A sensemaking model of knowledge in organisations: a way of understanding knowledge management and the role of information technologies

The objective of the paper is to demonstrate how a sensemaking model of knowledge enables better and deeper understanding of knowledge management (KM) processes in organisations and the role of information technologies (IT) in these processes. Inspired and informed by a sensemaking view of organisations, the model identifies four types of knowledge, corresponding to four sensemaking levels: the individual, collective, organizational, and cultural. Each knowledge type, as the paper shows, is of different nature and has different characteristics but is constituted and affected by all other knowledge types. An organisation is thus seen as a ‘distributed knowledge system’ composed of numerous instances of these four knowledge types and their dynamic interplay. By drawing from three empirical studies, the paper illustrates how the sensemaking model of knowledge can be applied to investigate different ways companies (try to) manage knowledge and use IT-based systems to improve KM and ultimately company performance. A deeper understanding of these processes through the lens of the model reveals mechanisms and forces underlying KM phenomena that help explain why some processes were successful and others failed. The paper intends to make the following contributions: propose a theoretical framework of knowledge and KM in organizations, which is reasonably comprehensive and empirically grounded and also demonstrate its relevance and usefulness to both researchers and practitioners as they investigate and make sense of specific KM processes and IT applications in practice.     

Configuring collective digital-technology usage in dynamic and complex design practices

Digital-technology usage in dynamic and complex work practices is a core phenomenon in innovation research. There are, however, few detailed analyses of how people organize the use of digital tools in their work practices. We aim to offer more insight into how individual actors use digital technology, how these actors organize its use in collectives, and how they organize their work with that of other actors in order to realize collective-level goals. We implemented a qualitative research design, based on interviews in architectural firms complemented with observations and archival data. By analyzing interactions of multiple individual actors with digital technology, we found that actors organize usage in collectives through activities that we call configuring-in-use and reflecting; and that they combine these two organizational activities in order to realize collective-level goals. We identify the combination of these organizational activities as configurational usage. We contribute to literature on the usage of pervasive digital technology by providing a detailed empirical investigation of organized usage of digital technology. Furthermore, we refine the conceptualization of configurational usage, improving understanding of core processes of digital innovation.     

Science and technology studies: Exploring the knowledge base

Science and Technology Studies (STS) is one of a number of new research fields to emerge over the last four or five decades. This paper attempts to identify its core academic contributions from the perspective of the authors of chapters in authoritative ‘handbooks’ and the references they cite. Besides identifying the most prominent publications, institutions and authors, we examine whether the core contributions can be broken down into identifiable clusters. The study also analyses the impact of these contributions by exploring the research fields, journals, and geographical location of the researchers that have cited the STS core contributions in their own work. Together, these analyses reveal a number of phases in the development of STS with periods of convergence and divergence of the field, including the gradual separation of quantitative studies of science and technology from the main body of STS. The paper ends with some conclusions about the evolution of STS, such as the role of ‘institution builders’ in developing new research fields and the structures required to hold them together.     

Paleontological Research in China:Retrospect and Prospect

For the last decade, paleontological research in China has been in the spotlight. Many new discoveries fascinated colleagues worldwide. Not only did a host of research papers appear in the prestigious journals both at home and abroad, but they also caused frequent media frenzies. Paleontology, used to be a Cinderella, is now in the glass shoes. Since 1986 and particularly in the last decade, 56 paleontological papers, either solely contributed or co-authored by Chinese scholars, have been published in "Nature" (39) and "Science"(17).     

The effects of global knowledge reservoirs on the productivity of multinational enterprises: The role of international depth and breadth

This study rests upon the premise that differences in the productivity performance of multinational enterprises (MNEs) stem from variations in their ability to access and combine globally distributed knowledge reservoirs within one organization. Its contribution lies in demonstrating that this important source of variation is determined by (a) the idiosyncratic manner in which the MNE's network of subsidiaries is structured, (b) the international breadth and depth of this network and (c) its location choices in the global landscape. We find that when multinationals spread their operations across many geographical markets, they benefit from knowledge externalities more than when they concentrate their activities in few countries. We further show that the ability to exploit spatially distant knowledge depends not only on idiosyncrasies specific to the MNE, but also on exogenous forces associated with international variations in appropriability regimes and industry-specific technological opportunities. As our study considers how the subsidiaries of the MNE collectively influence the productivity of the entire group, it captures complementarities and synergies within the group, and deepens understanding of how MNE-specific and location bound factors jointly shape performance outcomes.     

Mapping the mix: Linking instruments,settings and target groups in the study of policy mixes

This article proposes the extension of a conceptual framework aimed at analysing policy mixes and their outcomes and demonstrates its value added for the study of sustainability transitions. The argument is that policy mixes research should not focus only on the form of policy instruments, but also on their implementation context. Policy mix form designates the specific policy instruments that are involved according to a policy strategy. Policy mix context includes the specific setting where each policy measure is implemented, such as enterprise or family. It also includes the specific target group of each measure, such as youth or smokers. We apply this conceptual framework to the policy concept and implementation of tobacco control policies in Switzerland, which are an exemplary case for analysing transitions as they are geared towards behavioural change. In a mixed method approach, we triangulate different sets of quantitative and qualitative indicators in order to assess the implementation of eleven subnational policy mixes. Our findings show that taking into account the moderating role of settings between policy instruments and target groups allows for a more in depth analysis of policy processes. Observing the interactions between the four elements policy instruments, policy strategy, the implementation settings and the target groups allows capturing the complexity of policy mixes, at the crossroads of policy design, policy implementation and policy outcomes. Taking implementation settings and target groups into account in the analysis of policy mixes allows for a refined understanding of policy compliance and thus, from a broader perspective, of sustainability transitions.     

现代教育研究范式的历史转换及其价值取向

现代教育研究范式走过了定性研究、定量研究、定性研究和定量研究相结合三个阶段,现代教育研究的历史即是定性和定量两种范式之间对立、转换和结合的运动景观。其中表露了它们各自不同的价值取向及相应的社会要求。     

How does co-authoring with a star affect scientists' productivity? Evidence from small open economies

There is increasing policy interest in the recruitment and integration of star scientists as a mechanism to catalyse research productivity. We use rich data for three Small Open Economies (Ireland, Denmark, and New Zealand) on publications, citations and co-authorships to examine how co-authorship with a co-located star scientist affects the co-author's productivity, both including and excluding the output directly co-authored with the star. The latter effect provides a measure of the extent to which star collaborations crowd out/in other output. Event-study analyses reveal that star co-authorships are associated with economically and statistically significant increases in co-authors' output (measured by field-normalized total citations). Output in the three years after the initial star co-authorship is increased by 89.6 % when star co-authored publications are included and by 16.2 % when they are excluded. The results are robust to using an alternative measure of quality-adjusted output based on journal publication quality. We find co-authoring with a star increases the quality but not quantity of output when star co-authored publications are excluded. We explore heterogeneity by period, field and whether the authors have multiple star co-authorships. We conclude that policymakers' and institutions' efforts to promote access to star scientists may have substantial direct and indirect effects on the productivity of incumbent scientists within departments.     

Pioneering and continuing contributions to the semiconductor industry. The Franklin Institute's 2002 Bower Award for business leadership presented to Gordon E. Moore

Gordon Moore was honored for his pioneering role and continuing contributions to the semiconductor industry, and for his generous commitment to community service. Moore's technical and entrepreneurial leadership as founder of Intel is characterized by the sorts of innovations that have led to enhanced microprocessor speed, miniaturization and reduced cost, which have transformed the modern world.     

从国际科技合著论文状况看中国环境领域国际科技合作态势

环境领域是我国十一五期间重点强调的国际科技合作关键领域之一,该领域产出的国际合著论文是国际科技合作实施状况的一种重要反映。本文以美国科学引文索引数据库扩展版数据库(SC I-EXPANDED)收录的、中国2005-2009年在环境研究领域发表的国际合著论文为研究对象,通过对论文的生产能力、地域分布、机构分布、研究热点分布、发表期刊分布等方面的计量分析,系统地揭示了5年来我国在环境领域所开展的国际科技合作的整体表现以及国际科技合作网络的基本特征。     

图书情报学领域高产研究机构的合作网络指标分析

[目的/意义]当前有关论文合著的研究大多以主题或学科为研究对象,很少从整个研究机构的角度去探讨各个机构之间的学术合著情况。[方法/过程]本研究选取2007-2016年在Web of Science发表的图书情报学方面的期刊文章,利用书目计量及社会网络分析两种工具,对其论文合著情况进行分析。[结果/结论]研究显示M大学在图书情报学领域的学术合著已经成为普遍趋势,同时论文合著活跃度分别与学术生产力和学术影响力轻度正相关。本文的研究结果为后续研究机构分析学术研究网络提供参考。     

Universities and industrially relevant science: Towards measurement models and indicators of entrepreneurial orientation

Which university departments engaged in industrially relevant science are likely candidates to become entrepreneurial? At present, there are neither measurement models nor leading indicators that can answer such questions at an international comparative level. This paper introduces concepts, theory, and a measurement model for identifying (the early stages of) a university's enterpreneurial orientation within a quantitative analytical framework. This approach focuses specifically on university–industry interactions, in which the connectivity between academic science and industrial research is captured and measured empirically in terms of (1) public–private co-authored research articles, and (2) references (‘citations’) within corporate research articles to university research articles.The paper examines a range of country-level and institutional determinants of industrially relevant science, across 18 research areas of significant industrial interest, and at two different levels of analysis: research systems of OECD countries, and large sets of research universities within those countries. The results of these large-scale analyses, along with those of a case study dealing with European universities active in the field of immunology research, suggest that many structural factors determine university–industry interactions and (the potential for) entrepreneurial orientation. The two connectivity indicators appear to be of minor significance compared to a university's country of location and the magnitude of its research activities in industrially relevant fields of science.     

Teachers’ perspectives and contextual dimensions to guide the design of N.C. history learning objects and ontology

This paper describes an ongoing research project that involves the study of teachers’ information seeking behaviors, needs and practices in relation to a collection of primary source materials available through the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC) Library’s digital library Documenting the American South (DocSouth). By gaining an in-depth understanding of the needs and wants of teachers in the context of their work, we hope to build a collection of learning objects and a domain ontology applied to the collection to improve teachers’ access to the cultural heritage materials and to facilitate their actual use in the classroom.     

农业科学领域国际合作的中印比较

通过整理SCI数据库中中国和印度农业科学方面的国际合著论文,从国际合著论文数量、国际合著论文篇均合著国家数、国际合著论文篇均被引频次、国际合著网及国际合著论文的学科分布,比较了两国农业科学领域的国际合作.结果是,中国农业科学领域的国际合著论文自2000年开始超过印度,且差距越来越大;中国国际合著论文的篇均被引频次高于印度;中国更注重加强已有的国际合著关系,印度更注重建立新的国际合著关系;中国农业科学领域国际合作的重点学科依次是食品科技、农艺学、土壤学,印度依次是农艺学、食品科技、多学科农学.     

Research funding and collaboration

We analyze whether research funding contests promote co-authorship. Our analysis combines Scopus publication records with data on the Marsden Fund, the premier source of funding for basic research in New Zealand. We use fixed-effect models to analyze within-researcher-pair variation in co-authorship. Among pairs who ever co-authored or co-proposed, co-authorship was 13.8 percentage points more likely in a given year if they had co-proposed during the previous ten years than if they had not. This co-authorship rate was not significantly higher among funded pairs. However, when we increase post-proposal publication lags towards the length of a typical award, we find that funding, rather than participation, promotes co-authorship.     

杭州市城市土地利用对河流水质的影响

以杭州城区五条典型河流为研究对象,利用与水质监测数据相同年份的SPOT-5高分辨率卫星遥感影像,采用非监督分类与监督分类相结合的方法获取河流两岸土地利用信息;运用GIS的空间分析功能和帚观生态学的原理,计算了河道两岸不同距离缓冲范围区内的土地利用结构和景观格局指数;从小尺度上研究和分析城市内部土地利用结构和景观格局与河道水质的关系,及其空间变化对水质的影响。结果表明,河道两岸土地利用结构中典型城市用地（商业及工矿用地和居民住宅用地）占主导地位,而耕地数量极少;河流两岸的土地利用类型与河流水质污染指标有强烈的相关性。当缓冲区距离为100m时,土地利用结构和格局与水质呈现出显著的相关性,其中典型城市用地与水质表现显著正相关,它是造成城市河流污染的最主要的因素,绿化用地与CODMn、BOD5,优势度指数与DO都有着显著的负相关;而随着缓冲区距离增大至200m和300m时,土地利用结构和格局与河流水质的相关性明显下降,甚至消失。     

Emerging analytical methods to characterize zeolite-based materials

Zeolites and zeolitic materials are, through their use in numerous conventional and sustainable applications, very important to our daily lives, including to foster the necessary transition to a more circular society. The characterization of zeolite-based materials has a tremendous history and a great number of applications and properties of these materials have been discovered in the past decades. This review focuses on recently developed novel as well as more conventional techniques applied with the aim of better understanding zeolite-based materials. Recently explored analytical methods, e.g. atom probe tomography, scanning transmission X-ray microscopy, confocal fluorescence microscopy and photo-induced force microscopy, are discussed on their important contributions to the better understanding of zeolites as they mainly focus on the micro- to nanoscale chemical imaging and the revelation of structure–composition–performance relationships. Some other techniques have a long and established history, e.g. nuclear magnetic resonance, infrared, neutron scattering, electron microscopy and X-ray diffraction techniques, and have gone through increasing developments allowing the techniques to discover new and important features in zeolite-based materials. Additional to the increasing application of these methods, multiple techniques are nowadays used to study zeolites under working conditions (i.e. the in situ/operando mode of analysis) providing new insights in reaction and deactivation mechanisms.     

Assessing transitions through socio-technical configuration analysis – a methodological framework and a case study in the water sector

Classic accounts of transitions research have predominantly built on reconstructions of historical transition processes and in-depth case studies to identify and conceptualize socio-technical change. While such approaches have substantively improved our understanding of transitions, they often suffer from methodological nationalism and a lack of generalizability beyond spatial and sectoral boundaries. To address this gap, we propose a novel methodology – socio-technical configuration analysis (STCA) – to map and measure socio-technical alignment processes across time and space. STCA provides a configurational and dynamic perspective on how social and technical elements get aligned into “configurations that work”, allowing for the identification of differentiated transition trajectories at and across spatial and sectoral contexts. The methodology's value is illustrated with the empirical case of an ongoing shift from centralized to more modular infrastructure configurations in the global water sector. Building on this illustration, we outline potential contributions of STCA to configurational theorizing in transition studies, sketching the contours of what we believe could become a generative epistemological approach for this field.     

太湖流域主要河道浮游植物类群对比研究

2010年春季(4月13日-4月22日)和夏季(7月10日-7月19日)对太湖流域主要入湖河道进行了两次调查。对不同河道浮游植物群落结构进行了对比分析。入湖河流优势属主要有针杆藻(Synedra sp.)、隐藻(Cryptomonas sp.)、直链硅藻(Aulacoseira sp.)、脆杆藻属(Fragilaria sp.)和舟形藻(Navicula sp.)等;出湖河道主要优势属有直链硅藻(Aulacoseira sp.)、栅藻(Scenedesmus sp.)、隐藻(Cryptomonas sp.)等。夏季入湖河道优势属有针杆藻(Synedra sp.)、十字藻(Crucigenia sp.)、隐藻(Cryptomonas sp.)、裸藻(Euglena sp.)和微囊藻(Microcystis sp.)等;出湖河道优势属有直链硅藻(Aulacoseira sp.)、栅藻(Scenedesmus sp.)、隐藻(Cryptomonas sp.)、针杆藻(Synedra sp.)等。太湖流域河道浮游植物物种多样性春季要高于夏季,电导率、总磷、总氮、总悬浮物浓度、高锰酸钾指数和硝态氮与河道内浮游植物物种多样性显著相关。典范对应分析(CCA)结果显示影响春季浮游植物群落结构的关键因子有总悬浮物浓度、总氮和电导率,夏季则主要是高锰酸钾指数、硝态氮和总氮浓度。     

Absorptive capacities approaches for investigating national innovation systems in low and middle income countries

This review article covers some of the founding literature that helps develop our understanding of the National Innovation System (NIS) concept. Subsequently, several versions of NIS, including system-functional approaches, are discussed and compared with narrow research and development (R&D) and market-based approaches. Finally, the article contends that the system-functional and other narrow approaches are limited in application to the developing low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). Thus, it makes a case for more inclusive absorptive capacity approaches and explains how they might be more relevant in investigating the NIS of an LMIC. Such approaches suggest LMICs be strategic in building their innovation base and plead for strong local conditions (capacities) to produce knowledge as well as capture and improvise on incoming knowledge from abroad. The research is important as it provides insights into analyzing and capturing innovation processes in LMICs, which are prime candidates for development and innovation studies and practice.