A Systematic Review and Synthesis of Empirical Research on “Knowledge Leadership”: A New Insight in the Field of Knowledge Management

This paper aims to synthesize findings drawn from studies on knowledge leadership to identify the key trend of research in the knowledge management literature over the past two decades. A systematic literature review was performed over a data set of 149 related studies published in the international journals indexed by the WoS, SCOPUS, ProQuest, Google Scholar, Emerald Insight, and Elsevier databases between 2001 and 2021. The findings conceptualized the nature of “knowledge leadership” and revealed six core themes focusing on multiple leadership styles, knowledge leadership for learning, effective KM leadership, leader-member exchange, and customer knowledge leadership. Additionally, the content analysis revealed the importance of knowledge leaders being more transformational, distributed, empowering, and visionary. It has been widely reported that transformational leadership is a significant driver of knowledge management practices in the organization. This study provides an integrated picture of effective knowledge leadership for managers and practitioners that significantly depends on a paradigm shift from hierarchical structures and traditional models of leadership to the use of shared, distributed, and networking leadership. Given this increasing interest in studying the role of leadership in KM, it is interesting to investigate the research trend of knowledge leadership in the KM literature.https://dorl.net/dor/20.1001.1.20088302.2022.20.4.11.

Measuring Research Productivity of LIS Departments in the Middle East

oai:ojs.localhost:article/2142The present study measures research productivity of library and Information science departments in the Middle East. Data were collected from 16 countries whose LIS departments had at least one article indexed in Clarivate Analytics Web of Science between 2014 and 2018. Journals’ Citation Report was also used to collect further data. In measuring research productivity, the number of departments’ articles indexed in the Web of Science database and the size of each department (number of faculties) is considered as output and input, respectively. Findings indicated that Bar Ilan University had the highest research productivity (3.7), followed by Shiraz University (1.17) and Haceteppe University (1.04). With respect to LIS Department Research Productivity    Occupied Palestine, Turkey, Jordan, Kuwait and Iran ranked first to fifth respectively. The results of this research not only can contribute towards identifying highly productive and influential departments, but could also lay the groundworks for a well oriented scientific policy and cooperation.https://dorl.net/dor/20.1001.1.20088302.2022.20.2.3.

Trends and Evolution of Road User behaviour Research: A Bibliometric Review

Every single person is entitled to equal space on the roads or sidewalks, so they rely on each other’s empathy and compassion and not be self-centered. Therefore, it is essential to promote the ethics of road safety and road users’ exemplary behavior upmost. This review analyzed the publication trends and thematic evolution of road user behaviour over 47 years from 1973 to 2020. The assessment uses the Scopus database and various bibliometric indicators, such as output growth trends, eminent countries, research hotspots, and author keywords. Also, this study presented a graphical visualization of bibliometric indicators using a VOSviewer. Another bibliometric software tool, known as SciMAT, was used to inspect road user behaviour research’s thematic evolution. The verdicts revealed that the number of publications increased exponentially, starting in 2005 with a hike in publications in 2020. Road user behaviour researches were diverse by examining the various research hotspots. This review also focuses on several themes and dimensions of road user behaviour research. The essential motor theme during the first period (2005-2012) was “schools”. Other motor themes, such as “cross-sectional studies,” “car”, and “space-temporal-analysis”, became the most significant number of publications in the second period (2013-2020). These four themes may be beneficial as a benchmark for researchers focusing on the art of road user behaviour. This bibliometric study provides a comprehensive and in-depth view of road users’ behaviour that may help future researchers advance potential knowledge in this field.https://dorl.net/dor/20.1001.1.20088302.2022.20.3.5.2  

Growth and Development of Open Access Institutional Repositories in Africa

The present study attempts to highlight the growth and development of institutional repositories in Africa. The institutional repositories developed by African countries were identified by selecting the database of OpenDOAR (Directory of Open Access Repositories). The retrieved data were thoroughly analyzed for the necessary information. The study found a total of 219 open access repositories In Africa, out of which 161(73.51%) are Institutional repositories that contained theses and dissertations as one content type. The process of inclusion of institutional repositories at OpenDOAR in Africa started in the year 2005, while the maximum growth of repositories has been recorded during the year 2013 (21; 13%), 2015 (29; 18%), and 2019(46; 28%) respectively. The study also signifies that Kenya is the front runner contributing the highest institutional repositories, followed by South Africa and Nigeria. In terms of sub-region categorization (Eastern Africa, southern Africa, Northern Africa, Western Africa, and central Africa), it is observed that eastern Africa is the leading region having a maximum number of repositories while central Africa is lagging which do not have even a single repository registered with OpenDOAR. DSpace is the most preferred software used by the institutional repositories. The interface language assessment shows that English, the international language, was the most commonly preferred interface language by African institutional repositories.https://dorl.net/dor/20.1001.1.20088302.2022.20.1.3.

A Quantitative Comparative Study of Country University Competitiveness as Illustrated by the Countries of the Near East

A comparative study of the university systems of the countries of the Near East has been undertaken in this paper. It has been illustrated that the most competitive systems in terms of World University Rankings are the university systems of Iran, Israel, and Saudi Arabia. This conclusion, at a glance, was made based on the distribution of all the universities of 14 countries of the Near East by the ten World University Rankings. This conclusion was confirmed in a more detailed manner upon entering and calculating three integral indicators of country university competitiveness. They were expressed by multiplying and adding the number of the universities of the countries mentioned in the rankings mentioned above and the average values of the positioning of the universities in these systems. Together with the number of universities distributed among the countries, these three indicators correlated well with each other. The devised methodology of a quantitative assessment of country university competitiveness is proposed for a comparative study of this competitiveness in random groups of countries worldwide.https://dorl.net/dor/20.1001.1.20088302.2022.20.2.6.

An Investigation of the Architectural Spaces of Shiraz University Libraries with Respect to Design Standards as well as Academic Library Standards

This study investigates the architectural spaces of Shiraz University Libraries from users' viewpoints for architectural concepts and academic library standards. It also explores the architectural areas, appropriateness, and arrangement of internal communication inside the libraries and the strengths and weaknesses regarding activities performed in a typical academic library. The research method was a descriptive survey with a quantitative and qualitative approach. There were two statistical populations in this study. One was all the libraries in the faculties of Shiraz University, whose buildings have been designed for this purpose from the beginning. The other was all the students of different fields in the faculties of engineering, humanities, and educational sciences, social sciences, law, veterinary medicine, agriculture, and basic sciences of Shiraz University. The optimization method was Cochran's formula to determine the sample size. A researcher-made questionnaire for users containing fifty-four items on eight aspects of libraries, namely: the exterior space, main entrance space, circulation desk space, nonprint materials space (audio-visual resources, electronic resources, and databases), reference sources space, study hall space, hallways and service spaces and environmental issues such as air-conditioning. Another tool was a checklist based on the standards for Iranian university libraries and the fourth edition of the Sannwald Checklist published by the American Library Association. Based on this checklist, the spaces of the libraries were examined by observing and interviewing the library staff. The results obtained from the users' point of view, observation of libraries, and interviews with staff show that although some standards have been considered in the overall design of the library buildings of Shiraz University, many architectural standards and concepts have either been ignored or not fully considered in subspaces. The main problem seen in almost all libraries is the lack of a special entrance for disabled library patrons. In most cases, users' attitudes were in line with staff opinions and observations.https://dorl.net/dor/20.1001.1.20088302.2022.20.3.10.7  

Application of Bradford’s Law of Scattering to the Economics Literature During 2011-2020

The study has been conducted 330 journal articles contributions with a total of 9527 citations contributed by 763 authors published in volume 78, no. 309 to volume 87, no. 348 of the source Journal,  Economica between 2011 to 2020. An analysis of the different forms of literature, subject-wise distribution, ranking of top 24 cited journals, and the application of Bradford’s law in Economics literature has been made. Results indicate that major forms of literature are journal 6173 (64.795%), followed by Books 2097 (22.011%) and Working Papers 569 (5.972%). Economica has published an average of 33 articles per volume. The average number of citations appeared at 238.175 citations in each issue. ‘American Economic Review’, published from the USA, tops the list with a tally of 481 (7.792%) citations, ‘Journal of Political Economy’ with 399 (6.464%) citations, published from USA and followed by ‘Economic Journal’ with 335 (5.427%) citations from the UK as the third position. Economics literature is not fit well Bradford’s Law. Leimkuhler model is also applied to verify Bradford’s law of scattering in the field of Economics.https://dorl.net/dor/ 20.1001.1.20088302.2022.20.1.27.

A Bibliometric Mapping of Five Decades Research in Telecommuting

Globalization, new media development, and chaotic job climate have transformed the nature of the workplace in the 21st century. Thus, understanding areas of concern and expanding collaborating networks are essential to progress scientific creation towards integrated efforts. This study aimed to map the global research trends in telecommuting publications, research areas, prolific sources, most cited documents, authors co-authorship, institutions co-authorship, countries co-authorship, and keywords co-occurrence. Using the Scopus database, a total of 1453 telecommuting publications were disseminated between 1964 and 2020. The findings revealed that the number of publications fluctuated with hike publications in 2020. It can be interpreted that telecommuting research is miscellaneous by evaluating research fields. About 44.80% of the overall worldwide publications have been contributed by scholars from the United States, leading 77 other countries. Also, among the most prolific sources, the Transportation Research Record was the topmost of the other 159 outlets. The undertaken bibliometric study offers a comprehensive and in-depth view of telecommuting research that may be useful to practitioners and researchers in advancing potential knowledge in this field.https://dorl.net/dor/20.1001.1.20088302.2022.20.2.14.9  

Analysis of the Factors Affecting the Adoption of Management Information Systems

The present study was conducted with the aim to identify and rank the factors affecting the successful adoption of management information systems in medical centers of Kerman (Iran). For this purpose, based on research literature and experts’ interview 27 criteria were identified in four dimensions and categorized. Then, considering the causal relationships between them and the importance of each indicator, the AHP and DEMATEL multi-criteria decision making approach was used in the Intuitionistic fuzzy environment. In the present study, the weight of dimensions was determined using AHP method and then the causal relationships between dimensions and degree of influence and effectiveness of each dimension were determined using DEMTEL technique. The results obtained that the dimension of senior management support is identified as the most important dimension. Then, the dimensions of information quality, system quality, and finally the user experience are important.https://dorl.net/dor/20.1001.1.20088302.2022.20.3.4.1

Designing a Model for the Effect of Content Marketing on the Effectiveness of E-customer Relationship Management

The present study aims to design a model for the effect of content marketing on e-customer relationship management (E-CRM) in the Iran Public Libraries Foundation (IPLF). This research is applied in terms of its objective and mixed (quantitative-qualitative) in terms of its approach. The statistical population of the qualitative part of the research consists of experts who are fully acquainted with the subject of content marketing, including 17 professors in the departments of information science and knowledge, business management with the marketing orientation, information technology (IT), computer engineering and content production experts have chosen using purposeful and snowball sampling method. The statistical population of the research in the quantitative stage includes all managers, staff, and, librarians of Iranian public libraries, i.e. 7000 people. Using Cochran's formula and by stratified random sampling method, 364 people are selected as the total sample size. Due to sampling error (0.05) and the possibility of non-return of some questionnaires, 375 questionnaires are distributed and 366 questionnaires are collected and analyzed. Data collection tools are semi-structured interviews in the qualitative part and researcher-made questionnaire in the quantitative part, which is designed based on the findings of the qualitative part of the research. Also, the standard Kamalian, Amini Lari and Moezzi (2009) questionnaire is used to assess ECRM. In this study, theme analysis is used to identify the factors affecting content marketing, the fuzzy Delphi technique is used to consolidate the opinions of experts, and confirmatory factor analysis is used to evaluate the validity and reliability of the questionnaires. Results: Based on the study of texts and exploratory interviews with experts, five dimensions of strategic planning, content supply, and production, content distribution and dissemination, content analysis, pricing, and sales are identified for content marketing. Among these, content supply and production factor with an impact factor of 0.931 has the most impact and is the priority. Factors of content distribution and dissemination with a coefficient of 0.917; content analysis with a coefficient of 0.894; strategic planning with a coefficient of 0.877; and pricing and sales with a coefficient of 0.642 are in the second to fifth priorities in terms of effectiveness, respectively. Also, the impact factor of content marketing on the effectiveness of ECRM is calculated to be 816%. Findings at the error level of 0.05 indicate that content marketing has a significant effect on the effectiveness of ECRM in IPLF. ECRM in IPLF can be explained by the content marketing model. In addition to producing useful content related to the needs and preferences of its audience, it creates a powerful tool to gain trust and change the audience's attitude towards the services provided. Moreover, by increasing the skills of staff and managers, IPLF has made more efforts to identify, attract and retain audiences, which in the long run will lead to customer satisfaction, increased revenue growth, and achievement of competitive advantage.https://dorl.net/dor/20.1001.1.20088302.2022.20.3.11.8