24,018 research outputs found

    Managing the KM Trade-Off: Knowledge Centralization versus Distribution

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    KM is more an archipelago of theories and practices rather than a monolithic approach. We propose a conceptual map that organizes some major approaches to KM according to their assumptions on the nature of knowledge. The paper introduces the two major views on knowledge ­objectivist, subjectivist - and explodes each of them into two major approaches to KM: knowledge as a market, and knowledge as intellectual capital (the objectivistic perspective); knowledge as mental models, and knowledge as practice (the subjectivist perspective). We argue that the dichotomy between objective and subjective approaches is intrinsic to KM within complex organizations, as each side of the dichotomy responds to different, and often conflicting, needs: on the one hand, the need to maximize the value of knowledge through its replication; on the other hand, the need to keep knowledge appropriate to an increasingly complex and changing environment. Moreover, as a proposal for a deeper discussion, such trade-off will be suggested as the origin of other relevant KM related trade-offs that will be listed. Managing these trade-offs will be proposed as a main challenge of KM

    Assessment of electric field on hdpe-natural rubber biocomposite with sphere to sphere electrode configuration

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    Rapid growth of high voltage technology gives the opportunity to engineer to do a study on the environmental protection. Development of the design and manufacture of polymer insulation materials today make polymer insulation better because polymer insulators have a strength-to weight ratio which is larger than porcelain so that it can reduce manufacturing costs. This project is represented a study to analyse the electric field intensity of High Density Polyethylene (HDPE) when added with 10%, 20% and 30% of different types of bio-filler such as coconut coir fibre, pineapple leaves fibre, and oil palm empty fruit bunch. This can be accomplished by creating a two-dimensional (2D) axisymmetric electrostatic model by using the Finite Element Method Magnetics (FEMM) 4.2 software. Based on the results actualize, the inclusion of bio-filler in HDPE increased the maximum electric field intensity when compared with unfilled HDPE. The electric field intensity also varied with the different percentages loading of biocomposite and their permittivity. As a result, the maximum electric field intensity was much lower for HDPE added with a 10% loading of the oil palm empty fruit bunch. Hence, oil palm empty fruit bunch was the best composition as it tends to improve the dielectric properties since it has a lower electric field intensity at the top sphere electrode as compared to other compositions

    Methodological Strategies for Studying Documentary Planning Work.

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    This paper reports on the pilot testing of data collection strategies for a study of the complex and idiosyncratic document work involved in everyday life planning and time management. We describe two iterations of two data collection strategies, in-depth semi-structured interviews and photography of individual documents and document collections. Cette communication prente un projet pilote de straties de collecte de donns pour l\u27ude du travail documentaire complexe et idiosyncratique nessaire la planification et la gestion du temps au quotidien. Seront prents deux itations de deux straties de collecte de donns : les entrevues en profondeur semi-structurs et la photographie de documents individuels et de collections de documents

    Standardizing Minority Languages: Reinventing Peripheral Languages in the 21st Century

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    The Extraction of Community Structures from Publication Networks to Support Ethnographic Observations of Field Differences in Scientific Communication

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    The scientific community of researchers in a research specialty is an important unit of analysis for understanding the field specific shaping of scientific communication practices. These scientific communities are, however, a challenging unit of analysis to capture and compare because they overlap, have fuzzy boundaries, and evolve over time. We describe a network analytic approach that reveals the complexities of these communities through examination of their publication networks in combination with insights from ethnographic field studies. We suggest that the structures revealed indicate overlapping sub- communities within a research specialty and we provide evidence that they differ in disciplinary orientation and research practices. By mapping the community structures of scientific fields we aim to increase confidence about the domain of validity of ethnographic observations as well as of collaborative patterns extracted from publication networks thereby enabling the systematic study of field differences. The network analytic methods presented include methods to optimize the delineation of a bibliographic data set in order to adequately represent a research specialty, and methods to extract community structures from this data. We demonstrate the application of these methods in a case study of two research specialties in the physical and chemical sciences.Comment: Accepted for publication in JASIS

    Tales of Emergence - Synthetic Biology as a Scientific Community in the Making

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    International audienceThis article locates the beginnings of a synthetic biology network and thereby probes the formation of a potential disciplinary community. We consider the ways that ideas of community are mobilized, both by scientists and policy-makers in building an agenda for new forms of knowledge work, and by social scientists as an analytical device to understand new formations for knowledge production. As participants in, and analysts of, a network in synthetic biology, we describe our current understanding of synthetic biology by telling four tales of community making. The first tale tells of the mobilization of synthetic biology within a European context. The second tale describes the approach to synthetic biology community formation in the UK. The third narrates the creation of an institutionally based, funded 'network in synthetic biology'. The final tale de-localizes community-making efforts by focussing on 'devices' that make communities. In tying together these tales, our analysis suggests that the potential community can be understood in terms of 'movements'--the (re)orientation and enrolment of people, stories, disciplines and policies; and of 'stickiness'--the objects and glues that begin to bind together the various constitutive elements of community

    District Support Team Model as a Manifestation of Central Office Transformation: Experiences from Central Office and School Based Staff

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    The purpose of this study was to examine the described experiences of 20 participants—central office executives and specialists, principals, and teacher leaders—in the district support team (DST) process, a manifestation of central office transformation as an approach to school improvement. The site of this study was the Puget Sound School District in Washington State. The district was in its third year of central office transformation employing a differentiated support service model to assist its lowest performing schools. This case study utilized qualitative data from semi-structured interviews, document review, and field observations to understand the prevalence of the six elements of assistance relationships, experiences of collaboration among participants, capacity-building that resulted from the process, and the commonalities and differences in the experiences of different participant groups. Previous research on central office transformation, professional capital, and organizational theory provided the theoretical guide for this research. The conceptual framework was assistance relationships, grounded in sociocultural learning theory. Four major themes emerged from this study: the ambiguity of the DST purpose, process, and participants’ roles; the role and impact of power and trust in the collaborative process; the use of tools and resources as means to facilitate discussions and decisions; and finally, the DST process as the impetus for growing and building instructional capacity of all participants. This study found that all six elements of assistance relationships were present to varying degrees in the DST process, but that an imbalance of power and trust delayed the development of collaboration. The study also found that the DST process built the instructional and leadership capacity of all participants. While participants demonstrated varying degrees of understanding of the purpose of, and their roles and responsibilities within, the DST process, all participants agreed that they benefited from the use of tools and protocols to focus discussions and decisions. In addition, all participants felt the pervasiveness of power and its impact on participants’ receptivity to the process. Finally, participants reported that the DST process increased their social capital by expanding their networks outside of their immediate work group, giving them greater access to information and other resources

    To Know is to Be: Three Perspectives on the Codification of Knowledge

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    This paper presents three perspectives on the codification of knowledge. These perspectives are formed by recent contributions in the fields of economics, business and management studies and of a group of writers who have a ‘relational’ perspective from the field of organisational behaviour. A comparison of these differing views highlights not only epistemological boundaries between different approaches but can also lead to the novel approach to studying knowledge codification presented in this paper. This approach is based on the knowledge topography of Cowan et al. (2000). This paper also develops a research approach for examining the situated intricacies of knowledge sharing in group activities as a means for identifying opportunities for knowledge codification in settings where, so far, only tacit knowledge has been seen as the major focus. Such research may enable us to bridge the dichotomy of explicit versus tacit knowledge and the three perspectives on knowledge codification presented. Moreover, in-depth case studies on the possibilities for knowledge codification can advance both the academic and practical debate. (Cowan, R., David, P.A. and Foray, D. (2000) ‘The explicit economics of knowledge codification and tacitness’, Industrial and Corporate Change, 9(2), 211-254.)Knowledge Codification, Knowledge Perspectives, Situated Study

    Learning How to Manage Projects: exploring the situational context

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    This paper presents an account of how project management practitioners learn, how they determine what they want to learn and suggests some future directions for their knowledge journey. Two similar teaching approaches will be discussed that are currently used at undergraduate and post graduate level in an Australian University. The approaches used to embed the formal concepts taught in class include field work and reflective practice. This will provide a view of the formal structure in which learning takes place and the informal way that explicit knowledge is converted to tacit knowledge. A formative research study into project management research directions undertaken in 2003 provides a framework for the knowledge required by practitioners to further the discipline of project managemen

    The Thesis: texts and machines

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    This opening chapter focuses on how research knowledge is represented in the dissertation as a textual format. It sets the dissertation in two contexts. Borg discusses its historical formation within the technologies of the pen and the typewriter; Boyd Davis analyses the changes produced by digital technologies, offering counter-arguments to the claim that the predominantly textual thesis is a poor representation of research knowledge. He advances evidence-based arguments, using a synthesis of recent technological developments, for the additional functionality that text has acquired as a result of being digital and being connected via international networks, contrasting this with the relatively poor forms of access available even now using pictures, moving images and other non-textual forms. The chapter argues that the dissertation is inherently contingent, changing and changeable. While supervisors may expect their students to produce a dissertation that resembles the one they wrote themselves, changes both in the available technologies and in the kinds of knowledge the dissertation is expected to represent are having a significant effect on its form as well as its content. Boyd Davis is co-editor of the book in which this chapter is published, which has its origins in an ESRC-funded seminar series, ‘New Forms of Doctorate’ (2008–10), that he co-devised and co-chaired. The work grew out Boyd Davis’s questioning of methods and formats for research knowledge in his introduction to, and editing of, a special issue of Digital Creativity, entitled Creative Evaluation, in 2009. This followed a peer-reviewed symposium on evaluative techniques within creative work supported by the Design Research Society and British Computer Society, which he devised and chaired. Related work on forms of knowledge in interactive media appears in an article with Faiola and Edwards of Indiana University–Purdue University, Indianapolis, for New Media and Society (2010)
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