Paul Parboteeah

Expert evaluation study of an autopoietic model of knowledge

Purpose – The aim of the autopoietic model of knowledge is to act as a common foundation for KM to overcome the numerous knowledge management failures highlighted by the literature attributed to inaccurate or constantly debated definitions of knowledge. This paper seeks to evaluate such a model.Design/methodology/approach – Participants for this interpretivist evaluation study were selected by convenience sampling. Experts known to the authors were asked to participate, and 12 took part. Face‐to‐face interviews were conducted and lasted between 45 to 60 minutes. Member checking was used during the interviews. The data was analysed using the recursive abstraction method.Findings – The study highlighted the complexities of conducting an expert evaluation of a model that was deemed both too high level and too low level by the experts. The study highlighted the challenge of evaluating a model that is theoretically correct, but required acceptance in the knowledge management discipline. The study also showed t...

The Business Models and Economics of Peer-to-Peer Lending

This paper reviews peer-to-peer (P2P) lending, its development in the UK and other countries, and assesses the business and economic policy issues surrounding this new form of intermediation. P2P platform technology allows direct matching of borrowers’ and lenders’ diversification over a large number of borrowers without the loans having to be held on an intermediary balance sheet. P2P lending has developed rapidly in both the US and the UK, but it still represents a small fraction, less than 1%, of the stock of bank lending. In the UK – but not elsewhere – it is an important source of loans for smaller companies. We argue that P2P lending is fundamentally complementary to, and not competitive with, conventional banking. We therefore expect banks to adapt to the emergence of P2P lending, either by cooperating closely with third-party P2P lending platforms or offering their own proprietary platforms. We also argue that the full development of the sector requires much further work addressing the risks and business and regulatory issues in P2P lending, including risk communication, orderly resolution of platform failure, control of liquidity risks and minimisation of fraud, security and operational risks. This will depend on developing reliable business processes, the promotion to the full extent possible of transparency and standardisation and appropriate regulation that serves the needs of customers.

Preliminary Report on Standards in Global Financial Markets

This paper considers the ‘market failures’ that can block standardisation and recommends actions to overcome these barriers and so ensure greater realisation of the efficiency and risk-reduction benefits of standardisation in global financial markets. It first reviews the economic benefits of standardisation and the ‘market failures’ (lack of co-ordination and vested interests) can prevent these being achieved. It then looks at standard setting institutions in a range of industries (engineering, the global supply chain, the internet) developed to overcome these market failures, comparing these with the relatively underdeveloped institutions of standards development in financial services. It goes on to examine the development of both transaction and data reference standards in financial markets, finding that much remains to be done, especially on data reference standards where the limited progress to date has relied largely on regulatory mandate. Finally it recommends three practical actions to improve standardisation in global financial markets: (i) Promotion of discussion and dialogue across industry; (ii) engagement of senior management in the task of building cross industry support for both standardisation and standards institutions; and (iii) renewed effort, by researchers and practitioners, on identifying specific opportunities for using standardisation to promote business efficiency and improve market transparency.

Lessons from the Medical Industry for Big Data in Finance: Ontologies and Financial Stress Diagnostics

We examine the lessons from the experience of the SNOMED CT ontology in medicine for the monitoring of systemic financial risk. Using big data to create financial stress diagnostics that are informative about the causes of systemic risk, requires ontological understanding of financial data at the granular level. The history of SNOMED indicates that developing such an understanding is a long term project, requiring co-operation of many participants and a well developed structure of governance.