Knowledge,knowing, knower: what is to be managed and does it matter?

Knowledge Management Research & Practice - A knowledge management (KM) scope denotes our conception about what is relevant and useful, concerns what and how we are to manage, in KM. KM scopes...     

Green is good but is usability better? Consumer reactions to environmental initiatives in e-banking services

There is an emerging consensus in the corporate social responsibility (CSR) literature suggesting that the quest for the so-called business case for CSR should be abandoned. In the same vein, several researchers have suggested that future research should start examining not whether, but rather when CSR is likely to have strengthened, weakened or even nullified effects on organizational outcomes (e.g. Margolis et al. in Does it pay to be good? A meta-analysis and redirection of research on corporate social and financial performance. Working Paper, Harvard Business School, 2007; Kiron et al. in MIT Sloan Manag Rev 53(2):69–74, 2012). Using perspectives from several theoretical frameworks (Needs Theory, Technology Acceptance Theory, and Psychological Distance Theory), we contribute to the literature by empirically examining the tension between functional and sustainability attributes in a novel context, namely that of green e-banking services. The findings indicate that the positive effect of CSR on users’ attitudes towards green e-banking services is moderated by two primarily utilitarian information systems factors—namely perceived ease of use and perceived usefulness—and an important utilitarian individual difference variable—namely perceived self-efficacy with technology. Our findings are also important if interpreted within the context of the ethical decision-making literature (e.g. O’Fallon and Butterfield in J Bus Ethics 59(4):375–413, 2005), as they indicate that the linkage between moral judgment and moral outcomes is unlikely to be that straightforward.     

To what extent is language teaching methodology informed by theory？

With the globalization of the world, language teaching becomes more important than ever before, and many universities and classroom teachers are active to exploret he most efficient and effective methodology to teach languages to achieve a desirable result. When they seek to improve the quality of language teaching, they often research teaching methodologies by referring to general theories about language and language learning. Theoretical bases and teachers‘ hands-out experience have informed methodologies of language teaching, and methods of language teaching have been improved with the developments about linguistics, psychology and education. But there is a question which extent the information that theory has made available can be used to explore language teaching methodology and of the relevance of theory to language teaching methodology.     

Take what you see——RDA转录原则分析

作为新的国际编目规则,RDA建立在AACR2基础之上,但又表现出不同于其的新的特点.转录是其描述资源时的表达性原则.分析了RDA在转录语言与文字、错误信息以及各著录项中的省略与缩写的使用原则,提出了对新规则的三点质疑.     

Is it just too good to be true? Unearthing the benefits of disruptive technology

The rate of digital disruption is escalating and placing increasing pressure on organisations to adopt emerging technologies in order to improve their productivity and bottom-lines. Unfortunately, however, many organisations are often being seduced by the purported benefits of disruptive technologies often based on embellished or even falsified claims. This is particularly true in construction, where organisations are being required to embrace disruptive technologies (e.g. Building Information Modelling and Industry 4.0) to address performance and productivity issues. Unsubstantiated claims about expected benefits subvert the justification and benefits realisation process as the change management that is required is downplayed or ignored. It is, therefore, imperative that the business case as part of the process of evaluation, is based on evidence to enable the development of a change management and implementation strategy. In this paper, we present an overview of a longitudinal line of inquiry that sought to examine the benefits of disruptive technology, namely Systems Information Modelling (SIM). Our research revealed that more than a 90 % cost reduction to document electrical systems and a corresponding improvement in productivity was achieved. We suggest that engaging in the process of critical thinking, possessing a conscious awareness and healthy scepticism of technology places organisations in a position of control. As a consequence, organisations are better-positioned to understand the nature of technology and ‘how’ value can be generated from potential new ways of working.     

Creating the KM mindset: why is it so difficult?

Knowledge Management Research & Practice - The knowledge management (KM) mindset is a precursor to a knowledge-sharing culture. It is often assumed that developing a KM mindset is somewhat...     

Querying XML documents using Prolog engines: When is this a good idea?

XML has become a universal standard for information exchange over the Web due to features such as simple syntax and extensibility. Processing queries over these documents has been the focus of several research groups. In fact, there is broad literature in efficient XML query processing which explore indexes, fragmentation techniques, etc. However, for answering complex queries, existing approaches mainly analyze information that is explicitly defined in the XML document. A few work investigate the use of Prolog to increase the query possibilities, allowing inference over the data content. This can cause a significant increase in the query possibilities and expressive power, allowing access to non-obvious information. However, this requires translating the XML documents into Prolog facts. But for regular queries (which do not require inference), is this a good alternative? What kind of queries could benefit from the Prolog translation? Can we always use Prolog engines to execute XML queries in an efficient way? There are many questions involved in adopting an alternative approach to run XML queries. In this work, we investigate this matter by translating XML queries into Prolog queries and comparing the query processing times using Prolog and native XML engines. Our work contributes by providing a set of heuristics that helps users to decide when to use Prolog engines to process a given XML query. In summary, our results show that queries that search elements by a key value or by its position (simple search) are more efficient when run in Prolog than in native XML engines. Also, queries over large datasets, or that searches for substrings perform better when run by native XML engines.     

What is a genetic test, and why does it matter?

How the term ‘genetic test’ is defined, matters for social policy. The past few years have witnessed many efforts to enact legal barriers specifically against genetic discrimination. To the extent that information derived from genetic tests receives special protection, both enthusiasts for genetic medicine and those who stress its perils have an incentive to adopt a broad interpretation of genetic testing. However, the consequences have not always been those anticpated.     

Whose story is it anyway? Automatic extraction of accounts from news articles

Narratives are comprised of stories that provide insight into social processes. To facilitate the analysis of narratives in a more efficient manner, natural language processing (NLP) methods have been employed in order to automatically extract information from textual sources, e.g., newspaper articles. Existing work on automatic narrative extraction, however, has ignored the nested character of narratives. In this work, we argue that a narrative may contain multiple accounts given by different actors. Each individual account provides insight into the beliefs and desires underpinning an actor’s actions. We present a pipeline for automatically extracting accounts, consisting of NLP methods for: (1) named entity recognition, (2) event extraction, and (3) attribution extraction. Machine learning-based models for named entity recognition were trained based on a state-of-the-art neural network architecture for sequence labelling. For event extraction, we developed a hybrid approach combining the use of semantic role labelling tools, the FrameNet repository of semantic frames, and a lexicon of event nouns. Meanwhile, attribution extraction was addressed with the aid of a dependency parser and Levin’s verb classes. To facilitate the development and evaluation of these methods, we constructed a new corpus of news articles, in which named entities, events and attributions have been manually marked up following a novel annotation scheme that covers over 20 event types relating to socio-economic phenomena. Evaluation results show that relative to a baseline method underpinned solely by semantic role labelling tools, our event extraction approach optimises recall by 12.22–14.20 percentage points (reaching as high as 92.60% on one data set). Meanwhile, the use of Levin’s verb classes in attribution extraction obtains optimal performance in terms of F-score, outperforming a baseline method by 7.64–11.96 percentage points. Our proposed approach was applied on news articles focused on industrial regeneration cases. This facilitated the generation of accounts of events that are attributed to specific actors.     

Genes and speciation: is it time to abandon the biological species concept?

The biological species concept (BSC) is the cornerstone of neo-Darwinian thinking. In BSC, species do not exchange genes either during or after speciation. However, as gene flow during speciation is increasingly being reported in a substantial literature, it seems time to reassess the revered, but often doubted, BSC. Contrary to the common perception, BSC should expect substantial gene flow at the onset of speciation, not least because geographical isolation develops gradually. Although BSC does not stipulate how speciation begins, it does require a sustained period of isolation for speciation to complete its course. Evidence against BSC must demonstrate that the observed gene flow does not merely occur at the onset of speciation but continues until its completion. Importantly, recent genomic analyses cannot reject this more realistic version of BSC, although future analyses may still prove it wrong. The ultimate acceptance or rejection of BSC is not merely about a historical debate; rather, it is about the fundamental nature of species – are species (and, hence, divergent adaptations) driven by a relatively small number of genes, or by thousands of them? Many levels of biology, ranging from taxonomy to biodiversity, depend on this resolution.     

Is commercialization good or bad for science? Individual-level evidence from the Max Planck Society

Based on new data, this paper studies the invention disclosure, licensing, and spin-off activities of Max Planck Institute directors over the time period 1985-2004, analyzing their effects on the scientists’ subsequent publication and citation records. Consistent with prior findings, inventing does not adversely affect research output. Mixed results are obtained with regard to commercialization activities. The analysis suggests qualifications to earlier explanations of positive relationships between inventing and publishing.     

Information management for innovation networks—an empirical study on the “who,what and how” in networked innovation

Innovation networks are vital in advancing new product and service development. Particularly for small and medium-sized enterprises, partnering within innovation networks allows to enlarge innovation capabilities and to reach new markets. In order to create effective innovation networks, however, firms are required to adapt to the network. To do so, they must overcome three principal challenges: they need to build partnerships, integrate the partners’ value contributions, and coordinate innovation processes. We followed three innovation networks over a three-year period and examined how they successfully used information systems (IS) to respond to these challenges. On the basis of their experiences we identify IS categories and measures that support setting up an information management for networked innovation. We explicate relevant tasks for managing the aspects of “who, what and how” in networked innovation.