17,053 research outputs found
Transformational Leadership and Knowledge Management: Analysing the Knowledge Management Models
The purpose of the present study is to investigate the mutual relationship between transformational leadership and knowledge management as well the potential effects of a transformational leader on his or her followers. In this paper, we review the role of transformational leadership in effective knowledge management and establish the emerging role of transformational leadership, as an ideal leadership style in building knowledge-based companies to achieve a higher degree of competitive advantage. The findings in this article are based upon previous empirical studies that illustrate the formulation of several propositions that contribute to the knowledge management processes. Our findings are based upon possible scenarios that impact transformational leadership and knowledge management using grounded theoretical research. Research limitations are twofold. One limitation is found in the prior literature indicating that past studies have posited that companies might lack the required capabilities or decide to decline from interacting with other companies (Caldwell & Ancona 1988), or even distrust sharing their knowledge (Kraut & Streeter 1995). And, second, our contribution to the literature lies in presenting a link between knowledge management and transformational leadership that incorporates the knowledge management processes that may impact the effectiveness of transformational leaders to enhance their capabilities to effectively play their roles within companies. In addition, managerial applications that may support knowledge management processes are proposed further research is necessary to finalise conclusions. The original value of this research provides an impetus of mutual interaction of knowledge management and transformational leadership
Autonomous Agents for Business Process Management
Traditional approaches to managing business processes are often inadequate for large-scale organisation-wide, dynamic settings. However, since Internet and Intranet technologies have become widespread, an increasing number of business processes exhibit these properties. Therefore, a new approach is needed. To this end, we describe the motivation, conceptualization, design, and implementation of a novel agent-based business process management system. The key advance of our system is that responsibility for enacting various components of the business process is delegated to a number of autonomous problem solving agents. To enact their role, these agents typically interact and negotiate with other agents in order to coordinate their actions and to buy in the services they require. This approach leads to a system that is significantly more agile and robust than its traditional counterparts. To help demonstrate these benefits, a companion paper describes the application of our system to a real-world problem faced by British Telecom
Disease surveillance and patient care in remote regions: an exploratory study of collaboration among healthcare professionals in Amazonia
The development and deployment of information technology, particularly mobile tools, to support collaboration between different groups of healthcare professionals has been viewed as a promising way to improve disease surveillance and patient care in remote regions. The effects of global climate change combined with rapid changes to land cover and use in Amazonia are believed to be contributing to the spread of vector-borne emerging and neglected diseases. This makes empowering and providing support for local healthcare providers all the more important. We investigate the use of information technology in this context to support professionals whose activities range from diagnosing diseases and monitoring their spread to developing policies to deal with outbreaks. An analysis of stakeholders, their roles and requirements, is presented which encompasses results of fieldwork and of a process of design and prototyping complemented by questionnaires and targeted interviews. Findings are analysed with respect to the tasks of diagnosis, training of local healthcare professionals, and gathering, sharing and visualisation of data for purposes of epidemiological research and disease surveillance. Methodological issues regarding the elicitation of cooperation and collaboration requirements are discussed and implications are drawn with respect to the use of technology in tackling emerging and neglected diseases
Recommended from our members
Proceedings ICPW'07: 2nd International Conference on the Pragmatic Web, 22-23 Oct. 2007, Tilburg: NL
Proceedings ICPW'07: 2nd International Conference on the Pragmatic Web, 22-23 Oct. 2007, Tilburg: N
A Large Scale Dataset for the Evaluation of Ontology Matching Systems
Recently, the number of ontology matching techniques and systems has increased significantly. This makes the issue of their evaluation and comparison more severe. One of the challenges of the ontology matching evaluation is in building large scale evaluation datasets. In fact, the number of possible correspondences between two ontologies grows quadratically with respect to the numbers of entities in these ontologies. This often makes the manual construction of the evaluation datasets demanding to the point of being infeasible for large scale matching tasks. In this paper we present an ontology matching evaluation dataset composed of thousands of matching tasks, called TaxME2. It was built semi-automatically out of the Google, Yahoo and Looksmart web directories. We evaluated TaxME2 by exploiting the results of almost two dozen of state of the art ontology matching systems. The experiments indicate that the dataset possesses the desired key properties, namely it is error-free, incremental, discriminative, monotonic, and hard for the state of the art ontology matching systems. The paper has been accepted for publication in "The Knowledge Engineering Review", Cambridge Universty Press (ISSN: 0269-8889, EISSN: 1469-8005)
Modeling controlled vocabularies using OODBs and multilevel area diagrams
A Controlled Vocabulary (CV) is a software system of domain knowledge that consolidates and unifies the terminology of a large application domain. With a common, centralized CV, costly and time-consuming translations can be eliminated between pairs of organizations and pairs of software systems. Unfortunately, the more knowledge we put into a CV, the harder it is to understand and maintain it. In this dissertation, a comprehensive theoretical methodology for modeling CVs using Object-Oriented Database (OODB) technology is presented. We present two methods for representing a semantic network CV as an equivalent OODB, which we call an Object-Oriented Vocabulary Repository (OOVR). The first method, based on a structural analysis and partitioning of the CV, yields an OODB with a very concise schema, referred to as the OOVR schema. Due to its compact size, the schema can be displayed on one or a few computer screens and serves as an aid for comprehending and maintaining the CV. A program called the Object-Oriented Vocabulary Repository Generator (OOVR Generator) has been built to automatically generate an OOVR for a given semantic network CV. Our second methodology results in a larger schema, which, however, serves as an important tool for browsing and navigation through a CV. The OODB schemas created by both methodologies provide important abstract views of CVs. We have also defined a new type of semantic relationships called IS-A\u27 in the context of an OOVR representation. The IS-A\u27 relationships are defined on OOVR schemas to reflect certain important IS-A relationships in the underlying CV. The two OOVR representations exhibit several interesting theoretical characteristics which are formally proven in this dissertation.
To provide an environment with several abstract views of a CV, we also define a paradigm called Multilevel Area Diagrams (MLADs). A MLAD is a collection of different partitions of increasing detail and decreasing abstraction derived from a CV. Users can browse at one level and then switch to another level to continue their navigation. Examples of browsing sessions are presented to show that the MLAD paradigm provides processing capabilities beyond those of a traditional object-oriented representation of a vocabulary
Shaping solutions from learnings in PAIs: a Blueprint
Purpose: This paper presents a blueprint of a portal that enables a learning interface. This is between experience sharers and solution seekers in the domain of Poverty Alleviation Interventions (PAIs). Practitioners working on PAIs are often confined to searching from within ‘lessons learned’ repositories, and also from within limited disparate networks configured by aid agencies and consultancies. They do not, as of yet, have access to a comprehensive portal that explores the pool of knowledge carriers, and also and evaluates their efficacy, in contributing to customised solutions.
Design: The paper critiques the sufficiency of existing processes for feedback generation and it’s feed-forward thereof to support in PAIs. In relating to varying contexts of poverty alleviation interventions and experiences that exist from practice, it presents an internet enabled interface. We then illustrate how the proposed internet enabled interface it can deliver to specific issues and problems in different across differing PAI poverty alleviation intervention contexts.
Findings: The SOLVER portal and its process map that are configured and simulated using case vignettes aim to present create an interface environment between sharers and seekers for shaping customized solutions from past experiences for PAIs.
Originality and Value: Improving the performance of PAIs is crucial for societal goals of equitable living and access to opportunity spaces. PAIs practitioners are aware of the wealth of past experiences, but then, struggle to find a coherent and approachable portal that can churn these in response to their specific and contextual needs
Promoting the Readiness of Minors in Supplemental Security Income (PROMISE) [CFDA 84.418P]
Over the past two decades, New York State (NYS) has been actively and collaboratively engaged in systems change across three primary domains: 1) to develop a comprehensive employment system to reduce barriers to work and improve employment outcomes of individuals with disabilities; 2) to enhance the post-school adult outcomes of youth with disabilities, by collaboratively advancing evidence-based secondary transition practices at the regional, school district and individual student levels; and, 3) to support the return-to-work efforts of individuals with disabilities who receive Social Security Administration (SSA) disability benefits under the Supplemental Security Income (SSI) program and Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI). These domains have been supported by numerous federal and state initiatives including: the US Department of Education’s Office of Special Education and Rehabilitation Services (OSERS)-sponsored Transition Systems Change grant; the SSA-sponsored State Partnership Initiative (NYWORKS); two Youth Transition Demonstrations (YTD); the Benefits Offset National Demonstration (BOND); and, three cycles of funding for the National Work Incentives Support Center (WISC); the US Department of Labor (DOL)-sponsored Work Incentive Grant, Disability Program Navigator Initiative, and Disability Employment Initiative; three rounds of funding from the Center for Medicaid and Medicare Services (CMS) for Medicaid Infrastructure Grants (MIG, NY Makes Work Pay); the NYS Education Department (NYSED) sponsored Model Transition Program (MTP); and three multi-year cycles of the statewide Transition Coordination Site network. Most recently, NYS has sponsored the Statewide Transition Services Professional Development Support Center (PDSC); the NYS Developmental Disability Planning Council (DDPC)-sponsored Transition Technical Assistance Support Program (T-TASP), NYS Work Incentives Support Center (NYS WISC), and NYS Partners in Policy Making (PIP); the NYS Office of Mental Health (OMH)-sponsored Career Development Initiative; and others. The growing statewide and gubernatorial emphasis on employment for New Yorkers with disabilities developed over the past two decades stemming from these initiatives, supported by service innovations and shared vision across state agencies and employment stakeholders, establishes a strong foundation for implementing and sustaining a research demonstration to “Promote the Readiness of Minors in Supplemental Security Income” (PROMISE). The NYS PROMISE will build upon NYS’ past successes and significantly support NYS in removing systems, policy and practice barriers for transition-age youth who receive SSI and their families. The NYS OMH through the Research Foundation for Mental Hygiene (RFMH), with their management partners the New York Employment Support System (NYESS) Statewide Coordinating Council (SCC) and Cornell University Employment and Disability Institute, along with the proposed research demonstration site community, join the NYS Governor’s Office in designing and implementing a series of statewide strategic service interventions to support the transition and employment preparation of youth ages 14-16 who receive SSI
The Reasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics in the Natural Sciences
One of the most unsettling problems in the history of philosophy examines how mathematics can be used to adequately represent the world. An influential thesis, stated by Eugene Wigner in his paper entitled The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics in the Natural Sciences, claims that the miracle of the appropriateness of the language of mathematics for the formulation of the laws of physics is a wonderful gift which we neither understand nor deserve. Contrary to this view, this thesis delineates and implements a strategy to show that the applicability of mathematics is very reasonable indeed.
I distinguish three forms of the problem of the applicability of mathematics, and focus on one I call the problem of uncanny accuracy: Given that the construction and manipulation of mathematical representations is pervaded by uncertainty, error, approximation, and idealization, how can their apparently uncanny accuracy be explained? I argue that this question has found no satisfactory answer because our rational reconstruction of scientific practice has not involved tools rich enough to capture the logic of mathematical modelling.
Thus, I characterize a general schema of mathematical analysis of real systems, focusing on the selection of modelling assumptions, on the construction of model equations, and on the extraction of information, in order to address contextually determinate questions on some behaviour of interest. A concept of selective accuracy is developed to explain the way in which qualitative and quantitative solutions should be utilized to understand systems. The qualitative methods rely on asymptotic methods and on sensitivity analysis, whereas the quantitative methods are best understood using backward error analysis. The basic underpinning of this perspective is readily understandable across scientific fields, and it thereby provides a view of mathematical tractability readily interpretable in the broader context of mathematical modelling. In addition, this perspective is used to discuss the nature of theories, the role of scaling, and the epistemological and semantic aspects of experimentation. In conclusion, we argue for a method of local and global conceptual analysis that goes beyond the reach of the tools standardly used to capture the logic of science; on their basis, the applicability of mathematics finds itself demystified
- …