This issue completes the fifth volume of Knowledge Management Research & Practice (KMRP). As in the previous issue, the seven regular papers again feature a strong focus on knowledge sharing, knowledge transfer and learning. No fewer than four of them deal with the issue of providing appropriate information technology support, especially when needing to integrate different aspects of a knowledge management (KM) initiative. This is harder still when some of those aspects relate to codification and some to personalisation. Two other papers examine individuals' willingness to share knowledge, and how this is affected by the rewards available and the systems that they are using, while the remaining paper introduces ‘New Learning’ (you will have to look further down to find out what that is…).
The first regular paper is ‘Optimizing knowledge transfer by new employees in companies’ by Sidonia Cecilie von Ledebur. Von Ledebur presents a theoretical model based on game theory, which looks at the relevance of rewards to knowledge transfer in teams, especially the opportunity presented by the arrival of a new member. This paper draws on models that will be very familiar to many operational researchers, such as the Prisoner's Dilemma and Chicken, and discusses how these and other games or dilemmas are relevant to knowledge transfer in teams. The resulting model appears to be consistent with empirical findings, although as with all game theoretic studies there needs to be the crucial assumption that people will behave rationally at the point of decision.
The second paper is ‘Knowledge mobilisation in communities through socio-technical systems’ by Helen Hasan. Hasan's paper examines the use of information and communications technologies (ICT) by communities of various kinds, from a socio-technical systems perspective. Its results stem from a longitudinal action research study over 5 years. An immediate point of interest is the way that the study has evolved in two ways: from focusing solely on the ICT to considering broader socio-technical systems issues; and from an emphasis on organisations and learning in them to public, non-organisational communities. The three systems under study are UniStore, intended to retain knowledge; UniLinks, intended to facilitate interaction between community members; and UniPlan. UniStore and UniLinks have developed during the study to become practically useful systems. The need for UniPlan arose because of the tendency (surely familiar to all of us) to focus on specific actions rather than longer-term activities. UniPlan is intended to help a community remedy that problem, and make appropriate use of UniStore and UniLinks in so doing. Hasan's research demonstrates the advantages of considering them as socio-technical systems rather than merely ICT artefacts, and concludes that ‘the fact that communities are being recognised as a source of business value indicates that research into the role of socio-technical models of communities in general is warranted’ – although knowledge management is but one facet of this issue, so we would not wish to claim that KM had a monopoly on this.
Next comes another study on the role of ICT, ‘An integrative view of knowledge transfer and computer mediated communication: categorizing barriers and possible responses’ by David Schwartz. Schwartz examines how different ICT-based communication media may present (or remove) barriers to knowledge transfer. Seven different types are considered, from e-mail at the least contextual end of the scale through to VVOIP (Video and Voice Over Internet Protocol) at the other. Computer-mediated communication theories are combined with theories about barriers to knowledge transfer to shed light on how these barriers might be overcome, and to suggest future directions for research in these areas.
The fourth paper is ‘New Learning: a different way of approaching conference evaluation’ by Diane Chapman, Colleen Wiessner, Julia Storberg-Walker and Tim Hatcher. This addresses a topic that most readers of KMRP will have experienced personally, but that is relatively rarely studied: that of organising and attending conferences. As Chapman et al. point out, conference planning and evaluation is usually done with a focus on the presenters rather than the individual delegates: respondents are typically asked ‘what did you think of the presentation by Dr. X?’ rather than ‘what have you learned by being here?’ To this end, they outline ‘New Learning’, a process in which data collection is structured by individual respondent instead of by presentation, and report on its use at the Academy of Human Resources Research Conference in 2005. Many delegates responded (please pardon the pun) very well to the new framework, although a few used it simply to provide ‘traditional’ evaluations of each presentation they had attended. Chapman et al. commendably see this as evidence of the flexibility of the framework/process.
Following this comes ‘Harmonising codification and socialisation in knowledge management’ by Dimitris Apostolou, Andreas Abecker and Gregoris Mentzas. As is apparent from the paper's title, Apostolou et al. tackle the task of harmonising the codification and socialisation (also known as personalisation) strategic-level approaches to KM by means of an appropriate ICT infrastructure. Hasan's paper above can be seen as one example of how this might be done, with Hasan's interest more in the user perspective on the system(s) while Apostolou et al. emphasise the management perspective. Apostolou et al. describe the Know-Net system, which is based on managing ‘knowledge objects’ (KOs) rather than simply content. This is carried out by the use of appropriate metadata schemata and indexing ontologies, supported by specific software tools. The example of a multi-national management consultancy, with an implementation in IBM/Lotus Domino™, is used to illustrate how this operates in practice, to achieve the consultancy's goals for its KM initiative of avoiding ‘re-inventing the wheel’ (codification) and dealing with the Thematic Area Networks it wished to encourage (socialisation). The outcome is that learning and knowledge sharing in the consultancy takes place much more at the organizational level, rather than at the individual or team levels as previously.
The sixth paper, ‘Knowledge transfer by sharing task templates: two approaches and their psychological requirements’ by Uwe Riss, Ulrike Cress, Joachim Kimmerle and Stefan Martin, brings together the themes of information systems used in KM and motivation for knowledge sharing. Like von Ledebur, Riss et al. are interested in the willingness of members to contribute to a shared pool of knowledge. The authors' own motivation is the lack of flexibility of most existing approaches to implementing what they call Process Aware Information Systems, the most familiar examples of which are workflow systems. Two alternative approaches, case-based task management (CBTM) and pattern-based task management (PBTM), are described in the paper, and these two approaches are examined in the light of the results of experimental tests of knowledge sharing behaviour. Riss et al. conclude that the PBTM approach is more promising in terms of the potential benefits that it offers, but also more challenging to the users as it requires more abstraction in their thinking.
The final regular paper is ‘Integrated use of technologies and techniques for construction knowledge management’ by Kirti Ruikar, Chimay Anumba and Charles Egbu. Ruikar et al. analyse several case studies from the construction industry in the U.K. As the largest sector in the U.K. economy, there is great potential for the use of KM, but despite official encouragement, the take-up has been slow. The industry is characterised by fragmentation, the one-off nature of its projects, disparate project teams and the requirement for specialised skills, and a disturbing tendency for very little learning to be transferred from one project to another. This makes it a particularly challenging sector for KM. Ruikar et al. find that current KM approaches are mainly ad hoc and reactive to short-term business needs, especially in the selection of technology, and advocate an integrated approach.
As well as the regular papers, Heiner Müller-Merbach's series of articles on Philosophers and Knowledge Management examines what Kant said about the mutual interdependence between theory and practice (demonstrated very well in our selection of regular papers in this issue). Finally, there is a review of the first book to carry the name of an Encyclopedia of Knowledge Management, edited by David Schwartz, who has also written one of our regular papers in this issue.
As usual, we trust that you will find at least one of the articles in this issue of KMRP interesting and stimulating, and we would be delighted to receive your own contribution(s). We are also looking to expand our panel of reviewers to cope with providing timely responses to the increasing number of paper submissions. If you are willing to take on this task, please contact the Editor by e-mail to [email protected] and put ‘KMRP reviewing’ in the Subject line.