CoPs-Centered Knowledge Management

Rajiv Khosla is an Associate Professor at School of Business, La Trobe University. He is the director of externally funded Business Intelligence Institute-Business Systems and Knowledge Modelling research laboratory. Rajiv has a multi-disciplinary background in management, engineering and computer science. He has published over 120 refereed journal and conference papers. He has also authored four books (research monographs) in the area of Emotional Intelligence, Human-Centred e-Business, Multimedia based Socio-technical Information systems, Intelligent Hybrid Multi-agent Systems. Rajiv is the Associate editor of the International Journal of Pattern Recognition, Regional editor of Journal of Intelligent Manufacturing (Springer-verlag), and Action Editor of Journal of Cognitive Systems Research. He has been a project leader of over a dozen industry projects and has commercialised four IT products in Australia. Associate Professor Rajiv Khosla Business Intelligence Institute and Business Systems Knowledge Modeling Laboratory (http://www.latrobe.edu.au/bskm) School of Business, La Trobe University, Melbourne, Victoria – 3086, Australia E-Mail: [email protected] of the primary reasons identified for the failure of existing knowledge management solutions has been that knowledge management tools and research have primarily been designed around technology push-models as against strategy pull-models. In an era where organizations are undergoing rapid and discontinuous change it is imperative that knowledge management systems and organizational entities like CoPs that facilitate knowledge management and organizational transformation are more closely aligned with business strategies and goals of an organization. This would enable organizations to respond more quickly to changing business environments and corresponding change in their knowledge management needs from time to time. This seminar presents a strategy-pull approach for Modeling and Design of CoPs-centered Knowledge Management Systems to facilitate organizational transformation. Among other aspects the seminar will focus on definition of dimensions and criteria for defining CoPs in an organization, application of fuzzy integral techniques to rank 16 criteria employed by CoPs to engage in knowledge management. From a knowledge management and organizational transformation perspective this approach will enable a more direct relationship between business strategy, CoPs and Knowledge Management solutions.published_or_final_versionCentre for Information Technology in Education, University of Hong Kon

Safe, Remote-Access Swarm Robotics Research on the Robotarium

This paper describes the development of the Robotarium -- a remotely accessible, multi-robot research facility. The impetus behind the Robotarium is that multi-robot testbeds constitute an integral and essential part of the multi-agent research cycle, yet they are expensive, complex, and time-consuming to develop, operate, and maintain. These resource constraints, in turn, limit access for large groups of researchers and students, which is what the Robotarium is remedying by providing users with remote access to a state-of-the-art multi-robot test facility. This paper details the design and operation of the Robotarium as well as connects these to the particular considerations one must take when making complex hardware remotely accessible. In particular, safety must be built in already at the design phase without overly constraining which coordinated control programs the users can upload and execute, which calls for minimally invasive safety routines with provable performance guarantees.Comment: 13 pages, 7 figures, 3 code samples, 72 reference

Sense, Model and Identify the Load Signatures of HVAC Systems in Metro Stations

The HVAC systems in subway stations are energy consuming giants, each of which may consume over 10, 000 Kilowatts per day for cooling and ventilation. To save energy for the HVAC systems, it is critically important to firstly know the "load signatures" of the HVAC system, i.e., the quantity of heat imported from the outdoor environments and by the passengers respectively in different periods of a day, which will significantly benefit the design of control policies. In this paper, we present a novel sensing and learning approach to identify the load signature of the HVAC system in the subway stations. In particular, sensors and smart meters were deployed to monitor the indoor, outdoor temperatures, and the energy consumptions of the HVAC system in real-time. The number of passengers was counted by the ticket checking system. At the same time, the cooling supply provided by the HVAC system was inferred via the energy consumption logs of the HVAC system. Since the indoor temperature variations are driven by the difference of the loads and the cooling supply, linear regression model was proposed for the load signature, whose coefficients are derived via a proposed algorithm . We collected real sensing data and energy log data from HaiDianHuangZhuang Subway station, which is in line 4 of Beijing from the duration of July 2012 to Sept. 2012. The data was used to evaluate the coefficients of the regression model. The experiment results show typical variation signatures of the loads from the passengers and from the outdoor environments respectively, which provide important contexts for smart control policies.Comment: 5 pages, 5 figure

Sharing science, building bridges, and enhancing impact: Public-Private Partnerships in the CGIAR

"This study, which examines the role of public–private partnerships in international agricultural research, is intended to provide policymakers, research managers, and business decisionmakers with an understanding of how such partnerships operate and how they potentially contribute to food security and poverty reduction in developing countries. The study examines public–private partnerships in light of persistent market failure, institutional constraints, and systemic weaknesses, which impede the exchange of potentially pro-poor knowledge and technology. The study focuses on three key issues: whether public–private partnerships contribute to reducing the cost of research, whether they add value to research by facilitating innovation, and whether they enhance the impact of research on smallholders and other marginalized groups in developing-country agriculture. The study examines 75 projects undertaken by the research centers and programs of the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) in partnership with various types of private firms. Data and information were obtained through document analysis, semi-structured interviews with key informants, and an email survey of CGIAR centers. The resulting analysis provides a characterization of public–private partnerships in the CGIAR and describes the factors that contribute to their success. These finding are important to improving both public policy and organizational practices in the international agricultural research system." - from authors' abstract.Agricultural R&D, CGIAR, Innovation, Public-private partnerships,

Governance, rational choice and new public management (npm): a general view (and some critics)

This article aims to study the New Public Management (NPM), one of the main trends associated to neoliberalism. It studies governance to show its general, wider and abstract scope. It also focuses on the Rational Choice as an important theory about governance, a basis for NPM. And it observes the neoliberal foundations of NPM, showing critical aspects of its real practice. Methodology: hypothetical deductive method of research, with a qualitative and critical approach and bibliographic-documental research technique. As results of this research, we can conclude that: i) the ideological usage of NPM has been expressed in a culture of minimal state and government - but in practice, such culture, when embossing implemented reforms, seldom reverted the role of the state, destroyed social safety nets, and placed the tax burden on the working majority rather than on the wealthy elite; ii) advocates for NPM have Western-shaped minds, generally making erroneous assumptions about institutions and cultures, which may be present in Anglo-American countries, but not in other culturally different ones; iii) in practice, NPM reforms were imposed to low-income countries by donor institutions to adjust their states for good governance - but those reforms did not solve problems with inefficiency and corruption. This work is original and valuable because it shows that even when public policies highlight the importance of less state intervention, solid norms and institutions are always necessary, and because it helps demystifying discourses that simply put that less state/more market politics can be valuable everywhere

Computational Enterprise Modeling and Simulation: Enabling Enterprise Performance Improvement, Modernization and Transformation

Lean Advancement Initiative Annual Conference presentatio

Sustainable Development Report: Blockchain, the Web3 & the SDGs

This is an output paper of the applied research that was conducted between July 2018 - October 2019 funded by the Austrian Development Agency (ADA) and conducted by the Research Institute for Cryptoeconomics at the Vienna University of Economics and Business and RCE Vienna (Regional Centre of Expertise on Education for Sustainable Development).Series: Working Paper Series / Institute for Cryptoeconomics / Interdisciplinary Researc

Debating education for nation building in Malaysia: National school persistence or vernacular school resistance?

School and education system may be a critical and strategic platform for nation-building. At the same time, the politicization of the education system as well as the interdependent nature of schools and external forces may contribute to the destabilization of the role of school in nation building. In Malaysia, the issue of mono-lingualism as a medium of instruction in schools has been a contested one with efforts of accommodating bilingualism and multilingualism continue to be attempted with no solutions in sight. The persistence of vernacular schools has generated both intense debates and resistance. This article examines the reasons for the resistance to, and persistence of vernacular schools. The data were drawn from three main sources, namely interviews with heads and/or representatives of 12 schools (mostly national schools and Chinese schools) from four states namely Selangor, Kelantan, Sarawak and Sabah as part of a wider project on social cohesion study as well as newspapers and web sources. The resistance to vernacular schools was premised on the affirmation that national schools rest on the idea of inculcating and sustaining national identity as well as facilitating cross-cultural experience and communication while eliminating the more segregating and divisive forces in vernacular schools. By contrast, the persistence of vernacular schools pertains to the idea of sustaining minority cultural identity, countering the lack of national schools’ sense of accommodation and questionable quality of education, and refuting the perception of vernacular schools as structural cause of disunity. Besides these negotiation difficulties of cultural identities in the school system, wider power politics and market politics interplay in influencing the resistance and persistence of vernacular schools