have a key role to play in keeping knowledge flowing, used and retained in their organizations. This role is particularly important during difficult economic times. The impact of budget cuts, office closures, voluntary and compulsory redundancies, falling demand and reductions in bank lending can each have unintended consequences, including acting as barriers — the restrictions or blockages — to the flow of knowledge. This article identifies some of these barriers and highlights the knowledge transfer and retention actions that knowledge and information managers should consider to avoid knowledge loss and keep knowledge flowing in their organizations during a downturn.
... A commonly reported complaint at Hewlett-Packard was " If only HP knew what HP knows, " reflecting the " growing gap between the potential and actual value of HP's collective intellectual assets . . . " [4]. This clearly demonstrates that large organizations face the challenge of keeping up with and organizing the volume of information that is produced, sent, received, and archived daily. ...
In today's information-driven economy, the ability to efficiently find, critically analyze, and intelligently use reliable information is a major factor, if not the key, to profit making. Ironically, however, overexposure to that critically valuable resource, information, leads to information overload and its detrimental effects.
... Echoing the famous HP quote "If only HP knew what HP knows…"(p. 47) [16], it is about providing the design team with a means to assess what they, or others in the company or virtual enterprise, might already know about a certain activity or artefact. ...
In aeronautics industry today, companies collaborate closely in virtual enterprises to develop products and solutions that are more integrated and more complex, and that aims to target larger responsibilities regarding the product life-cycle. On top of this, lead-time and development costs needs to be reduced.
The 7 Day Proposal (7DP) is the conceptual name of a framework wherein a customized proposal is produced by a virtual enterprise consortium within seven days from a received request for proposal. This is substantially shorter than what is current practice today and implies that new methods, tools and ways of working are needed. Today, in offer processes, time is lost because of insufficient, or immature, available information and knowledge at gate reviews when decisions are due, causing time consuming iterations.
The Gated Maturity Assessment (GMA) concept is intended to help reduce these costly iterations by targeting the ambiguity at these gate reviews in order to reduce the uncertainty in decision base.
Other frameworks using maturity include Technology Readiness Levels (TRL) and the Capability Maturity Model (CMM). TRL is an artefact-focused framework developed by NASA to assess space technology maturity. CMM is a process-focused framework for assessing organisations' software development process capability (maturity).
The GMA is a concept for assessing the maturity of the knowledge that goes into a gate review (i.e. a decision document). The GMA is intended to support decision makers by assuring confidence in these decision points and thereby reducing the number of iterations, hereby reducing lead-time and increases the quality of the process.
This paper reports on the development of the GMA concept from the 7DP use case, and also the development of a support tool intended for use in the 7DP process.
Essentially, the 7DP process is a stage-gate process like many corporate product development processes with a number of decision gates. Therefore there is a future wish to move towards an engineering design context with this concept.
The work is part of the 70 million € European project VIVACE where GMA is part of a Knowledge Enabled Engineering solution to the 7DP use case.
The first decade of the World Wide Web predominantly enforced a clear separation between designers and consumers. New technological developments, such as the participatory Web 2.0 architectures, have emerged to support social computing. These developments are the foundations for a fundamental shift from consumer cultures (specialized in producing finished goods) to cultures of participation (in which all people can participate actively in personally meaningful activities). End-user development and meta-design provide foundations for this fundamental transformation. They explore and support new approaches for the design, adoption, appropriation, adaptation, evolution, and sharing of artifacts by all participating stakeholders. They take into account that cultures of participation are not dictated by technology alone: they are the result of incremental shifts in human behavior and social organizations. The design, development, and assessment of five particular applications that contributed to the development of our theoretical framework are described and discussed.
Im Zuge der Digitalisierung stehen viele Unternehmen vor der Frage, wie sich das Innovations- und Wissensmanagement zielführend mit (Cloud-) Software unterstützen lässt. In diesem Beitrag stellen wir die bisherige Entwicklung der Cloud-basierten Innovationsplattform der KSB SE & Co. KGaA vor. Aus organisationaler Sicht können mit der Plattform vier miteinander eng verwobene Kernfunktionen bedient werden: 1. Globales Wissensmanagement, 2. Betriebliches Vorschlagswesen, 3. strategische Technologie- und Trendvorausschau und 4. Wettbewerbsanalyse. Diese vier, zum Teil sehr unterschiedlichen, Stoßrichtungen beeinflussen maßgeblich die Komplexität für Anwender und Administratoren. Auf der anderen Seite lassen sich gerade durch die Vernetzung der Informationen vorher unentdeckte Zusammenhänge offenlegen. Somit können unternehmensinterne Wissensbarrieren aufgebrochen und Potentiale für Innovationen identifiziert werden. Neben der erhöhten Komplexität der Plattform an für sich, lassen sich die Herausforderungen bei der Einführung und dem Betrieb des Online-Tools im Wesentlichen in drei Kategorien einteilen: 1. Herausforderungen, die mit der technischen Umsetzung und Konfiguration verbunden sind, 2. Herausforderungen, die sich auf den Betrieb und die inhaltliche Steuerung beziehen und 3. Herausforderungen, die sich um die Einbeziehung relevanter Akteure und Akzeptanz im Unternehmen drehen. Selbstverständlich bedingen sich diese Herausforderungen bei der Entwicklung der Plattform gegenseitig. In diesem Beitrag werden der aktuelle Implementierungsstand und praktische Hinweise bei der Einführung einer solchen Plattform präsentiert. Wir geben zudem einen Ausblick, der sich auf die Weiterentwicklung in Richtung Open Innovation Plattform und globaler Rollout-Strategie, bezieht.
Purpose
This paper responds to a recent trend towards reifying “knowledge hoarding” for purposes of quantitative/deductive research, via a study of information technology (IT) service professionals. A “rhetorical theory” lens is applied to reconsider “knowledge hoarding” as a value-laden rhetoric that directs managers towards addressing assumed worker dysfunctionality.
Design/methodology/approach
A qualitative study of practicing IT service professionals (assumed within IT service management “best practice” to be inclined to hoard knowledge) was conducted over a 34-day period. Twenty workers were closely observed processing IT service incidents, and 26 workers were interviewed about knowledge-sharing practices.
Findings
The study found that IT service practice is characterized more by pro-social collegiality in sharing knowledge/know-how than by self-interested strategic knowledge concealment.
Research limitations/implications
The study concerns a single occupational context. The study indicates that deductive research that reifies “knowledge hoarding” as a naturally occurring phenomenon is flawed, with clear implications for future research.
Practical implications
The study suggests that management concern for productivity might be redirected away from addressing assumed knowledge-hoarding behaviour and towards encouraging knowledge sharing via social interaction in the workplace.
Originality/value
Previous studies have not directly examined the concept of knowledge hoarding using qualitative methods, nor have they considered it as a rhetorical device.
A dramatic growth in organizational knowledge over the past few decades has made the problem of developing appropriate structures for capturing and storing knowledge in organizations especially salient. Concomitant with this growth in organizational knowledge and increased need for knowledge structuring, intensifying competition and high rates of technological obsolescence have created a need for greater and faster innovation in many industries. Addressing the challenges posed by these two problems, of structuring knowledge and managing it for innovation, are key tasks for organization theorists in the knowledge economy. This chapter surveys and structures the emergent literature in these domains, and thus cumulates the understanding of the relationship between knowledge structures and innovation. The concept of an organizational knowledge-base as a key organizing construct is used. The literature has used the term knowledge structure to represent three quite distinct components of organizational knowledge: the cognitive templates used by management, the content knowledge of the organization, and the transactive systems used by an organization to organize its knowledge. The term organizational knowledge-base is used as an abstraction to capture the aggregative entity that includes these three components. The chapter identifies six primary dimensions along which organizational knowledge-bases differ: size, content, veridicality, degree of differentiation, degree of integration, and embeddedness. Three common mechanisms are identified by which organizations search for innovations, recombinant, cognitive, and experiential search and the implications of the knowledge-base dimensions is examined in the context of these mechanisms.
Over the last century and half, US industry has seen the emergence of several different management models, but we still understand little about the factors that drove their evolution. We propose a theory of this evolution based on three nested and interacting processes. First, we identify several successive waves of technological revolution, each of which prompted a corresponding wave of change in the dominant organizational paradigm. Second, nested within these waves, each of these organizational paradigms emerged through two successive cycles—a primary cycle which generated a new management model that obsoleted the prior organizational paradigm, and a secondary cycle which generated another model that mitigated the dysfunctions of the primary cycle's model. Third, nested within each of these cycles, we identify a problem-solving process in which the development of each model passed through four main phases during which various related management concepts competed for dominance.
This chapter provides a practical perspective of knowledge cartography by drawing on an approach that has been developed and refined through the lead author’s experiences in facilitating workshops in diverse professional domains. The discussion focuses on the importance of developing a feel for conversational patterns and for understanding the kinds of questions that enable insights to emerge from dialogue, leading to an emergent design approach that combines the methods of knowledge cartography with other facilitation and problem solving techniques in a “fit-for-situation” manner.
The process of knowledge objectification entails several advantages in terms of capitalising the owned knowledge, facilitating its localisation, retrieval and reuse, establishing a common cognitive base and so on. However, the management of knowledge objects is far from simple, especially in the case of large organisations with an extensive and dispersed production of knowledge objects. In principle, this issue seems to have a simple solution, that is, merging the various cognitive bases in a single one. In practice this raises several questions, both on the technical-cognitive and the organisational side. The paper deals with this topic, by discussing the case of Ernst & Young that three years ago started a project aimed at developing a global knowledge platform. In particular, it intends to identify and discuss the main problems (and possible solutions) raised by the management of large amounts of knowledge objects scattered in different parts of the organisation. In addition, it aims to show how a codification, technology-based approach to knowledge management cannot be successfully pursued without taking into account the relevant social and organisational aspects.
The goal of Knowledge Management (KM) is a practical one: to improve organizational capabilities through better use of the organization's individual and collective knowledge resources. Astonishingly, despite the now-solid consensus on the importance of knowledge or intellectual capital to every organization's success, most organizations actually manage knowledge very badly. Very few have clearly defined management roles, such as Chief Knowledge Officer (CKO), or organizational structures for the management of knowledge as a resource. Thus, the paramount protection of knowledge is not the type of knowledge itself, but the human element of the knowledge worker within knowledge management. In so doing, this chapter covers the human element of the Knowledge Worker (KW), the Learning Organization (LO) (organizations that are good at Organizational Learning [OL]), the history and meaning of knowledge, types of knowledge, and concludes with the protection of the human element of the KW.
Background: Despite an increase in the number of patients who use the Internet for health information, little is known about the effects of that searching on the doctor-patient relationship. Objective: To review the effects of patients' online searching on various aspects of their interactions with their doctor. Methods: We searched MEDLINE to find articles in the English language that contained pertinent data about patient Internet use and its effect on the doctor-patient relationship. After examining 697 articles that matched our search criteria, three investigators reviewed 71 candidate articles, of which thirty-three were selected for this review. The data extracted from these articles were grouped into four common themes: the Internet as a source of medical information; the use of Internet-acquired information during the clinic visit; the perception of health information on the Internet; and the impact of the Internet on the doctor-patient relationship. Results: The Internet has not replaced physicians as the primary source of medical or health information for patients. Patients do, however, trust the Internet as an additional information source and would like their physicians to recommend specific websites. Although some patients brought Internet-acquired information to their clinic visit, this is not a frequent occurrence. Patients report that the Internet decreases anxiety, improves understanding and communication, and has a positive overall effect on the doctor-patient relationship. Doctors generally agree with patients' responses, but are more likely to cite concerns about the accuracy of Internet information and how it may influence trust in the relationship. However, for the majority of patients and doctors, the Internet still has little effect on their relationship. Conclusions: The Internet appears to have a generally positive impact on the doctor-patient interaction and relationship, yet negative effects are also reported. Future research should include observational and experimental methods, to supplement existing studies that have largely relied upon survey methods.
This chapter examines knowledge and innovation as invaluable factors affecting the longevity of large organizations. It presents the history and evolution of the concepts of knowledge and learning within organizations to provide grounds for establishing crucial factors affecting the development and maintenance of competitive advantage for large contemporary organizations. Thus the purpose of this chapter is to address the evolution of knowledge management, the meaning and purpose of knowledge management, and the organizational structure that supports such knowledge.
When does democracy work well, and why? Is democracy the best form of government? These questions are of supreme importance today as the United States seeks to promote its democratic values abroad.Democracy and Knowledgeis the first book to look to ancient Athens to explain how and why directly democratic government by the people produces wealth, power, and security. Combining a history of Athens with contemporary theories of collective action and rational choice developed by economists and political scientists, Josiah Ober examines Athenian democracy's unique contribution to the ancient Greek city-state's remarkable success, and demonstrates the valuable lessons Athenian political practices hold for us today. He argues that the key to Athens's success lay in how the city-state managed and organized the aggregation and distribution of knowledge among its citizens. Ober explores the institutional contexts of democratic knowledge management, including the use of social networks for collecting information, publicity for building common knowledge, and open access for lowering transaction costs. He explains why a government's attempt to dam the flow of information makes democracy stumble. Democratic participation and deliberation consume state resources and social energy. Yet as Ober shows, the benefits of a well designed democracy far outweigh its costs. Understanding how democracy can lead to prosperity and security is among the most pressing political challenges of modern times.Democracy and Knowledgereveals how ancient Greek politics can help us transcend the democratic dilemmas that confront the world today.
Quality care of patients requires evaluating large amounts of data at the right time and place and in the correct context. With the advent of electronic health records, data warehouses now provide information at the point of care and facilitate a continuous learning environment in which lessons learned can provide updates to clinical, administrative, and financial processes. Given the advancement of the information tools and techniques of today's knowledge economy, utilizing these resources are imperative for effective healthcare. Thus, the principles of Knowledge Management (KM) are now essential for quality healthcare management. The Healthcare Knowledge Management Primer explores and explains essential KM principles in healthcare settings in an introductory and easy to understand fashion. This concise book is ideal for both students and professionals who need to learn more about key aspects of the KM field as it pertains to effecting superior healthcare delivery. It provides readers with an understanding of approaches to KM by examining the purpose and nature of its key components and demystifies the KM field by explaining in an accessible manner the key concepts of KM tools, strategies and techniques, and their benefits to contemporary healthcare organizations. © 2009 Nilmini Wickramasinghe, Rajeev K. Bali, Brian Lehaney, Jonathan L. Schaffer, M. Chris Gibbons. All rights reserved.
Following the information boom that propelled the world into the 21 st century, it has become crucial for global organisations to have the ability to convert all precious data to useful knowledge. As a company’s tangible assets gradually become far less valuable than its intangible assets, it is essential to learn how to efficiently manage this knowledge. This study analyses how the basic elements of knowledge management are linked to the development of an organisation’s competitive edge. It also looks at the level of knowledge management adoption across Asia as compared to the West. Through online research, literature reviews and interviews, this paper presents a series of case studies on knowledge management implementation at various global organisations.
Educational systems are responsible for sociability and prepare new generations for playing the role of citizenship in the local, national and global community. The basic question is how the new generation would be ready for the role of citizenship and which education approach can lead to it in knowledge age. This paper through review of litreture and previous studies has been discussed the dimensions of professional citizenship education considering the knowledge management principles towards promoting social, human and intellectual capitals in educational system in Iran. (C) 2011 Published by Elsevier Ltd. Selection and/or peer-review under responsibility of Dr Zafer Bekirogullari.
A transformation has gradually been taking place in health-related research over the last twenty-five years. The synergistic interaction between information technology (IT), biomedical knowledge and genetic engineering revolutions has led to an information explosion in the healthcare field and irrevocable changes in the very nature of healthcare processes. In the light of these challenges, the objective of this paper is to examine the feasibility of incorporating the Knowledge Management (KM) paradigm in healthcare.
This chapter will examine why contemporary pervasive tools and technologies in conjunction with established knowledge management methods are vital to crisis scenarios. We discuss how such technologies can be used as an effective mechanism to transfer often complex information in as efficient a manner as possible. Three case studies are presented, followed by a discussion, which illustrate the challenges faced during different crises situations and how the use of technologies can make a difference in those contexts.
In order to manage knowledge, we need to understand the nature of knowledge in organisations. It is helpful to distinguish between three categories of organisational knowledge: tacit knowledge, explicit knowledge, and cultural knowledge. Tacit knowledge is personal knowledge, explicit knowledge is codified knowledge, and cultural knowledge is based on shared beliefs. We use this framework to discuss the role of the information professional with respect to each category of knowledge. Knowledge management initiatives led by information professionals in three organisations are then examined. An analysis of these experiences suggests many opportunities for information professionals to make important contributions in managing an organisation’s knowledge for growth and innovation.
This paper reflects on experiences when traditional IT approaches were used to design large IT systems and ended in failure. The main reflections focus on the reasons for system failure and how they relate to the diversity of knowledge, managing knowledge, and the understanding gaps that may exist between the business and the system developers. The study reveals that the understanding gaps mainly result from lack of knowledge of business operations on the developer side, matched by lack of technical appreciation and knowledge on the user side. To help address the knowledge-gap problem, a practical approach employing soft-systems, diagramming and set mapping techniques is proposed and described.
ResearchGate has not been able to resolve any references for this publication.