Miltiadis D. Lytras

Informal learning in work environments: training with the Social Web in the workplace

The Internet and its increasing usage has changed informal learning in depth. This change has affected young and older adults in both the workplace and in higher education. But, in spite of this, formal and non-formal course-based approaches have not taken full advantage of these new informal learning scenarios and technologies. The Web 2.0 is a new way for people to communicate across the Internet. Communication is a means of transformation and knowledge exchange. These are the facts that cannot be obviated by the organisations in their training programmes and knowledge management. This special issue is devoted to investigating how informal learning changes or influences online information in Social Web and training strategies in institutions. In order to do so, five papers will present different approaches of informal learning in the workplace regarding Web 2.0 capabilities.

Knowledge management convergence – expanding learning frontiers

KM seems to be another buzzword. More and more we hear about the new imperatum of knowledge. Like researchers in a new field, our daily life is a continuous knowledge management process. Moreover, the origins of our focus diversify biased to the KM perspectives that we have conceptualized. Our paper intends to reveal the continuous process of KM to re‐usable learning objects. The case of organizational memory is treated as a cumulative system of value adding components. The deployment of information and communication technologies in our approach justifies the intelligence of our analysis. Web semantics, metadata specification and extensive XML specifications provide only the enclosure of an extensive analysis of concepts. Two concepts are presented: multidimensional dynamic e‐learning and the value adding knowledge management framework.

Competencies and human resource management: implications for organizational competitive advantage

Purpose – The paper seeks to analyze in depth the organizational requirements for the exploitation of human resource management towards increased organizational performance, and to provide a conceptual framework for the analysis of human resource management in learning organizations.Design/methodology/approach – The paper takes the form of an extensive literature review on human resource management (HRM), organizational learning and human capital.Findings – The major contribution is the Requirements Framework for the Adoption of Technology Enhanced Learning and Semantic Web Technologies, which can guide strategies of effective competencies management in modern organizations. This framework initiates an interesting discussion of technological issues that go beyond the scope of this paper.Research limitations/implications – The Requirements Framework provides the basis for an extensive specification of knowledge management strategies. A follow‐up publication will present the practical implications of the “t...

The semantic learning organization

Purpose – The aim of this paper is introducing the concept of a “semantic learning organization” (SLO) as an extension of the concept of “learning organization” in the technological domain.Design/methodology/approach – The paper takes existing definitions and conceptualizations of both learning organizations and Semantic Web technology to develop the new concept.Findings – The main points in which Semantic Web technology can be applied to learning in organizations are identified, and ontological accounts of organizational earning behaviour are pointed out as the main open question to develop the concept of a SLO.Originality/value – The paper provides a new conceptual framework for Semantic Web applications in organizational learning, which can be used as a roadmap for further research.

Integrating descriptions of knowledge management learning activities into large ontological structures: a case study

Ontologies have been recognized as a fundamental infrastructure for advanced approaches to Knowledge Management (KM) automation, and the conceptual foundations for them have been discussed in some previous reports. Nonetheless, such conceptual structures should be properly integrated into existing ontological bases, for the practical purpose of providing the required support for the development of intelligent applications. Such applications should ideally integrate KM concepts into a framework of commonsense knowledge with clear computational semantics. In this paper, such an integration work is illustrated through a concrete case study, using the large OpenCyc knowledge base. Concretely, the main elements of the Holsapple and Joshi KM ontology and some existing work on e-learning ontologies are explicitly linked to OpenCyc definitions, providing a framework for the development of functionalities that use the built-in reasoning services of OpenCyc in KM activities. The integration can be used as the point of departure for the engineering of KM-oriented systems that account for a shared understanding of the discipline and rely on public semantics provided by one of the largest open knowledge bases available.

Towards the development of a novel taxonomy of knowledge management systems from a learning perspective: an integrated approach to learning and knowledge infrastructures

Purpose – The paper aims to discuss the critical issue of learning and knowledge convergence in knowledge‐intensive organizations, and to provide practical guidelines for effective strategies.Design/methodology/approach – The paper brings together previous research in knowledge management and provides a critique for the lack of integration of previous studies with learning, a key process for efficient knowledge management. Stemming from this critique, an integrative framework for knowledge management support from a learning perspective is proposed.Findings – The major contribution is the framework for knowledge management support from a learning perspective, which can guide strategies of effective knowledge and learning management. This framework initiates an interesting discussion of technological issues that can enhance current knowledge management practices.Research limitations/implications – The taxonomy of knowledge management systems provides the basis for an extensive specification of knowledge man...

Guest Editors' Introduction: Semantic-Web-Based Knowledge Management

The Semantic Web promises to make Web-accessible data more amenable to machine processing. This special issue presents several proposals for the Semantic Webs strategic role in supporting more effective knowledge management at several levels.

Project management as a knowledge management primer: the learning infrastructure in knowledge‐intensive organizations: projects as knowledge transformations and beyond

The digital economy is based on knowledge and the ultimate objective is the reinforcement of performance. The business strategy has been shifted from the management of tangible assets to intangible resources and the traditional competitive position of business units is based on their capacity for effective action. The main conclusion is that a knowledge and learning management infrastructure is required in order to realize every knowledge organization as a learning organization capable of exploiting the organizational knowledge wealth.

Semantic Web and Knowledge Management for the health domain: state of the art and challenges for the Seventh Framework Programme (FP7) of the European Union (2007-2013)

Information Systems in the context of the health domain play a critical role. The evolution of the semantic web and knowledge management technologies in the last years set a new context for the exploitation of patient-centric strategies based on well-defined semantics and knowledge. In this paper we have two critical objectives. On the one hand to exploit the state of the art on Semantic Web and Knowledge Management (KM) approaches in the context of the health domain and on the other hand to underline the key challenges within the FP7 framework of the European Union for customised and personalised health services.

Editorial: Revisiting the (Machine) Semantic Web: The Missing Layers for the Human Semantic Web

THE Semantic Web has recently emerged as a new and highly promising context for knowledge and data engineering. Within an atmosphere of high expectations, many myths as well as many visions have exhibited a number of different approaches for the exploitation of the Semantic Web in both academia and industry. However, a struggling business reality requires a concrete strategy as well as the development of specific competencies from the knowledge and data engineering community in order to prove the value of the Semantic Web to society. For three years, we have undertaken a significant effort to cultivate the Semantic Web vision in the computer science, information systems, and Semantic Web communities through the Special Interest Group on Semantic Web and Information Systems of the Association for Information Systems (AIS, see http://www.aisnet.org [1], [8]). We have emphasized the benefits of the Semantic Web merits in different application contexts, including digital libraries, e-government, knowledge management, health care, and e-learning [3], [4], [5], [6]. One of the most fascinating aspects of our effort is the exchange of ideas with people that come from different disciplines, which has led us to arrive at the conclusion that the Semantic Web adoption requires the convergence of many different disciplines; this is illustrated in Fig. 1. It is more than obvious that, after an early stage of evolution, Semantic Web research has reached a first level of maturity. Most significantly, some “voices” of criticism or questioning for the pace of the change that Semantic Web brings to traditional knowledge and data engineering have initiated a new stream of innovations. The concept of semantics [2] and its capacity to support a new era of applications challenges the traditional perceptions for the never-ending journey of computing. Knowledge and data representation and retrieval require new conceptual models and the move to a human Semantic Web vision seems more timely than ever. After the initial enthusiasm and excitement following the launch of the Semantic Web vision, a time of significant problems, unexploited opportunities, and slow adoption followed. Knowledge and data engineering had to meet several diverse and high demanding requirements for the realization of the Semantic Web. In numerous international efforts as well as in various research and competence centers of the Semantic Web, there is now a continuous effort to reach the point for a real “take-off” of the Semantic Web. It looks like an entire research community is looking for the last step before the breaking of the “wall.” And, this wall is associated with all the inefficiencies of the traditional Web, and with a panacea for the solution of all the knowledgerelated performance gaps. For the past one and a half years, we have been working hard, with the support of a large number of reviewers, on the development of an excellent quality TKDE special issue on the Semantic Web. From the beginning, our motivation was based on a clear belief that the Semantic Web represents a key milestone for the knowledge and data engineering community. While the Semantic Web is often considered to be a machine-intensive/oriented theme, our key argumentation is that Semantic Web is a Human manifesto [7]. The fundamental social and political impact of the Semantic Web is derived from the fact that its underlying technology supports a shift of social interaction patterns from “knowledge push” to “knowledge pull” [7]. This includes the shift