Kieren Diment

Organizational Commitment, Knowledge Management Interventions, and Learning Organization Capacity.

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to examine the relationship between organizational commitment and knowledge management initiatives in developing learning organization capacity (LOC).Design/methodology/approach – This is an empirical study based on a single case study, using partial least squares (PLS) analysis.Findings – The strategic importance of LOC and the role of knowledge sharing in developing LOC have been well documented. The effect of social and conversational technologies on LOC has also undergone investigation. The effect of individual factors (e.g. attitudes) towards such technologies has not been adequately described empirically. This paper links organizational commitment, a broad attitude domain, and technology aptitude, a narrow attitudinal facet, to knowledge sharing via a social and conversational technology.Originality/value – This research clarifies person‐related effects within these important workplace phenomena.

How Demographic Characteristics Affect Mode Preference in a Postal/Web Mixed-Mode Survey of Australian Researchers

Early promise for the Internet as a tool to make social research questionnaires easier and cheaper to deliver is not fully realized. This study reports a mixed-mode survey of 1,100 Australian researchers. When respondents were given the choice to complete either web- or paper-based versions of a questionnaire, the majority chose the paper-based mode. Web respondents were more likely to be young, male, middle ranking, and working in information technology—related sectors. The authors highlight the need to determine how far alternate delivery modes increase response rates. For mixed-mode surveys to be financially and methodologically worthwhile, the authors propose that the initial sample size be at least 1,000 individuals, this figure depending on the demographic characteristics of the sample.

Careers and Organisational Objectives: Managing Competing Interests in Cooperative Research Centres

This chapter contribution to the edited volume addresses the growing interest among science policy researchers and practitioners in understanding the organisational dilemmas confronted in cooperative research centres (CRCs). The authors Sam Garrett-Jones, Tim Turpin and Kieren Diment acknowledge that little empirical evidence exists on (a) how individual researchers perceive the benefits of their participation, (b) how far the structures and functions of particular centres coalesce around of researchers’ expectations and (c) what problems arise for researchers who opt for a ‘second job’ in the centre. The authors use the broad policy and organisational context of the Australian CRC to conduct a qualitative analysis of a survey of respondents from government organisations and universities involved in these centres. They use the perspective of the individual research scientists from academia and government participating in centres to illuminate the management issues of trust, governance and competition between functional domains, which emerge from the field of inter-organisational relationships, which the authors suggest have been inadequately recognised in the context of CRC including but not limited to the Australian model. For complementary examinations, see the chapter by Branco Ponomariov and Craig Boardman on benefits across stakeholder types (including but not limited to academic faculty) from participation in CRC as well as the chapter by Beth M. Coberly and Denis O. Gray on the tangible and intangible benefits gained (or not) by academic faculty participating in centres.

Piloting a logic-based framework for understanding organisational change process for a health IT implementation

This paper describes how a method for evaluating organisational change based on the theory of logical types can be used for classifying organisational change processes to understand change after the implementation of an electronic documentation system in a residential aged care facility. In this instance we assess the organisational change reflected by care staffs perceptions of the benefits of the new documentation system at one site, at pre-implementation, and at 12 months post-implementation. The results show how a coherent view from the staff as a whole of the personal benefits, the benefits for others and the benefits for the organization create a situation of positive feedback leading to embeddedness of the documentation system into the site, and a broader appreciation of the potential capabilities of the electronic documentation system.