The research core of the knowledge management literature

A bibliometric analysis and a content analysis were conducted to explore the nature of the knowledge management literature. For the bibliometric analysis, three levels of Bradford analysis were used to examine the shape of the knowledge management literature based on 21,596 references from 2771 source publications. Each of the three analyses conformed to the typical curve of the Bradford distribution. For the content analysis, the texts of 630 knowledge management articles were analyzed to address the question of what research methodologies are used in the knowledge management literature. It was found that 27.8 percent of knowledge management-related articles in knowledge management journals used no identifiable research method. Of the remaining 455 refereed articles, 60 percent employed mainstream social sciences research methodologies. The remaining 40 percent of the articles using an identifiable methodology were characterized by the use of “provisional methods” that appeared to substitute for more formally defined or scientifically based research methodologies.     

Making functional units functional: The role of rhetorical structure in use of scholarly journal articles

Scholars are reading more journal articles than ever, so it is important that they focus on the relevant text within the articles they read. To support this goal, this study explores enhancements to a journal reading system by applying the idea of the functional unit, the smallest information unit with a distinct function within four major components of scholarly journal articles—Introduction, Methods, Results and Discussion. This study examined a set of functional units and their associations with scholarly journal article use tasks through literature analysis and validation surveys. Forty-one typical functional units were found in psychology journal articles, with varying relevance to five tasks requiring use of information in journal articles. The relationships among sets of functional units for particular tasks were also identified. A taxonomy was developed incorporating the relationships between functional units and information use tasks, which can be used to inform system design. Based on this taxonomy, a prototype journal reading environment signalling functional units was designed and implemented for testing.     

Achieving top management support with business knowledge and role of IT/IS personnel

The business-IT gap is still present in many companies and IT/IS professionals often impute the responsibility for this to management and claim they lack top management's support for their initiatives. The aim of this paper is to show how IT/IS personnel can achieve top management support. Based on more than 50 in-depth interviews with CIOs and CEOs in the last 10 years we hypothesize that top management support can be attained with the business and managerial knowledge and skills of IT/IS personnel as well as with the business-oriented role of the IT/IS department. The impact was empirically tested via structural equation modeling (SEM) using data from 152 Slovenian companies with more than 50 employees. Based on findings some implications for top managers and IT/IS professionals are given, especially for CIOs, on how IT/IS personnel can contribute to bridging the gap.     

What happens when brands tell the truth? Exploring the effects of transparency signaling on corporate reputation for agribusiness

This study focused on Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) within agribusiness – an industry confronted with particularly high expectations from its societal environment. This study examined the effects of transparency signaling and its interaction with the nature of CSR on publics’ evaluation of an agribusiness company with regards to perceived integrity, perceived competence, and company reputation. Our findings showed that high transparency signaling led to higher perceived integrity, but there were no significant effects on perceived competence and company reputation. Moreover, the effects of transparency signaling were moderated by the nature of CSR on company reputation. The study also revealed that perceived integrity influenced the relationship between transparency and company reputation, while perceived competence was not influenced by transparency signaling. Researchers discuss the implications of these findings for communication professionals sharing CSR information, especially for high involvement industries like food and agriculture.     

E-government discourses: An inductive analysis

This article offers a new perspective on e-government by documenting the categories of e-government discourses, and evaluating them within a public value framework. Understanding e-government discourses is significant, since these discourses represent contested visions of e-government, and one can derive a feel for public sentiment about e-government from the discourses used in the media. The findings are accumulated through an inductive analysis of 85 newspaper articles, published during the year of 2010, in three top-selling, ideologically different, nationally circulating Turkish newspapers. In these 85 articles, 98 discourses presented by 90 policy actors are found. Five positive and four negative discourse categories and their relationships emerged from the analysis of the data. The results show that, government reform efforts shaped by the New Public Management movement and Turkey's harmonization efforts with the global political system in general, and with the European Union in particular, are influential in the presentation of e-government projects to the Turkish public through newspapers.     

Addressing below proficient information literacy skills: Evaluating the efficacy of an evidence-based educational intervention

Over the course of three years, an educational intervention was developed to teach information literacy (IL) skills, change perceptions of IL, and to recalibrate self views of the abilities of first year college students who demonstrate below proficient information literacy skills. The intervention is a modular workshop designed around the three-step analyze, search, evaluate (ASE) model of information literacy, which is easy to remember, easy to adapt to multiple instructional situations, and can provide a foundation for building information literacy skills. Summative evaluation of the intervention demonstrates that students who attend the workshop see an increase in skills and awareness of information literacy as a skill set. Increases in skills, however, were not sufficient to move participants into the proficient range. While workshop participants were able to reassess preworkshop skills, skills gained in the workshop did not result in recalibrated self-views of ability. Like the development of skills, the recalibration of self-assessments may require multiple exposures to information literacy instruction.     

Search markets and search results: The case of Bing

Bing and Google customize their results to target people with different geographic locations and languages but, despite the importance of search engines for web users and webometric research, the extent and nature of these differences are unknown. This study compares the results of seventeen random queries submitted automatically to Bing for thirteen different English geographic search markets at monthly intervals. Search market choice alters a small majority of the top 10 results but less than a third of the complete sets of results. Variation in the top 10 results over a month was about the same as variation between search markets but variation over time was greater for the complete results sets. Most worryingly for users, there were almost no ubiquitous authoritative results: only one URL was always returned in the top 10 for all search markets and points in time, and Wikipedia was almost completely absent from the most common top 10 results. Most importantly for webometrics, results from at least three different search markets should be combined to give more reliable and comprehensive results, even for queries that return fewer than the maximum number of URLs.     

The Cynefin framework: A tool for analyzing qualitative data in information science?

Interpreting qualitative research data and presenting it in ways that enable potential beneficiaries of the research to use it readily and appropriately is increasingly important in the context of the research impact agenda. One way of doing uses the Cynefin framework. Cynefin, which is rooted in knowledge management and complexity science, has been used in a range of contexts to support decision-making and strategy development in dynamic and challenging situations. However, it has not been widely used as a data analysis technique or in the information science discipline. An exploratory evaluation uses it to interpret the rich, nuanced qualitative data from a three-year research project that engaged people worldwide to explore issues and practical strategies for managing electronic records, a significant information management challenge. The evaluation demonstrates that the Cynefin framework provides a strategic lens through which to view electronic records management (ERM). Cynefin prompts new questions to be asked, leading to new insights and a deeper understanding of the ERM challenge. Most significantly, it provides a new construct for re-perceiving the challenge in a holistic way and offers a strategic approach to taking action for change. This evaluation suggests that it is an appropriate and effective framework for use in qualitative research on challenging information management problems, with the potential to support the transfer of research into practice.     

Increasing process orientation with business process management: Critical practices’

This paper studies the role of business process management in creating a higher business process orientation. The purpose is to analyze previously suggested practices to identify those that are critical at a certain business process orientation maturity level and those that are not. A case study is used to identify the critical success factors. Then a statistical analysis of a sample of 324 companies is undertaken to operationalize the success factors in the form of critical practices. Organizations following these critical practices at a certain level will reach higher process orientation sooner.     

Propagation of projective synchronization in a series connection of chaotic systems

Projective synchronization is a type of chaos synchronization where the response system states are scaled replicas of the drive system states. This paper deals with the propagation of projective synchronization in a series connection of N chaotic discrete-time drive systems and N response systems. By exploiting an observer-based approach, the paper demonstrates that dead-beat projective synchronization (i.e., exact synchronization in finite time for any scaling factor) is achieved between the nth drive and nth response systems. In particular, it is shown that projective synchronization starts from the innermost (Nth) drive-response system pair and propagates toward the outermost (first) drive-response system pair. Only a single scalar synchronizing signal connects the cascaded drive and response systems. Finally, an example illustrates the propagation of different types of chaos synchronization in a series connection consisting of a Gingerbreadman map, a third order hyperchaotic Henon map and a Lozi map.