Gonçalo Jorge Morais da Costa

Knowledge versus content in e-learning: A philosophical discussion

Historically education has been supported by technology; however, during the past three decades electronic technologies for educational purposes have been used to achieve better learning outcomes. There are two propositions regarding the use of computers for educational purposes; that is, people can learn “from” technologies or people can learn “with” technologies. The, e-learning literature reveals that technological and instructional perceptions are diffuse. Furthermore, only recently have the ethical and cultural issues been considered. The philosophical discussion within this paper considers these issues and explores the idea of knowledge or content in e-learning, teasing out the differences between these two concepts. In order to contextualize the debate, the literature is reviewed, and a philosophical debate using an inquiry example is presented.

Organizational Knowledge: Ethics and the Importance of Trust

The aim of this paper is to grasp the ethical dilemmas that arise into organizational knowledge and the importance of trust for diminishing these dilemmas. Therefore, it focuses three key issues: knowledge management (concept; and, schools of thought); knowledge flowing models versus ethics (mental models; the Socialization, Externalization, Combination, Internalization (SECI) model; and, Fiske’s relational model); and finally, the importance of trust as a possible answer. Plus, this paper suggests that the previous models only focus knowledge as continuum process and the result of this process omits ethical and moral dilemmas (obligation to share, personal property, personal worth, autonomy, dignity, privacy, etc.). These ethical dilemmas clearly weaken a knowledge management project, and how trust is a reliable answer. The absence of empirical work should be considered a limitation of this paper; however, does not diminish the importance for this debate.

Porquê relacionar gestão do conhecimento, cultura organizacional e ética: resultados empíricos

A gestao de conhecimento pode ser caracterizada como a aquisicao e utilizacao de recursos organizacionais de modo a gerar informacao disponivel para todos, devendo esta ser partilhada e empregue com o intuito de melhorar o conhecimento individual e consequentemente coletivo. Nesse sentido, uma estrategia de gestao do conhecimento incorpora dois niveis antagonicos: pessoal e organizacional, suscetiveis de gerar potenciais tensoes. Estas tensoes podem derivar da interacao da gestao do conhecimento com a cultura organizacional e a etica, o que de acordo com a literatura origina os seguintes dilemas: acesso ao conhecimento, autonomia, dignidade, privacidade, propriedade intelectual, e justa compensacao (eticos); confianca versus cultura organizacional (sociais). Nesse sentido, este projeto de investigacao assume uma atitude descritiva e explanatoria atraves de um estudo interpretativo e critico. A utilizacao de multiplos casos de estudo e grounded theory (multi-metodo) permitira percecionar a complexidade e a natureza do estudo, contudo existem desafios consideraveis no que respeita aos metodos de recolha de dados (entrevistas e questionarios). Sendo assim, optou-se por elaborar pre-testes e testes piloto com o objetivo de promulgar maiores niveis de confianca relativamente aos casos de estudo, cujos resultados empiricos (pre-testes e testes piloto) demonstram de forma clara que existem os dilemas eticos e sociais referenciados, assim como os gestores tendem a ignora-los ou negligencia-los.