Digital storytelling as a reflective practice tool in a community of professionals

This exploratory study is based on an ethnographic research about a group of food safety professionals (physicians, veterinarians, biologists, chemists, nutritionists and prevention technicians) that try to exchange information and solve critical work issues communicating their experiences in the form of digital stories. In fact they convey more detailed context than textual and verbal stories, facilitating tacit knowledge elicitation and reflective practices. The digital storytelling process helped the community to reach a higher level of awareness about their specific professional competencies and critical work issues, fostering high levels of commitment and motivation, transforming the community in a true Community of Practice

Vertical Restraints Facilitating Horizontal Collusion: ‘Stretching’ Agreements in a Comparative Approach

This article discusses the approaches of the European Union (EU) and of the United States (US) to the notions of agreement and concerted practice applied to horizontal collusive consequences of vertical restraints. It concludes that networks of vertical restraints blur the differences between vertical and horizontal agreements; therefore, both options of attack are available for enforcers in the EU and the US context. If the analysed vertical restraints are adopted in parallel by agreement, they should be deemed illegal as long as they restrict competition producing collusive consequences. In the absence of explicit coordination to adopt the practice, I suggest first looking for a stretched concept of horizontal agreement or a broadly interpreted concept of concerted practice, including unilateral ‘communication’ that intentionally reduces uncertainty. Even when the analysed practices are adopted individually and not by all firms, they can represent a commitment to focal points, observable by market players, thus amounting to communication of intent. If that is not possible, I propose that an analysis of market power, incentives, coercion and induction should guide the finding of an illegal vertical agreement and ground the analysis of the consequences. The agreement/concerted practice path is an appropriate, feasible and coherent way to deal with vertical restraints facilitating horizontal tacit coordination, but that does not exclude alternative effective enforcement mechanisms

Knowledge management and communities of practice in the private sector: lessons for modernising the National Health Service in England and Wales

The National Health Service (NHS) in England and Wales has embarked upon a radical and farreaching programme of change and reform. However, to date the results of organizational quality and service improvement initiatives in the public sector have been mixed, if not to say disappointing, with anticipated gains often failing to materialize or to be sustained in the longer term. This paper draws on the authors' recent extensive research into one of the principal methodologies for bringing about the sought after step change in the quality of health care in England and Wales. It explores how private sector knowledge management (KM) concepts and practices might contribute to the further development of public sector quality improvement initiatives in general and to the reform of the NHS in particular. Our analysis suggests there have been a number of problems and challenges in practice, not least a considerable naïvety around the issue of knowledge transfer and 'knowledge into practice' within health care organizations. We suggest four broad areas for possible development which also have important implications for other public sector organizations

Potentials of social media for tacit knowledge sharing amongst physicians : preliminary findings

Tacit knowledge sharing amongst physicians, such as the sharing of clinical experiences, skills, or know-how, or know-whom, is known to have a significant impact on the quality of medical diagnosis and decisions. This paper posits that social media can provide new opportunities for tacit knowledge sharing amongst physicians, and demonstrates this by presenting findings from a review of relevant literature and a survey conducted with physicians. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with ten physicians from around the world who were active users of social media. Initial thematic analysis revealed eight themes as potential contributions of social web tools to facilitate tacit knowledge flow amongst physicians. The emergent themes are defined, linked to the literature, and supported by instances of interview transcripts. Findings presented here are preliminary, and final results will be reported after accomplishing all phases of data collection and analysis

Actions Speak Louder than Words: Econometric Evidence to Target Tacit Collusion in Oligopolistic Markets

Tacit collusion reduces welfare comparably to explicit collusion but remains mostly unaddressed by antitrust enforcement which greatly depends on evidence of explicit communication. We propose to target specific elements of firms’ behavior that facilitate tacit collusion by providing quantitative evidence that links these actions to an anticompetitive market outcome. We apply our approach to incidents on the Italian gasoline market where the market leader unilaterally announced its commitment to a policy of sticky pricing and large price changes which facilitated price alignment and coordination of price changes. Antitrust policy has to distinguish such active promotion of a collusive strategy from passive (best response) alignment. Our results imply the necessity of stronger legal instruments which target unilateral conduct that aims at bringing about collusion

Developing a sustainability KM strategy for HA planned works

Effective management of sustainability-related knowledge is central to the development of sustainable construction practices. Despite progress In other contexts, existing knowledge management efforts have been of limited value to contexts such as housing association planned works (cyclical replacement of housing components) due to an inability to reflect the specificities of these projects. This paper presents the development of a structured strategy to improve the capture, storage, retrieval and exchange of sustainability-related knowledge within housing association planned works. Knowledge mapping exercises based on semi-structured interviews were carried out within four different sized Scottish housing associations. Sustainability-related knowledge maps were developed for each activity focusing on managerial, economic, social, environmental aspects and overall flow of knowledge providing the basis for recommendations to improve the management of sustainability-related knowledge during planned works. The strategy promotes a structured approach providing housing associations with the opportunity to tailor the strategy to reflect their context and requirements. Practitioners from the case studies confirmed its usefulness especially for housing associations committed to sustainability but struggling to engage with high-level policy and strategies. One case study association has implemented the high-level principles to support its wider sustainability policy and is piloting a strategy for its planned works. </jats:p

Soft networks for bridging the gap between research and practice: illuminative evaluation of CHAIN

Objectives To explore the process of knowledge exchange in an informal email network for evidence based health care, to illuminate the value of the service and its critical success factors, and to identify areas for improvement.Design Illuminative evaluationSetting Targeted email and networking service for UK healthcare practitioners and researchers.Participants 2800 members of a networking service.Main outcome measures Tracking of email messages, interviews with core staff, and a qualitative analysis of messages, postings from focus groups, and invited and unsolicited feedback to the service.Results The informal email network helped to bridge the gap between research and practice by serving as a rich source of information, providing access to members' experiences, suggestions, and ideas, facilitating cross boundary collaboration, and enabling participation in networking at a variety of levels. Ad hoc groupings and communities of practice emerged spontaneously as members discovered common areas of interest.Conclusion This study illuminated how knowledge for evidence based health care can be targeted, personalised, and made meaningful through informal social processes. Critical success factors include a broad based membership from both the research and service communities; a loose and fluid network structure; fight targeting of messages based on members' interests; the presence of a strong network identity and culture of reciprocity; and the opportunity for new members to learn through passive participation

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