Jocelyn Cranefield

Interorganisational knowledge transfer: the role of the gatekeeper

This paper reports on a research project that investigated the key factors impacting on interorganisational knowledge transfer during a collaborative project involving a group of New Zealand State Sector organisations. Interviews were undertaken with seven gatekeepers (boundary-spanning individuals). The gatekeepers were found to have performed multiple roles, playing a critical part in enabling knowledge transfer throughout the project. These roles were: (1) flag-bearer for their organisation, (2) project advocate within their organisation, (3) translator and interpreter of new knowledge, (4) scout (a seeker of knowledge), (5) facilitator of knowledge sharing and knowledge creation and towards the latter stages of the project, (6) storyteller and (7) in-house expert.

Enriching Knowledge in Business Process Modelling: A Storytelling Approach

The main goal of Business Process Management (BPM) is conceptualising, operationalizing and controlling workflows in organisations based on process models. In this paper we discuss several limitations of the workflow paradigm and suggest that process models can also play an important role in analysing how organisations think about themselves through storytelling. We contrast the workflow paradigm with storytelling through a comparative analysis. We also report a case study where storytelling has been used to elicit and document the practices of an IT maintenance team. This research contributes towards the development of better process modelling languages and tools.

Embedding professional knowledge: the ‘middle layer' in an online community ecosystem

This paper reports on an interpretive case research project that investigated how online communities facilitate the embedding of professional knowledge. The study context was a New Zealand programme that aimed to integrate ICT into school teaching, while building a student-centred pedagogy. For many participants, this amounted to paradigm shift, challenging the nature of the teachers role. An informal, unofficial Web 2.0-based community was found to play a key role in embedding the new paradigm. This community formed a bridging, or middle layer between local communities and an international network. Members of the middle layer acted as knowledge intermediaries, undertaking various social and technological practices to drive the embedding process. These practices included filtering incoming knowledge, feeding it to followers, recycling and recombining ideas, and providing a just-in-time support system. The middle layer can be seen as forming a key part of a knowledge ecosystem, within which patterns of feeding and recycling occurred.

Social Media and Knowledge Management: A Perfect Couple

This chapter forms the introduction to the Social Knowledge Management book. Prying back in time, the chapter first discusses the history of knowledge management and social media. Their emergence, evolution and difficulties are elaborated. Then, the revitalization of knowledge management by social media, through communities, networking and other technologies, is explained and illustrated. Furthermore, it is explained how the synthesis of knowledge management and social media opened even new avenues for both scholars and practitioners, through analyzing digital traces and the employment of the wisdom of the crowd. The chapter continues by providing an overview of its chapters and illustrates how every chapter informs the reader about novel theories and applications of social media for knowledge management in business or societal contexts. The reader is left with insight in the successes and challenges faced by these endeavors and therefore, this chapter concludes with a sneak preview for each of the chapters, inviting the reader to stat their journey into the realm of social knowledge management as it stands in current day science and practice.

Web 2.0 and Personal Knowledge Management: A Framework of Skills for Effectiveness

This chapter explores the benefits and challenges that Web 2.0 tools present to knowledge workers and proposes a framework of personal knowledge management (PKM) skills to foster effectiveness in Web 2.0 settings. Research into Web 2.0 in the enterprise has focused primarily at the organizational level. Although the importance of individual knowledge workers is well known, there is limited understanding of the issues that Web 2.0 tools present for PKM and the related skills required. Our study aimed to address this gap. We interviewed six individuals from multinational software companies—three software developers and three middle managers. Our analysis combined an inductive approach with use of Avery et al. (Personal knowledge management: Framework for integration and partnership. ASCUE 2001 Conference Proceedings, North Myrtle Beach, SC, 2001) PKM skills model. Key perceived benefits of Web 2.0 were time saving, timeliness, improved collaboration, ability to locate knowledge holders, and improved communication across hierarchies and silos. Participants highlighted five main challenges: unreliable information quality, inequality of participation, lack of knowledge about the nature of technology, security risk, and fragmentation of information. They combined eight PKM skills to militate the challenges and realize the benefits of Web 2.0. We propose an adaptation of Avery et al. (Personal knowledge management: Framework for integration and partnership. ASCUE 2001 Conference Proceedings, North Myrtle Beach, SC, 2001) model that identifies eight PKM skills relevant to Web 2.0 and a framework for understanding how these promote individual performance in the context of Web 2.0. While the need for some traditional skills appears to be reduced, we found that two additional PKM skills were critical: creating and curating information and exercising time control.

Indigenous Knowledge Sharing in Sarawak: A System-Level View and Its Implications for the Cultural Heritage Sector

This article is written on the premise that indigenous people have their own ways of knowledge sharing and knowledge transfer. Using narrative inquiry, stories from three Sarawak-based indigenous groups were analysed to determine the nature of knowledge involved and how this related to transfer methods. The results suggest that a traditional indigenous knowledge system can be presented in a tiered model, in which the kind of knowledge in each tier determines the ways of knowledge sharing. The paper argues that cultural heritage institutions would benefit from understanding indigenous knowledge systems when they design policies and methods for the acquisition of knowledge from indigenous people.