Lena Aggestam

How to Disseminate Professional Knowledge in Healthcare: The Case of Skaraborg Hospital

Undertaking to implement a knowledge management approach is inherently difficult and risky for organizations. This article describes and discusses an implementation of a knowledge management system that took place at Skaraborg Hospital, a group of hospitals in the South West of Sweden. The article describes how the implementation process was carried out. Based on the experiences from this case and some previous cases, the article suggests a number of best practices for implementing a knowledge management approach.

Understanding Champion Behaviour in a Health-Care Information System Development Project – How Multiple Champions and Champion Behaviours Build a Coherent Whole

Champions are commonly suggested as a means of promoting the adoption of information systems. Since there are many different definitions of the concepts of champion and champion behaviour in the literature, practitioners and researchers may be confused about how to exactly use these concepts. A qualitative analysis of a single case study in a Swedish health-care organisation enabled us to explain how different champion behaviours relate to each other and how multiple champions interact. Combining our rich case observations with an analysis of champion literature reveals how champion behaviours form a coherent and meaningful whole in which networks of different types of champions at different levels in an organisation utilise their network of relations, their knowledge of the organisation and their insight into strategic decision-making politics to time and orchestrate the framing of innovations and the involvement of the right people. In conclusion, championing is a complex performance of contextually dependent collective social interaction, varying over time, rather than a heroic act of one individual promoting an idea. Future studies need to focus more on how the relations between different champions and their behaviours develop across innovations and over time, in order to develop a richer understanding of championing.

Understanding knowledge leakage: a review of previous studies

Purpose – This paper aims to review research on the topic of knowledge leakage to establish the current body of knowledge and, on this basis, to suggest some promising avenues for future research.D ...

Supporting Knowledge Evaluation to Increase Quality in Electronic Knowledge Repositories

Knowledge forms an important asset in modern organizations. In order to gain and sustain competitive advantage knowledge has to be managed. One aspect of this is to use Electronic Knowledge Repositories EKR to enhance knowledge sharing, reuse and learning. The success of an EKR is dependent on the quality of its content. For knowledge to be stored in an EKR, it has to be captured. One crucial part of the capture process is to evaluate whether the identified knowledge should be incorporated in the EKR or not. Therefore, to increase quality in an EKR, the evaluation stage of the capture process must be successfully carried out. Based on an interpretive field study and an extensive literature review, this paper identifies and characterizes Critical Success Factors CSF in the evaluation stage and presents guidance aiming to support implementation of the evaluation stage with the purpose to increase the quality of an EKR. In particular, the guidance supports the decision whether identified knowledge should be stored or not and it highlights the importance of performing evaluation addressing correctness, relevance, protection and redundancy. The characterization of the capture process contributes mainly to KM theory, and the guidance to KM practice.

Increasing the Quality in IT-Supported Knowledge Repositories: Critical Success Factors for Identifying Knowledge

IT-supported knowledge repositories are an important part in Knowledge Management (KM) work. The success of an IT-supported knowledge repository is dependent on what is stored in the repository and hence the ability to capture the right knowledge is a key aspect. Therefore, to increase the quality in an IT-supported Knowledge Repository, the identify activity, which starts the capture process, must be successfully performed. While Critical Success Factors (CSF) for KM and KMS are frequently discussed in the literature, there is a knowledge gap concerning CSF for this specific knowledge capture activity. Based on an interpretive field study and a literature review, this paper proposes and characterizes CSF for the identify activity. For example, we highlight the importance of having organizational knowledge about what knowledge to capture and where to find it, i.e. having knowledge about potential sources of knowledge.

Knowledge Leakage when SMEs Participate in Supply Chains: What Is It About and How Can It Occur?

The advantages of sharing knowledge when participating in a Supply Chain SC are well established in the literature, but the challenge of knowledge leakage, and how to manage it, is still in its infancy. In order to increase the understanding of knowledge leakage, when SMEs participate in SCs, this study describes types of knowledge that may leak away, how they are valued, and how knowledge leakage can occur. The result includes two frameworks that also have shown to be potentially useful for examining the maturity of a specific SME with regard to knowledge leakages when participating in the SC.

Knowledge Capture in E-Services Development: A Prosperous Marriage?

In this paper, the authors examine whether the union of Knowledge Management with e-services development would be successful in performing as a collaborative functioning unit. The focus of this research is examining the potential for using Knowledge Management as a means for improving research and practice in e-services development. The authors analyze a real-life case against the Knowledge Capture model and its associated knowledge loss. The results show that KM theory has definite potential to elevate e-services research and practice, for example, by adding analysis and decision points concerning what knowledge to use and how to collect it. This is particularly relevant when collecting requirements, information, and desires from potential users of an e-service at the start of a development project.