Fefie Dotsika

Knowledge sharing: developing from within

Purpose – If collaboration and knowledge sharing lie at the core of providing added‐value to either services or products can we improve this process? The purpose of this paper is to suggest that it can be improved and this lies in how we develop the systems that support collaboration and knowledge sharing. This can be achieved within the development process, focusing on the knowledge sharers and developing from within.Design/methodology/approach – The underpinning has been the examination of traditional system development methodologies, the emergence of social computing and its underlying approaches and ethos. The approach draws upon knowledge management concepts, overlaid onto the purpose and motivation for knowledge sharing.Findings – The paper continues the premise that better systems are derived from fully engaging with the systems users. Although existing methodologies have this at their heart, the systems produced still fall short. The argument presents how developing systems from within can improve...

Collaborative KM for SMEs: a framework evaluation study

Purpose – Implementing knowledge management (KM) initiatives in small-to-medium enterprises (SMEs) is crucial, as knowledge is their single key resource. Despite evidence that it improves performance and competitive advantage, KM practices in SMEs have been problematic due to resource constraints, while existing solutions and practices fail to meet the changing requirements of growing companies. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the evolution of the KM system of an independent SME, whose growth changed their operations’ systems and KM requirements. The necessary changes were promptly acknowledged and managed as a priority by revisiting their system and adapting it to their new needs. This KM practice and the consequent feedback loop have been identified as an essential tool for growth and change. Design/methodology/approach – In order to achieve a comprehensive understanding of the key issues involved in KM adoption in SMEs, the paper took an exploratory approach, applying a combination of actio...

Interactive Business Development, Capturing Business Knowledge and Practice: A Case Study.

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to follow the planning and development of MapaWiki, a Knowledge Management System for Mapa, an independent research company that specialises in competitor benchmarking. Starting with the standard requirements to capture, store and share information and knowledge, a system was sought that would allow growth and expansion whilst supporting the quick and easy recording and maintenance of interactions between employees.Design/methodology/approach – Trying to identify the optimum KM solution, the social and technical systems within the organisation cooperated in the investigation of different approaches and in the systems design and development. From the case study perspective the Yin (1994) approach was adopted as a framing and guiding schema. This was further shaped through the action research aspect, involving problem‐solving and generating new knowledge and awareness. The solution selection methodology followed was based on the framework proposed by Despres and Chauv...

Uniting formal and informal descriptive power: Reconciling ontologies with folksonomies

Ontologies and folksonomies are currently the most prominent web content classification schemes. While their roles are similar, their engineering is different. In an attempt to combine and harness their distinct powers, web and information scientists are attempting to integrate them, merging the flexibility, collaboration and information aggregation of folksonomies with the standardisation, automated validation and interoperability of ontologies. This paper explores the basics of web information classification engineering, identifies the strengths and weaknesses of the existing methodologies, assesses their effectiveness and investigates a number of key quality issues. It then investigates the existing methods for integrating ontologies and folksonomies and examines the integration requirements. It finally proposes a common framework for reconciliation of the two classification approaches and quality assurance.

Towards the new generation of web knowledge

Purpose – As the web evolves its purpose and nature of its use are changing. The purpose of the paper is to investigate whether the web can provide for the competing stakeholders, who are similarly evolving and who increasingly see it as a significant part of their business.Design/methodology/approach – The paper adopts an exploratory and reviewing approach to the emerging trends and patterns emanating from the webs changing use and explores the underpinning technologies and tools that facilitate this use and access. It examines the future and potential of web‐based knowledge management (KM) and reviews the emerging web trends, tools, and enabling technologies that will provide the infrastructure of the next generation web.Findings – The research carried out provides an independent framework for the capturing, accessing and distributing of web knowledge. This framework retains the semantic mark‐up, a feature that we deem indispensable for the future of KM, employing web ontologies to structure organisati...

Implementing a social intranet in a professional services environment through Web 2.0 technologies

Purpose – Research into professional services firms that have successfully implemented and adopted Web 2.0 tools are still rare, with no widely known accepted methodologies or frameworks. The purpose of this case study is to investigate a medium-sized law firm that embarked on a KM programme that makes explicit use of emergent enterprise-based Web 2.0 tools. Design/methodology/approach – The overlying research methodology applied is action research, in particular participatory action research (PAR). The study draws on interviews with practitioners, consultants and knowledge workers and takes into consideration multiple stakeholder views and value conflicts. The project is part of a Knowledge Transfer Partnership between RPC LLP and Westminster Business School. Findings – Implementation of Web 2.0 tools in professional services requires the blending of a number of approaches to address the intrinsic tension between the open, participative behaviour and iterative development methodologies encouraged by soci...

An approach for pattern mining through grounded theory techniques and its applications to process-driven SOA patterns

Pattern mining is a term used in the pattern community to describe the process of identifying or discovering patterns. To identify new patterns, usually an informal or ad hoc process of finding patterns (e.g., in existing software systems) is used. This paper reflects on lessons learned and methods used regarding the integration of software pattern mining with qualitative research methods during our work on a pattern language for process-driven and service-oriented architectures (SOAs). This pattern language aims at closing the conceptual gap between business architecture and software architecture with a focus on process-driven solutions. In this paper we emphasize the notion of understanding patterns as sociological phenomena of problem solving behavior. We further introduce a systematic approach for pattern mining based Glaserian Grounded Theory techniques. This approach has been applied for mining the pattern language for process-driven SOAs. This work may also contribute to a better empirical grounding of software pattern mining. We will illustrate our approach using the pattern language for process-driven SOAs as a pattern mining case study.

From data to knowledge in e-health applications: an integrated system for medical information modelling and retrieval

The system described in this paper uses the technological advances in information technology in order to influence and improve healthcare practice by enabling the flexible modelling, direct representation and adaptable use of medical knowledge. It aims at resolving a number of difficulties encountered by current information repositories, such as costly customization, reusability, high maintenance and poor information modelling, by employing the architecture of the functional data model (FDM), while maintaining full interoperability with existing systems by means of XML. On the information-modelling front the system supports a variety of modelling techniques that are especially relevant to medical applications, such as complex objects, incomplete or missing information, partially structured data and multimedia content. A prototype implementation of the system has been developed which consists of a multimedia-enhanced version of the functional database language FDL, and a web-based, two-way translator interface between the applications native language and XML. This interface provides full interoperability with other, heterogeneous systems over the web, thus, significantly reducing the complexity of developing distributed healthcare systems and e-health applications.

Knowledge creation and sharing mechanisms: from Heads (of Departments) to Hands (of staff)

This paper discusses the issue of succession planning for the United Kingdom (UK) Higher Education (HE) sector where there is an impending crisis due to the age distribution of staff. This paper illustrates the consequences of knowledge loss with examples taken from other sectors. Intellectual Capital contains sticky knowledge which is identified as context- and process-specific knowledge that is typically difficult to capture and transfer. Sticky knowledge in the HE sector is held by senior and soon-to-retire staff and we describe our research project into means for harvesting this knowledge.