778,038 research outputs found

    A Knowledge Framework Underlying Process Management

    Get PDF
    Organizations are increasingly implementing process-improvement techniques like Six Sigma, total quality management, lean, and business process re-engineering to improve organizational performance. These techniques are part of a process management system that includes the organizational infrastructure to support the improvement techniques. The knowledge-based view of a firm argues that organizational knowledge is the source of competitive advantage. To the extent that the process management system enables knowledge creation it should be a source of competitive advantage. This study investigates the underlying framework and factors of a process management system that lead to organizational knowledge creation. Prior studies have considered knowledge creation in process improvement, but none have considered the role of the process management system. Specifically, the study uses the case study method to investigate multiple levels (organization level and project level) of two firms using Six Sigma as their chosen process management system. Analysis of the cases reveals that the leadership creates a supportive infrastructure enabling process- improvement techniques to effectively create organizational knowledge. Interestingly, focusing on decision-making tools and methods may not be effective without developing a supportive infrastructure. The proposed framework provides a basis for organizational leaders to think about how to design and implement a process management system to better enable knowledge creation in organizations

    The 2P-K Framework: A Personal Knowledge Measurement Framework for the Pharmaceutical Industry

    Get PDF
    Knowledge is a dynamic human process to justify our personal belief in pursuit of the truth. The intellectual output of any organisation is reliant upon the individual people within that organisation. Despite the eminent role of personal knowledge in organisations, personal knowledge management and measurement have received little attention, particularly in pharmaceutical manufacturing. The pharmaceutical industry is one of the pillars of the global economy and a knowledge-intensive sector where knowledge is described as the second product after medicines. The need of measurement to achieve effective management is not a new concept in management literature. This study offers an explanatory framework for personal knowledge, its underlying constructs and observed measures in the pharmaceutical manufacturing context. Following a sequential mixed method research (MMR) design, the researcher developed a measurement framework based on the thematic analysis of fifteen semi-structured interviews with industry experts and considering the extant academic and regulatory literature. A survey of 190 practitioners from the pharmaceutical manufacturing sector enabled quantitative testing and validation of the proposed models utilising confirmatory factor analysis. The pharmaceutical personal knowledge framework was the fruit of a comprehensive study to explain and measure the manifestations of personal knowledge in pharmaceutical organisations. The proposed framework identifies 41 personal knowledge measures reflecting six latent factors and the underlying personal knowledge. The hypothesised factors include: regulatory awareness, performance, wisdom, organisational understanding, mastership of product and process besides communication and networking skills. In order to enhance the applicability and flexibility of the measurement framework, an abbreviated 15-item form of the original framework was developed. The abbreviated pharmaceutical personal knowledge (2P-K) framework demonstrated superior model fit, better accuracy and reliability. The research results reveal that over 80% of the participant pharmaceutical organisations had a form of structured KM system. However, less than 30% integrated KM with corporate strategies suggesting that KM is still in the early stages of development in the pharmaceutical industry. Also, personal knowledge measurement is still a subjective practice and predominately an informal process. The 2P-K framework offers researchers and scholars a theoretically grounded original model for measuring personal knowledge. Also, it offers a basis for a personal knowledge measurement scale (2P-K-S) in the pharmaceutical manufacturing context. Finally, the study had some limitations. The framework survey relied on self-ratings. This might pose a risk of social desirability bias and Dunning–Kruger effect. Consequently, a 360- degree survey was suggested to achieve accurate assessments. Also, the model was developed and tested in an industry-specific context. A comparative study in similar manufacturing industries (e.g. chemical industries) is recommended to assess the validity of the current model or a modified version of it in other industries

    Towards an Interaction-based Integration of MKM Services into End-User Applications

    Full text link
    The Semantic Alliance (SAlly) Framework, first presented at MKM 2012, allows integration of Mathematical Knowledge Management services into typical applications and end-user workflows. From an architecture allowing invasion of spreadsheet programs, it grew into a middle-ware connecting spreadsheet, CAD, text and image processing environments with MKM services. The architecture presented in the original paper proved to be quite resilient as it is still used today with only minor changes. This paper explores extensibility challenges we have encountered in the process of developing new services and maintaining the plugins invading end-user applications. After an analysis of the underlying problems, I present an augmented version of the SAlly architecture that addresses these issues and opens new opportunities for document type agnostic MKM services.Comment: 14 pages, 7 figure

    Antecedents of knowledge sharing behavior towards project success

    Get PDF
    In the current globally competitive knowledge economy, all organizations need to manage a project effectively to ensure success. Studies have shown that many projects failed to achieve initial objectives and unable to respond to their stakeholders’ expectations. Researchers have recognized that knowledge is a key strategic resource for the project performance and effectiveness and that it is essential to encourage and assist project team members to share their know-how. Hence, the main aim of this research is to investigate the individual and organizational factors influencing project team members' knowledge sharing behavior that eventually contributes to the success of a project. This study develops a theoretical framework of underlying project knowledge sharing based on the “Theory of Planned Behavior” for identifying knowledge sharing behavior complemented by System Thinking Theory and Input-Process-Output Model. A questionnaire survey was used for data collection and analysis was made based on 423 responses from project team members of a large project based company. A semi-structured interview was conducted with 14 participants including managers and project management team members in the case company to gain a clearer and deeper understanding of knowledge sharing behaviors. The findings from the research survey and interview support the basic assumption that higher levels of individual factors including Perceived Reciprocity Benefits, Perceived Enjoyment in Helping Others, Perceived Project Commitment, Knowledge Selfefficacy; together with higher levels of organizational factors including Perceived Project Climate, Top Management Support, Rewards and Incentives, Information Technology; lead to higher levels of actual knowledge sharing. The findings also show that knowledge sharing behavior in project environment is a critical factor which can affect success of a project

    Extracting Implicit Knowledge and Inter-relationships from Initial Public Offering (IPO) Prospectus for Pricing Prediction

    Get PDF
    Initial Public Offering (IPO) process and the associated pricing strategies are of much interest to researchers and practitioners (e.g., underwriters, investors) in the finance and accounting domains. IPO prospectuses, regulated by Security Exchange Committee (SEC), serve as the most reliable publicly available information source in the IPO process. IPO prospectuses disclose a variety of information; however, traditional studies do not leverage the rich knowledge hidden in the vast textual information within them. The research gap can be partially attributed to the lack of an underlying formal knowledge structure to support the extraction of the implicit knowledge from the prospectuses, as well as to the absence of quantitative metrics that reflect management\u27s outlook and awareness embedded in the prospectuses. The primary research question addressed in this work is: How do the management\u27s awareness of risks (expressed via the emphasized mentions in the Risk Factors sections of the Form 424 filings), and confidence about the firm\u27s outlook (expressed through the sentiments in the MD&A sections) affect IPO valuations? The major research problem could be further broken down into two research goals: a) to develop an actionable knowledge structure for guiding the extraction, storing the results, and facilitate reasoning of the knowledge hidden in the textual content of the IPO prospectuses; and b) to utilize the knowledge structure developed above, as well as the predictive models, to estimate pricing volatility prior to and right after the IPO date. In order to identify and quantify such inter­relationships, an underlying knowledge structure needs to be constructed and updated with minimal manual interventions for efficient knowledge acquisition and accurate knowledge representation purposes. In this dissertation, to bridge aforementioned research gaps, I proposed a text analytics framework for assisting the investment and underwriting decision making processes. Two major components existing in the proposed framework, namely the ontology enrichment methodology that updates the ontology in real time and online mode, and the predictive modeling techniques using the extracted information based on the ontology for predicting IPO pricing. The proposed framework is then developed in the form of a research prototype, which is used to predict pricing trends during and after the IPO process. I use real world data to evaluate the framework itself as well as the prediction results through a set of experiments, which yield promising results. Design science research methodology is applied as the methodological framework in this study. Two motivational scenarios are provided to illustrate the significance and relevance of this study. The searching and developing process of a solution is documented in detail. I have compared our approach to the existing body of research and illustrated its novelty. Further, I have evaluated the proposed IT artifacts (the analytical framework), first through feasibility and functionality testing and second through an experimental approach for analyzing efficiency and accuracy. The proposed analytical framework is evaluated by various means. First, a case study is designed to evaluate the functionalities and efficiencies of the framework. Second, the practical relevance of the framework is evaluated through the results of the predictive models. Third, the design artifacts are also evaluated against the design requirements drawn from existing literature. The evaluation results in this study are satisfying, which indicate the promising prospects of this project in practice. There are two key research contributions of this work: a) an (semi-) automatic approach for enriching the specifications of domain knowledge bases (i.e. ontologies) is developed and evaluated, as an underlying knowledge structure for the analytical process. The approach is unique in the sense of incorporating feature-based word sense disambiguation and relation extraction methods in the process; b) several predictive models are designed based on extracted knowledge from the prospectus, for the purpose of predicting pre- and post-IPO pricing volatility. The results of this phase of the study ensure its practical relevance. In addition to these two primary contributions, two metrics are also designed, as a proxy of the management\u27s awareness of risks and management\u27s confidence regarding the organization\u27s future operations. This metrics are based on the textual contents in the more informative sections in the prospectuses (i.e. Risk Factors, Management Discussions and Analysis) and to the best of our knowledge, these metrics are the first of its kind to quantify such information. Further, the analytical framework and development approaches of the design artifacts can be adopted in other application domains such as healthcare informatics, social media analysis, and so forth

    Integrating uncertainty management in strategic planning practice

    Get PDF
    Despite competing in highly turbulent and competitive industry, evidence suggests that construction firms have not put sufficient emphasis on strategic planning. Further, the practice of strategic planning in construction is dominated by informal nd sporadic approaches/processes, which rely heavily on the subjective judgement of top management and tacit knowledge of individuals involved. Literature indicates that the identification of possible risks and opportunities is the most critical in this process, but little guidance is available with regards to the most effective approaches in dealing with the inherent characteristics of strategic planning. A review of underlying aspects (including decision theory, cognitive and behavioural psychology) is presented with a view of developing a framework for improving this process in a construction firm. The framework attempts to engage stakeholders and capture both explicit and tacit knowledge in the strategic thinking for organisational learning. The framework is viewed as a better alternative to the top-down approach of strategic decision making in the construction industry. Benefits from adopting such anapproach and future direction of research in this area are then discussed. Copyright ASCE 2009

    Effective Knowledge Management (KM) strategy within a business organization

    Get PDF
    A cohesive Knowledge Management (KM) strategy is found at the cornerstone of every successful business enterprise\u27s overall business strategy. The full benefit of this strategy can only be achieved through a dynamic, technology-enabled framework that encourages best and better practices to capture the outputs of human innovation and creative knowledge. Competitive pressures and technological convergence, most prevalent in high technology business sectors, have demonstrated the critical need for an information strategy that can harness and discern the continual amass of intellectual property. The continual accumulation of information and knowledge critical to the sustained viability of many business organizations, presents significant and complex management challenges. The dynamic changes in economic conditions and technical innovation and advance, coupled with the need to manage the outputs of human innovation and creative capacity, continues to present a paradigm shift from the traditional management approaches to more adaptive, dynamic, non-traditional management approaches and technology solutions. A major KM challenge many organizations continue to face is no longer just how to capture and manage their intellectual property, but how to identify and discern between true intellectual content and simple information, the real knowledge of their business. A successful KM strategy becomes synonymous with the overall business strategy, and includes the requirement for a process model that provides a framework that can be adapted to an ever-changing business model. This framework must provide the ability to identify and discern between static data or information and dynamic intellectual property, which the latter is often the direct output of human creativity and innovation.1 Accordingly, one important aspect of KM as a practice is the development of knowledge transfer systems. However, the one-size-fits-all approach to the technical solution is only part of the success equation.2 The other critical element in the equation is the approach to integrate it into the related business process framework. The means of specific process improvement may vary based on business requirements and scope of technical solution, but the underlying basis of need for change or improvement remains a constant. A foundational framework for business process strategy and execution takes on much greater significance as part of the overall business strategy. Thomas A. Stewart, a member of the board of editors at Fortune Magazine, says Because knowledge has become the single most important factor of production, managing intellectual assets has become the single most important task of business. This paper will focus on the discipline of knowledge management and associated knowledge transfer practices in a pragmatic context to illustrate its importance as an integral component of a successful business strategy. This includes the perspectives of both as strategic asset in the management of intellectual capital, and as an enabling technology to leverage the intellectual capital for business fulfillment. The assertions and discussions put forth, while centered on knowledge management, can be paralleled for several IT-centric business disciplines. However, the analysis of the research and case studies referenced in this paper will illustrate the growing breadth and importance of knowledge assets as the primary cornerstone in a broad spectrum of business disciplines. More importantly, it will clearly demonstrate the critical need to effectively manage and control knowledge assets for competitive advantage as part of the overall business strategy. 1 Yogesh Malhotra, Knowledge Management for E-business Performance: Advancing Information Strategy to Internet Time ; Information Strategy, The Executive\u27s Journal. Summer 2000, vol. 16 (4), pp. 5-16 2 James Conlan, Improving Business Processes , KMWorld, November/December 2001, pp. S13

    Performance Management by Causal Mapping: An Application Field of Knowledge Management

    Get PDF
    As implied by the performance management (PM) concept, modern corporate management has to focus on cause-and-effect relationships underlying a firm´s financial performance generation. To determine the causes of financially desirable effects, subject-bound experiences and knowledge of employees, called tacit knowledge, should be realised. For this, knowledge management (KM) offers various elicitation techniques to reveal corporate-specific success factors (SFs) of financial performance generation from the corporate experts´ implicit knowledge. The identified factors have to be organised within a network of cause-and-effect relationships. In this framework, PM can apply the instrument of mapping to structure the individually revealed knowledge, to aggregate and visualise it for the entire company. For a valid representation of the causal relationships, the subjective bias arising within the mentioned process has to be minimised. In the literature, a variety of mapping methods can be found that differ in their approaches and their level of significance. As such a method, causal mapping will be presented in this paper. For providing intersubjectivity, the decision-making trail and evaluation laboratory (DEMATEL) as a multi-criteria approach will be debated in the context of mapping as a research field

    Report of the workshop on MSP and Transitions CDI & WLR : 7-9 February 2011, De Bosrand, Ede

    Get PDF
    WLR and CDI organised in 2011 a training on MSP and Transitions in order to deepen each other’s knowledge and share the ideas underlying the change processes they work in. The training was divided in two parts with the focus on MSP framework, Process model, Power and Conflict and Transitions in the first part. The second part was more devoted to the Theories of Change, the actual stakeholder management and the M&E of these change processes
    • …
    corecore