Meir Russ

Toward a taxonomy of knowledge-based strategies: early findings

Knowledge-Based (KB) Strategies are being recognised as a vital factor of business strategy. Still, a complete taxonomy of KB strategies is absent. This research proposes such a framework by analysing the typology of six KB strategic dimensions, and organisational culture. The findings suggest that organisations have six major strategic decisions to make when it comes to strategically managing their knowledge base. The analysis shows that culture and strategies have a positive association with organisational effectiveness. The findings also suggest that KB strategy relationship to outcomes is complementary to culture. Based on the findings, the study offers an early draft of a KB strategies taxonomy.

Electronic markets and the future internet: from clouds to semantics

Internet entrepreneurs are dramatically changing the business environment since the late 1990s by revolutionizing how business processes and transactions are conducted all over the world. In this sense, business networking revenues are increasing exponentially and the number of products/services available online for businesses and consumers are also growing steadily. However, questions remain unanswered regarding whether and how new Internet technologies such as the so called social web, the semantic web and cloud computing will bring new forms of business networking, business value creation activities and business models. The social web can be defined as the second generation of community-driven web services (Social Networking Site, blogs, wikis, and others) where everyone can communicate, participate, collaborate and refine the information space (Colomo-Palacios 2010; Paroutis and Al Saleh 2009). In other words, the social web encompasses the design of websites and software to support and foster social interaction. Social web technologies have become not only key tools for information and knowledge management within firms (Valencia-Garcia et al. 2010), but also a required tool for competition and interaction with customers across many industries. These web sites allow knowledge creation and sharing by the interaction of employees and other stakeholders via blogs, wikis, forums and online social networks. At the same time, the potential of the social web has allowed firms not only to interact with customers but also to promote their products and services. In this sense, firms are more frequently adopting these new channels and technologies to improve their reputation and increase their market share. Shared ownership of brand, image and reputation are key benefits derived from the social Web (Jones and Iredale 2009). Despite all the above mentioned benefits resulting from the implementation of Internet technologies, traditional websites are designed to be read by people, not machines. In this sense, the advent of the semantic web has emerged in the form of new promising tools for information and data engineering (Vossen et al. 2007). The term “semantic web” was coined by Berners-Lee et al. (2001), to describe the evolution from a document-based web toward a new paradigm that includes data and information for computers to manipulate. The semantic web facilitates computers’ interpretation of information, so they can perform more of the tedious work involved in finding, combining, and acting upon information on the web (Soto-Acosta et al. 2010). In this sense, the semantic web is driving the evolution of the current web by enabling users to find, share, and combine information more easily. Still other Internet tools and services such as cloud computing are arising nowadays. Cloud computing involves the delivery of computing (shared resources and software) over the Internet as a service rather than as a product (Colomo-Palacios et al. 2012) In particular, cloud computing enables the transformation of Information Technology expenditure from a “capital expenditure” (requiring finances which may be difficult to raise) to a pay-as-you-go “operating expenditure” (Nikolov 2011). In this sense, cloud computing presents a number of potential benefits which are driving its adoption. Some of the R. Colomo-Palacios (*) Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, Madrid, Spain e-mail: ricardo.colomo@uc3m.es

Knowledge-based strategies: a foundation of a typology

Knowledge, besides being recognised as a business asset, is being considered a crucial component of business strategy. As a result, companies are investing heavily in Information Systems (IS) technologies. Unfortunately, very often the investments do not fulfill their expected returns. This paper embarks on the development of a typology of Knowledge-Based (KB) strategies to address this situation. Two alternative strategies were identified and a set of survey instruments was validated. The analysis showed that the strategies had a positive relationship to R&D and training and development investments and had a direct and indirect relationship with organisational outcomes. The research indicates that KB strategies are significantly related to all IS technologies studied. Evidence of reciprocal relationships between IS technologies and KB strategies was found for specific and different IS technologies. This may suggest that some technologies are more important for a specific KB strategy. The analysis also indicates that there is a significant relationship between business outcomes, KB strategies, and IS technologies in the case of earnings.

A typology of knowledge management strategies for hospital preparedness: what lessons can be learned?

Recently, hospital emergency preparedness has come under scrutiny. Having a written plan, even training for every possible attack might not be sufficient if there is a shortage in the required local knowledge and capacity. Until recently, knowledge management has not been at the core of the healthcare business model despite healthcare being a knowledge-intensive business. Hospitals are becoming aware of the need for capturing the knowledge of their staff and focusing on the efficient and effective use of information technology. The authors modified slightly an earlier typology of six different Knowledge-Based (KB) strategies that was validated in the business-for-profit sector to fit the unique aspects of KB strategies for hospital preparedness. Based on the proposed typology, hospitals have a number of choices to consider. Since organisational cultures are different, this suggests that each hospital must tailor a disaster plan to fit its unique characteristics, environment and history.

Changes in the value implications of compensation costs throughout the economic cycle: an examination of high-tech versus low-tech industries

This study explores whether and how the value implications of compensation costs change throughout the economic cycle. Given that we are dealing with the human aspect of the intangibles that drive the value created by a company, it is not obvious what impact the ‘boom’ and ‘bust’ phases of the economic cycle will have on investor valuations of this primary component of a company’s investment in human capital (HC). Our results reveal that economic cycles have a substantial immediate impact on the value implications of compensation costs. Specifically, these value implications increase significantly during upticks in the economy and decline in the downturns, in high-tech as well as low-tech firms. Notwithstanding, the value implications of compensation costs are consistently higher for high-tech firms. Furthermore, the changes in value implications for high-tech firms throughout the economic trends are more volatile than those observed for low-tech firms. When differentiating between investors on and outside the exchange, we find consistently stronger value implications of compensation costs for the latter. It seems that throughout the economic cycle more informed and sophisticated investors have a higher assessment of the role of a firm’s investment in HC in value creation. Another important implication of our results is that, in response to economic changes, investors modify their valuations of HC quickly rather than gradually, which is unexpected given the strategic value and complexity of the human aspect of the firm’s intangibles.

Knowledge-based strategies and information system technologies: preliminary findings

Knowledge-Based (KB) strategies are being recognised as a vital factor of business strategy. Still, there is limited empirical research in this young academic field. This research intends to add to the limited empirical research in the area of Knowledge Management (KM) and Information Systems (IS) technologies. This research uses a recently proposed framework to analyse the relationship between six KB strategic dimensions, organisational culture, and IS technologies. The results indicated that two KB strategies had a positive association with a number of IS technologies, but not all types of IS technologies. Further, only one IS technology showed statistically significant association with one of the outcomes tested.