Phenomenological Turbulence and Innovation in Knowledge Systems

Most considerations of knowledge management focus on corporations and, until recently, considered knowledge to be objective, stable, and asocial. In this paper we wish to move the focus away from corporations, and examine knowledge and national innovation systems. We argue that the knowledge systems in which innovation takes place are phenomenologically turbulent, a state not made explicit in the change, innovation and socio-economic studies of knowledge literature, and that this omission poses a serious limitation to the successful analysis of innovation and knowledge systems. To address this lack we suggest that three evolutionary processes must be considered: self-referencing, self-transformation and self-organisation. These processes, acting simultaneously, enable system cohesion, radical innovation and adaptation. More specifically, we argue that in knowledge-based economies the high levels of phenomenological turbulence drives these processes. Finally, we spell out important policy principles that derive from these processes.     

The Drive to Codify: Implications for the Knowledge-based Economy

This paper critically explores the forces driving the codification of knowledge, together with the implications of codification for the evolution of the knowledge-based economy. It is argued that tacit knowledge is neglected in the drive to codify with important consequences for the process of knowledge creation and innovation. The drive to codify knowledge is briefly considered in the context of higher education and then through the practice of knowledge management within firms. The paper is exploratory in nature and seeks to outline policy concerns and directions for further research.     

Knowledge maps: A systematic literature review and directions for future research

ContextNowadays the concept of knowledge mapping has attracted increased attention from scientists in a variety of academic disciplines and professional practice areas. Among the most important attributes of a knowledge map is its ability to increase communication and share common practices across an entire organisation. However, despite being a promising area for research, the knowledge maps community lacks a widespread understanding of the current state of the art.ObjectiveThe objective of this article is to explore the world of knowledge mapping by reviewing and analysing the current state of research and providing an overview of knowledge mapping’s concepts, benefits, techniques, classifications and methodologies, which are precisely reviewed, and their features are highlighted. In addition, we offer directions for future research.MethodBased on the systematic literature review method this study collects, synthesises, and analyses numerous articles on a variety of topics closely related to a knowledge map published from January 2000 to December 2013 on six electronic databases by following a pre-defined review protocol. The articles have been retrieved through a combination of automatic and manual search, hence extensive quantitative and qualitative results of the research are provided.ResultsFrom the review study, we identified 132 articles addressing knowledge maps that have been reviewed in order to extract relevant information on a set of research questions. We found a generally increasing level of activity during this 5-year period. We noted that while existing research covers a large number of studies on some disciplines, such as systems and tools development, it contains very few studies on other disciplines, such as knowledge maps adoption. To aid this situation, we offer directions for future research.ConclusionsThe results demonstrated that a knowledge map is an imperative strategy for increasing organisations’ effectiveness. In addition, there is a need for more knowledge maps research.     

Latecomer firms and the emergence and development of knowledge networks: The case of Petrobras in Brazil

This paper addresses the emergence and development of firm-centred knowledge networks within learning and innovation systems in late-industrialising countries. A key contribution of the paper is conceptual and methodological: the development of an original typology of knowledge network properties to trace out changes in the form of networks as they evolve over time. A second contribution consists in providing an example of the application of the typology by examining the emergence and development of a firm-centred knowledge network in the case of Petrobras, the Brazilian oil company over more than 30 years between the late 1960s and the early 2000s. This demonstrates that the properties of Petrobras’ knowledge networks continuously evolved through a succession of stages towards (i) increasing intentionality in the management decision-making underlying network development, (ii) growing complexity and diversity in selected cognitive characteristics, and (iii) greater complementarity in the division of innovative labour between Petrobras and its network partners. These original results from applying the typology, in conjunction with retrospective historical methods, illustrate only one aspect of its potential value in the analysis of knowledge networks in late-industrialising economies: tracking out organisational evolution over long periods of time. Others include the comparative examination of network differences across different circumstances and the analysis of relationships between changes/differences in network properties and other characteristics of learning/innovation systems and their contexts.     

The case of EAI facilitating knowledge management integration in local government domain

Information Technology (IT) infrastructure integration and knowledge management (KM) share communal objectives e.g. to transform organisations into more effective and efficient, agile and innovative, and more responsive to market changes. Such an association when assimilates bona fide knowledge management philosophy, it offers the IT departments a headship opportunity for organisational transformation in correlation with the rest of the organisation. Despite more than a decade of active research and practice in this complex problem area, advocates still perceive that Local Government Authorities (LGAs) lack integrated IT infrastructures that have resulted in the generation of data inconsistencies and redundancies, inefficient knowledge exchange and reduction in service quality and delivery. In the recent years, several LGAs have implemented Enterprise Application Integration (EAI) solutions to integrate their IT infrastructure. However, on analysing the relevant research studies, it is noticeable that application of EAI has been practiced at a larger scale in the private domain but to limited scale in the public domain. The shortage of such research studies presents a knowledge gap that needs to be endorsed. This research adapts a Revised Model for Integration Layers (REAL). By adapting to this model, it is exemplified that EAI achieves integration at five layers namely: connectivity, transportation, transformation, process integration and knowledge integration. The methodology for validating this model included a qualitative analysis of data gathered from formal interviews, observations and archive documents guided by initial conceptual observations from the literature. The findings indicate that cases leading to data inconsistencies and replication can be prevented by integrating knowledge through EAI.     

Knowledge bases and regional innovation systems: Comparing Nordic clusters

The analysis of the importance of different types of regional innovation systems must take place within a context of the actual knowledge base of various industries in the economy, as the innovation processes of firms are strongly shaped by their specific knowledge base. In this paper, we shall distinguish between two types of knowledge base: analytical and synthetic. These types indicate different mixes of tacit and codified knowledge, codification possibilities and limits, qualifications and skills, required organisations and institutions involved, as well as specific competitive challenges from a globalising economy, which have different implications for different sectors of industry, and, thus, for the kind of innovation support needed. The traditional constellation of industrial clusters surrounded by innovation supporting organisations, constituting a regional innovation system, is nearly always to be found in contexts of industries with a synthetic knowledge base (e.g. engineering-based industries), while the existence of regional innovation systems as an integral part of a cluster will normally be the case of industries-based on an analytical knowledge base (e.g. science-based industries, such as IT and bio-tech). In the discussion of different types of regional innovation systems five empirical illustrations from a Nordic comparative project on SMEs and regional innovation systems will be used: the furniture industry in Salling, Denmark; the wireless communication industry in North Jutland, Denmark; the functional food industry in Scania, Sweden; the food industry in Rogaland, Norway and the electronics industry in Horten, Norway. We argue that in terms of innovation policy the regional level often provides a grounded approach embedded in networks of actors acknowledging the importance of the knowledge base of an industry.     

现代企业知识管理系统建设研究

文章简述了知识管理系统的内涵。构建了企业知识管理系统的模式．分析了知识管理系统与企业信息系统的关系，提出了企业实现知识管理系统的思路。     

A systematic examination of knowledge loss in open source software projects

Context Open Source Software (OSS) development is a knowledge focused activity which relies heavily on contributors who can be volunteers or paid workers and are geographically distributed. While working on OSS projects contributors acquire project related individualistic knowledge and gain experience and skills, which often remains unshared with others and is usually lost once contributors leave a project. All software development organisations face the problem of knowledge loss as employees leave, but this situation is exasperated in OSS projects where most contributors are volunteers with largely unpredictable engagement durations. Contributor turnover is inevitable due to the transient nature of OSS project workforces causing knowledge loss, which threatens the overall sustainability of OSS projects and impacts negatively on software quality and contributor productivity.ObjectiveThe objective of this work is to deeply and systematically investigate the phenomenon of knowledge loss due to contributor turnover in OSS projects as presented in the state-of-the-art literature and to synthesise the information presented on the topic. Furthermore, based on the learning arising from our investigation it is our intention to identify mechanisms to reduce the overall effects of knowledge loss in OSS projects.MethodologyWe use the snowballing methodology to identify the relevant literature on knowledge loss due to contributor turnover in OSS projects. This robust methodology for a literature review includes research question, search strategy, inclusion, exclusion, quality criteria, and data synthesis. The search strategy, and inclusion, exclusions and quality criteria are applied as a part of snowballing procedure.Snowballing is considered an efficient and reliable way to conduct a systematic literature review, providing a robust alternative to mechanically searching individual databases for given topics.ResultKnowledge sharing in OSS projects is abundant but there is no evidence of a formal strategy or practice to manage knowledge. Due to the dynamic and diverse nature of OSS projects, knowledge management is considered a challenging task and there is a need for a proactive mechanism to share knowledge in the OSS community for knowledge to be reused in the future by the OSS project contributors. From the collection of papers found using snowballing, we consolidated various themes on knowledge loss due to contributor turnover in OSS projects and identified 11 impacts due to knowledge loss in OSS projects, and 10 mitigations to manage with knowledge loss in OSS projects.ConclusionIn this paper, we propose future research directions to investigate integration of proactive knowledge retention practices with the existing OSS practices to reduce the current knowledge loss problem. We suggest that there is insufficient attention paid to KM in general in OSS, in particular there would appear to an absence of proactive measures to reduce the potential impact of knowledge loss. We also propose the need for a KM evaluation metric in OSS projects, similar to the ones that evaluate health of online communities, which should help to inform potential consumers of the OSS of the KM status on a project, something that is not existent today.     

Ireland’s National Innovation System: An Exploratory Study of Supporting Institutions and Dynamic Actors

Abstract

This paper begins with a brief look at the literature on national innovation systems (NIS). Building on the NIS approach, we present a simple conceptual framework. National innovative competence is dependent on the presence of dynamic STI actors, operating within the confines of compatible institutions. We distinguish the roles played by different STI actors and argue that heterogeneous actors engage in innovation for different reasons. Collaborative innovation is not always a natural consequence of engagement in innovation but is characterised by a distinct set of considerations. The latter part of the paper is concerned with the application of this conceptual framework to the case of Ireland. We identify the institutions pertaining to Ireland’s current innovative performance. An outline of STI actors according to their role in the system is then presented. In turn we outline the various contributions of Irish STI actors and explore their motives for engaging in innovation and collaborative innovation.     

The 'Self-service' Student: Building Enterprise-wide Systems into Universities 1

This article investigates the take-up by universities of enterprise-wide computer systems and the development of a new module for the management and administration of students. Having its origins in Electronic Commerce, the system assumes the existence of a certain kind of user, one with particular roles and responsibilities--Aa self-service user. The notion of 'self-service' is deployed as an integral part of the system rollout where students are to view, input and modify administrative and financial information on themselves and their courses. Drawing from the sociology of science and technology, and material from a 3-year ethnographic study, we describe the system's implementation in a British university. While accepting of the need for an ERP system the campus community reject self-service. However, as we will show, because Campus Management is a 'global product' unwanted functionality can be difficult to resist outright and this can have important implications for the autonomy of the university and the reshaping of fundamental principles and relationships.     

Impact of knowledge incentive mechanisms on individual knowledge creation behavior—An empirical study for Taiwanese R&D professionals

Knowledge incentive mechanisms are a new development in the management of knowledge. The most prevalent perspective presented in the available literature is that the knowledge incentive mechanisms must have the ability to manage the flow of business knowledge. This study explores the relationship among knowledge incentive mechanisms, knowledge psychological ownership, and individual knowledge creation behavior. This study uses structural equation modeling to test a sample of R&D professionals from high-tech companies in Taiwan. Data analysis suggests that knowledge incentive mechanisms promote the psychological ownership by the knowledge owner so that he or she actively carries out knowledge innovation. This implies that knowledge incentive mechanisms stress private proprietary characteristics employees who possess real ownership when they innovate will deem such innovation as an extension of self, giving rise to a protective or defensive mindset, which then has an impact on individual knowledge creation behaviors because of the psychological ownership of knowledge.     

Business services as actors of knowledge transformation: the role of KIBS in regional and national innovation systems

Over the last years, there has been a significant increase in the attention paid to the activities of knowledge-intensive business services (KIBS). KIBS produce and diffuse knowledge, which is crucial for innovation processes. The paper gives an overview of the role and function of KIBS in innovation systems and their knowledge production, transformation and diffusion activities. Focusing on innovation interactions between manufacturing small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and KIBS, the empirical analyses grasps KIBS position in five regional contexts. The analysis leads to the conclusion that innovation activities link SMEs and KIBS through the process of knowledge generation and diffusion.     

Knowledge and Cooperation for Regional Development: The Effect of Provincial and Federal Policy Initiatives in Canada and Australia 1

Abstract

This paper examines how federal systems of government in Canada and Australia deal with the challenges of promoting regional innovation and knowledge‐based industries. It focuses on selected cases of federal and regional (provincial or municipally based) policy initiatives and structures that support cross‐sector collaboration between ‘knowledge institutions’ (such as universities) and locally based industries. The study reveals both anticipated commonalities in and unexpected differences between the Canadian and Australian innovation environments and policy approaches. Federalism, resource‐based economies and sparse population have led to similar concerns and solutions. However, building local innovation systems and networks is a question of building on social capital and Canada seems rather more inventive and effective than Australia in turning social capital into sustainable organisations. Several regions of Canada have developed very strong community involvement in networks and institutions for improving technological skills, awareness and programmes—examples which provide valuable lessons for Australia.     

Knowledge economy measurement: Methods, results and insights from the Malaysian Knowledge Content Study

Building on a conceptual model of knowledge content, we discuss the methodology and results of a project to develop sectoral knowledge content measures in Malaysia. Through a survey of over 1800 Malaysian firms in 18 manufacturing and services industries, levels of knowledge content are assessed by sector. Industries vary in their emphasis on specific knowledge content components. Positive associations between technological innovation and at least one knowledge content variable are evident across all but four industries, although generally the results suggest that knowledge-based innovation is modest in Malaysia. Further insights and opportunities for policy from tracking knowledge content are considered.     

企业协同知识创新中的知识共享研究

企业协同知识创新是企业提高动态能力和获取持续竞争优势的重要途径,而知识共享则是协同知识创新活动开展的前提和基础,也是其成败的关键。在分析国内外相关研究成果的基础上,探讨了协同知识创新中知识共享的特征、影响因素及主要问题,结合协同管理理论和知识治理理论分析、探讨了知识共享的过程及其治理机制,进而构建企业协同知识创新的知识共享体系。     

我国区域创新系统内知识存量投入产出效率测度

本文通过应用DEA模型对我国30个区域创新系统内知识存量投入产出效率进行了测算,其结果显示我国区域创新系统内知识存量投入产出效率除部分地区外整体偏低,区域内知识资源投入产出要素的规模效率普遍呈现递减趋势.     

Communication Gone Wired: Working Toward a "Practiced" Cyberfeminism

Abstract

Numerous environmental forces exist today that contribute to changing industry and market segments. The least studied of these is the impact of information systems which transcend traditional company boundaries. One of the subtle impacts of contemporary developments in information systems technology is the redefinition of traditional organizational and industrial boundaries. Examples of these interorganizational systems (referred to as IOS), reviewed by the author, imply that a wide range of organizations may have an opportunity to use these systems to improve their operations, services to their customers, and their competitive position.

Some of these systems raise public policy issues that are not well understood, nor are they being addressed in a comprehensive manner. This article is designed to provide a conceptual framework for thinking about these systems.     

资源系统工程的研究与应用

本文从资源定义出发,提出资源系统是指在一定区域内能够产生经济价值的、以提高人类当前和将来福利因素和条件的复杂系统。资源系统工程是对资源系统进行合理规划、设计和运行管理的一门交叉学科。研究分析认为：资源系统工程的理论基础是系统工程理论、系统工程技术和资源科学,研究的主要内容为资源系统规律、资源开发利用、资源协调控制,并初步确定了资源系统工程研究的方法论和学科体系。文章最后指出资源生态学、资源信息学的研究、资源系统定量分析,以及现代工程技术和方法的采用是资源系统工程研究的重点方向。资源系统工程是一门正在孕育发展中的学科,有待进一步去探索。     

The impact of knowledge stickiness on knowledge transfer implementation,internalization, and satisfaction for multinational corporations

Improving the effectiveness of knowledge transfer from a parent firm to its subsidiary is one of the most critical issues confronting management at multinational companies (MNC). Since knowledge tends to be sticky and difficult to transfer, the success of knowledge transfer is contingent not only upon various kinds of contextual variables, but also upon the process of knowledge transfer implementation and internalization. Previous studies did not consider the process of implementation and internalization variables, and failed to provide a more comprehensive research framework for MNC knowledge transfer. This study attempts to assess the impact of knowledge stickiness on knowledge transfer implementation and internalization, as well as the performance of headquarter–subsidiary knowledge transfer. Results of this study suggest that an increase in knowledge stickiness may have a positive and significant influence on knowledge implementation, internalization, and knowledge transfer satisfaction. However, increases in knowledge stickiness beyond a certain point can also deter the success of transferring knowledge. Results also suggest a significant relationship between knowledge transfer implementation and internalization, innovation and satisfaction, and between knowledge innovation and knowledge transfer satisfaction.