Joseph Meloche

Cocreating Corporate Knowledge with a Wiki

Wikis have a growing reputation on the open Internet for producing evolving stores of shared knowledge. However, such democratic systems are often treated with suspicion within corporations for management, legal, social, and other reasons. This article describes a field study of a corporate Wiki that has been developed to capture, and make available, organisational knowledge in a large manufacturing company as an initiative of their Knowledge Management (KM) program. As this approach to KM is a controversial and rapidly changing phenomenon, a Q Methodology research approach was selected to uncover employees’ subjective attitudes to the Wiki. Activity Theory was used to provide a deeper interpretation of the findings of the Q-study. The results are enabling the firm to more fully exploit the potential of the Wiki as a ubiquitous tool for successful tacit and explicit knowledge management as more employees are encouraged to participate in a process of cocreating the store of corporate knowledge. The article also demonstrates how meaningful and rigorous research on this new democratic direction of corporate KM should continue.

Innovative ICT-mediated activities for people, profit and planet

Purpose – Solutions to complex environmental problems rely on the innovative knowledge and expertise of many professions whose members accept their responsibilities towards the environment. The study described here canvases information systems (IS) professionals for their perspectives, knowledge and expertise within the domains of Green IT and Green IS.Design/methodology/approach – Following a review of the Green IT and IS literature, two topics were identified for a Q‐study conducted among IS professionals: topic 1 focussed on which technologies, systems and applications offer the greatest opportunity in solving environmental problems, and topic 2 on what sets of issues affect these green opportunities. Activity Theory was used to interpret the factors emerging from the Q‐study.Findings – Three categories of activities were identified in topic 1 involving ICT support for “teleworking and teleconferencing”, “monitoring, optimising, and modelling” and “influencing human understanding and behaviour”. The to...

ICT Devices as Ubiquitous Tools for Information Seeking Activity

This paper investigates the use of current and developing ubiquitous digital devices and the way that they impact on, and are integrated into, use by groups within the community for information seeking. Three cases are presented involving ubiquitous use of the mobile phone, USB memory devices, and a wireless groupware system. The study considers the need for ongoing research to inform, direct and study the innovative use, appropriation and development of such tools. The primary methodological framework that is applied is activity theory, as it allows dasiatoolpsila to be examined in light of purposeful activity in the context of their use.

The Power of Play in Knowledge Management

The aim and motivation of this research is to investigate ways to support and encourage knowledge sharing. Specifically we examined ways in which ‘play’ can be used to enhance collaborative work practices. In this process we elicited subjective views and opinions on playing games and the extent to which the participant’s felt these could enhance their collaboration in work. The ancient Chinese strategy game of Go was employed in an online team version as a means to evaluate and advance the knowledge sharing culture in a network centric environment. The results of this research identified that play has the power to engage participants into the collaborative work practices and that it can provide an opportunity for teams to see the value of sharing information, and hence to improve the knowledge management practices.

Australian Online Public Information Systems:An Evaluative Study of an Evolving Public Health Website

Rapid developments in ICT are extending and transforming the ways public services are delivered to citizens. The area of public healthcare has always been viewed as particularly as information intensive. This phenomenon is made more complex by rapid changes and continual increases in technological capability as well as increasing demands for new functions by users. Therefore, when conducting research in this area it is essential to take a holistic approach that integrates the latest ICT tools and processes with the needs of individuals. Q methodology is a research design that provides a foundation for the systematic study of subjectivity. The use of Q in the dynamic health context, we propose, is appropriate as a way of fostering deeper understandings of online public health phenomena. This paper reports on the results of a subjective study of the usefulness and usability of online public health information systems. The study used Q-methodology to investigate the perceptions of an Australian palliative care website with a group of available potential users of the website, which was composed of medical practitioners and students, and the general public, mostly from the computer-literate academic community. The most significant finding of this subjective study of internet-literate participants’ perceptions towards online palliative care is the recognition of four groups: interactive, superficial, medical and service.

Simulating information exchanges to investigate the utility of public health web sites

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to present research into the area of internet support for professional‐public communication through a deeper understanding of the role that a web site can provide in meeting the information needs of critically ill patients in intensive care units (ICUs). The communication between clinicians and members of the patients family in the stressful ICU is modelled to give an integrated view of the situation and thereby allow for the incorporation of the views of all stakeholders on how the internet can meet this communication need.Design/methodology/approach – The paper takes a broad, holistic, systemic approach that integrates the latest information and communications technology tools and processes with rich qualitative data from all stakeholder groups. The data are interpreted through the use of system dynamic modelling to visually conceptualise information flows and communication between clinicians and family members of patients.Findings – The paper conceptualises, visu...