CICBS: a methodology and a framework for measuring and managing intellectual capital of cities. A practical application in the city of Mataró

The governments of cities have to make important decisions on the future of their communities. In the past, the vision, objectives, and goals of cities have been determined mainly by considering tangible assets as the main factors of a city's prosperity. However, in the knowledge economy, the role of intangible assets in wealth creation has become fundamental. As a result, a framework of intangible assets that allows navigation from the present reality to the future vision has become an urgent need for all cities. The paper has two well-defined parts. In the first part, it develops a specific methodology and framework for measuring and managing the intellectual capital of cities. In the second part, the study deals with the practical application of this model of intellectual capital in cities with the specific case of the city of Mataró, providing some details of the first cities’ intellectual capital report.     

Knowledge sharing in a multi-cultural setting: a case study

Organizational culture has been shown to influence the success of knowledge management practices. Hofstede's theory specifies that organizational culture is not independent of national culture. A case study of an international subsidiary was conducted to explore the extent to which knowledge sharing is dependent on national culture. Results indicate that language differences can create knowledge blocks, and cross-cultural differences can explain the direction of knowledge flows.     

The 2001 Benjamin Franklin Medal in Earth Science presented to Rob Van der Voo

The Franklin Institute, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, awarded the 2001 Benjamin Franklin Medal in Earth Science to Rob Van der Voo for his outstanding contributions to the field of paleomagnetism and his reconstruction of ancient continental positions that have lead to a better understanding of plate tectonic processes for the past billion years of Earth history.     

元极学发展了传统的天人合一观

论述了元极学的人天整体观是对传统的天人合一观的发展和元极图是人天运化的全息模型。     

Exploring knowledge management implementation in large-sized service organizations – Saudi Arabia as a case

Whereas there is a growing literature that investigates knowledge management (KM) in service corporates, yet the overview and understanding of KM in large-sized service organisations is yet limited and sparse. Transitional economies, like of Saudi Arabia, are highly motivated to establish a knowledge based structure both economically and socially. There is an urgent need for exploring the current situation of KM tools usage and of perspectives on knowledge and knowledge management, as a start by large sized service organisations. Towards further understanding in this regard, this paper explores the status and potentials of KM implementation scoped to Saudi large-sized service organisations. The paper triangulated an interviewer-administrated questionnaire and focus groups to gather the data. The results indicate that although the weighted average of KM tools/methods deployment (being deployed or can possibly be deployed) reaches 79%; however, the written comments in front of each tool indicates that the participants’ understanding of what KM seems distorted, which is confirmed in the coding of their definitions of the term ‘Knowledge’. The participants identified leadership and strategy formulation as the top two critical success factors. A number of other results are presented and several issues were identified for future research.     

In search of query patterns: A case study of a university OPAC

A transaction log analysis of the Nanyang Technological University (NTU) OPAC was conducted to identify query and search failure patterns with the goal of identifying areas of improvement for the system. One semester’s worth of OPAC transaction logs were obtained and from these, 641,991 queries were extracted and used for this work. Issues investigated included query length, frequency and type of search options and Boolean operators used as well as their relationships with search failure. Among other findings, results indicate that a majority of the queries were simple, with short query lengths and a low usage of Boolean operators. Failure analysis revealed that on average, users had an almost equal chance of obtaining no records or at least one record to a submitted query. We propose enhancements and suggest future areas of work to improve the users’ search experience with the NTU OPAC.     

Japanese Conceptions of Privacy: An Intercultural Perspective

This paper deals with intercultural aspects of privacy, particularly with regard to important differences between Japanese and the Western views. This paper is based on our discussions with Rafael Capurro – a dialogue now represented by two separate but closely interrelated articles. The companion paper is broadly focused on the cultural and historical backgrounds of the concepts of privacy and individualism in “Western” worlds; our main theme focuses on different concepts of privacy in Japan and their sources in related aspects of Japanese culture. The interrelationship between our two papers is apparent in our taking up identical or similar topics in each paper. Reading our two papers in conjunction with each other will bring about deeper and broader insights into the diverse values and worldviews of Japan and Western cultures that underlie concepts of privacy that at a surface level appear to be similar     

Trusting Virtual Trust

Can trust evolve on the Internet between virtual strangers? Recently, Pettit answered this question in the negative. Focusing on trust in the sense of ‘dynamic, interactive, and trusting’ reliance on other people, he distinguishes between two forms of trust: primary trust rests on the belief that the other is trustworthy, while the more subtle secondary kind of trust is premised on the belief that the other cherishes one’s esteem, and will, therefore, reply to an act of trust in kind (‘trust-responsiveness’). Based on this theory Pettit argues that trust between virtual strangers is impossible: they lack all evidence about one another, which prevents the imputation of trustworthiness and renders the reliance on trust-responsiveness ridiculous. I argue that this argument is flawed, both empirically and theoretically. In several virtual communities amazing acts of trust between pure virtuals have been observed. I propose that these can be explained as follows. On the one hand, social cues, reputation, reliance on third parties, and participation in (quasi-) institutions allow imputing trustworthiness to varying degrees. On the other, precisely trust-responsiveness is also relied upon, as a necessary supplement to primary trust. In virtual markets, esteem as a fair trader is coveted while it contributes to building up one’s reputation. In task groups, a hyperactive style of action may be adopted which amounts to assuming (not: inferring) trust. Trustors expect that their virtual co-workers will reply in kind while such an approach is to be considered the most appropriate in cyberspace. In non-task groups, finally, members often display intimacies while they are confident someone else ‘out there’ will return them. This is facilitated by the one-to-many, asynchronous mode of communication within mailing lists.