actually gets done, especially how people involve each other in their work. In particular, a model of practice reveals how people accomplish a collaboration through multiple and alternative means of communication, such as meetings, computer tools, and written documents. Choices of what and how to communicate are dependent upon social beliefs and behaviors---what people know about each other's activities, intentions, and capabilities and their understanding of the norms of the group. As a result, Brahms models can help human---computer system designers to understand how tasks and information actually flow between people and machines, what work is required to synchronize individual contributions, and how tools hinder or help this process. In particular, workflow diagrams generated by Brahms are the emergent product of local interactions between agents and representational artifacts, not pre-ordained, end-to-end p

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This paper considers the relationship between the stocks and flows of learning across levels in an overall organizational learning system. A survey instrument based on the Strategic Learning Assessment Map (SLAM) was administered to 15 individuals representing senior-, middle- and non-management levels from each of 32 organizations, resulting in a total sample of 480 respondents. This research supports the premise that there is a positive relationship between the stocks of learning at all levels and business poibrmance. Furthermore, the proposition that the misalignment of stocks and flows in an overall organizational learning system is negatively associated with business per, finance is also supported.

Vol 6, No. 2, 2002 (May) The agreement of the publishers to distribution at this conference is gratefully acknowledged. We are reaching the end of the second generation of knowledge management, with its focus on tacit-explicit knowledge conversion. Triggered by the SECI model of Nonaka, it replaced a first generation focus on timely information provision for decision support and in support of BPR initiatives. Like BPR it has substantially failed to deliver on its promised benefits. The third generation requires the clear separation of context, narrative and content management and challenges the orthodoxy of scientific management. Complex adaptive systems theory is used to create a sense-making model that utilises self-organising capabilities of the informal communities and identifies a natural flow model of knowledge creation, disruption and utilisation. However the argument from nature of many complexity thinkers is rejected given the human capability to create order and predictability through collective and individual acts of freewill. Knowledge is seen paradoxically, as both a thing and a flow requiring diverse management

This article examines the key assumptions of any information strategy and demonstrates why they should be considered afresh. Based on this discussion, the author proposes a new perspective on knowledge management and suggests how managers can effectively deploy it in the new world of E-business. nformation strategy executives observed some significant transitions during the last quarter of the twentieth century: information technology (IT) as a lever of competitive advantage; the IT outsourcing bandwagon effect characterized by consideration of information as a "utility" just like electric power or the telephone; and more recently, the E-everything phenomenon with the emergence of the Internet and electronic commerce as key factors in business and IT strategy. While some researchers suggested that same investments in information systems would yield different benefits in competitive advantage, others, such as the IT economist Paul Strassmann, concluded that there is no relationship whatsoever between computer expenditures and company performance. John Seely Brown, director of Xerox Parc, observed that despite investments of over $1 trillion in technology over two decades of this era, U.S. industry had realized little improvement in the efficiency and effectiveness of its knowledge workers. The confusion between knowledge and information has caused managers to sink billions of dollars into information technology investments that have often yielded marginal results. The disconnect between IT expenditures and the firms' organizational performance could be attributed to an economic transition from an era of competitive advantage based on information to one based on knowledge creation. The earlier era was characterized by relatively slow and predictable change that could be d...

Abstract. The primary goal of today’s search and browsing techniques is to find relevant documents. As the current web evolves into the next generation termed the Semantic Web, the emphasis will shift from finding documents to finding facts, actionable information, and insights. Improving ability to extract facts, mainly in the form of entities, embedded within documents leads to the fundamental challenge of discovering relevant and interesting relationships amongst the entities that these documents describe. Relationships are fundamental to semantics—to associate meanings to words, terms and entities. They are a key to new insights. Knowledge discovery is also about discovery of heretofore new relationships. The Semantic Web seeks to associate annotations (i.e., metadata), primarily consisting of based on concepts (often representing entities) from one or more ontologies/vocabularies with all Web-accessible resources such that programs can associate “meaning with data”. Not only it supports the goal of automatic interpretation and processing (access, invoke, utilize, and analyze), it also enables improvements in scalability compared to approaches that are not semantics-based. Identification, discovery, validation and utilization of relationships (such as during query evaluation), will be a critical computation on the Semantic Web. Based on our research over the last decade, this paper takes an empirical look at various types of

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Based on a study of knowledge transfer within more than 15 industries, across three forms of governance, and between both domestic and international R&D partners, knowledge transfer success was found to be associated with several key variables, and to hinge upon (a) both R&D units’ understanding where the desired knowledge resides within the source, (b) the extent to which the parties share similar knowledge bases, and the extent of interactions between the source and the recipient to (c) transfer the knowledge and (d) participate in an articulation process through which the source’s knowledge is made accessible to the recipient.

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This is a careful and insightful case study of how the Toyota Production System manages the paradox of efficiency and flexibility, which arises periodically in connection with model changeovers. The authors detail the functioning of four organizational mechanisms—metaroutines, partitioning, switching, and ambidexterity. However, of particular interest is the contextual reinforcing role of training and trust in administrative structures, procedures, and rules.