Advanced Knowledge Technologies at the Midterm: Tools and Methods for the Semantic Web

The University of Edinburgh and research sponsors are authorised to reproduce and distribute reprints and on-line copies for their purposes notwithstanding any copyright annotation hereon. The views and conclusions contained herein are the author’s and shouldn’t be interpreted as necessarily representing the official policies or endorsements, either expressed or implied, of other parties.In a celebrated essay on the new electronic media, Marshall McLuhan wrote in 1962:Our private senses are not closed systems but are endlessly translated into each other in that experience which we call consciousness. Our extended senses, tools, technologies, through the ages, have been closed systems incapable of interplay or collective awareness. Now, in the electric age, the very instantaneous nature of co-existence among our technological instruments has created a crisis quite new in human history. Our extended faculties and senses now constitute a single field of experience which demands that they become collectively conscious. Our technologies, like our private senses, now demand an interplay and ratio that makes rational co-existence possible. As long as our technologies were as slow as the wheel or the alphabet or money, the fact that they were separate, closed systems was socially and psychically supportable. This is not true now when sight and sound and movement are simultaneous and global in extent. (McLuhan 1962, p.5, emphasis in original)Over forty years later, the seamless interplay that McLuhan demanded between our technologies is still barely visible. McLuhan’s predictions of the spread, and increased importance, of electronic media have of course been borne out, and the worlds of business, science and knowledge storage and transfer have been revolutionised. Yet the integration of electronic systems as open systems remains in its infancy.Advanced Knowledge Technologies (AKT) aims to address this problem, to create a view of knowledge and its management across its lifecycle, to research and create the services and technologies that such unification will require. Half way through its sixyear span, the results are beginning to come through, and this paper will explore some of the services, technologies and methodologies that have been developed. We hope to give a sense in this paper of the potential for the next three years, to discuss the insights and lessons learnt in the first phase of the project, to articulate the challenges and issues that remain.The WWW provided the original context that made the AKT approach to knowledge management (KM) possible. AKT was initially proposed in 1999, it brought together an interdisciplinary consortium with the technological breadth and complementarity to create the conditions for a unified approach to knowledge across its lifecycle. The combination of this expertise, and the time and space afforded the consortium by the IRC structure, suggested the opportunity for a concerted effort to develop an approach to advanced knowledge technologies, based on the WWW as a basic infrastructure.The technological context of AKT altered for the better in the short period between the development of the proposal and the beginning of the project itself with the development of the semantic web (SW), which foresaw much more intelligent manipulation and querying of knowledge. The opportunities that the SW provided for e.g., more intelligent retrieval, put AKT in the centre of information technology innovation and knowledge management services; the AKT skill set would clearly be central for the exploitation of those opportunities.The SW, as an extension of the WWW, provides an interesting set of constraints to the knowledge management services AKT tries to provide. As a medium for the semantically-informed coordination of information, it has suggested a number of ways in which the objectives of AKT can be achieved, most obviously through the provision of knowledge management services delivered over the web as opposed to the creation and provision of technologies to manage knowledge.AKT is working on the assumption that many web services will be developed and provided for users. The KM problem in the near future will be one of deciding which services are needed and of coordinating them. Many of these services will be largely or entirely legacies of the WWW, and so the capabilities of the services will vary. As well as providing useful KM services in their own right, AKT will be aiming to exploit this opportunity, by reasoning over services, brokering between them, and providing essential meta-services for SW knowledge service management.Ontologies will be a crucial tool for the SW. The AKT consortium brings a lot of expertise on ontologies together, and ontologies were always going to be a key part of the strategy. All kinds of knowledge sharing and transfer activities will be mediated by ontologies, and ontology management will be an important enabling task. Different applications will need to cope with inconsistent ontologies, or with the problems that will follow the automatic creation of ontologies (e.g. merging of pre-existing ontologies to create a third). Ontology mapping, and the elimination of conflicts of reference, will be important tasks. All of these issues are discussed along with our proposed technologies.Similarly, specifications of tasks will be used for the deployment of knowledge services over the SW, but in general it cannot be expected that in the medium term there will be standards for task (or service) specifications. The brokering metaservices that are envisaged will have to deal with this heterogeneity.The emerging picture of the SW is one of great opportunity but it will not be a wellordered, certain or consistent environment. It will comprise many repositories of legacy data, outdated and inconsistent stores, and requirements for common understandings across divergent formalisms. There is clearly a role for standards to play to bring much of this context together; AKT is playing a significant role in these efforts. But standards take time to emerge, they take political power to enforce, and they have been known to stifle innovation (in the short term). AKT is keen to understand the balance between principled inference and statistical processing of web content. Logical inference on the Web is tough. Complex queries using traditional AI inference methods bring most distributed computer systems to their knees. Do we set up semantically well-behaved areas of the Web? Is any part of the Web in which semantic hygiene prevails interesting enough to reason in? These and many other questions need to be addressed if we are to provide effective knowledge technologies for our content on the web

A Study of E-Business/E-Manufacturing Models

Traditional business methods are taking a drastic turn and changing to digitized businesses. Information and communication technology is being integrated into orthodox business practices and giving birth to e-business. E-business in turn, is looking up to e-business models for dynamic integration. The e-business concept was first explored. It was broken down into its smaller entities to make for a clearer and better understanding. Components of an electronic business were identified, and e-commerce was understood to be a subset of e-business. It was established that for a business to be e-business enabled, it required information and communication technology (ICT) to be integrated into its brick and mortar business practice. This showed that the e-business concept was not replacing traditional business practices but improving on it. The e-manufacturing business practice was also researched. This practice was found to be in essence e-business, but in the manufacturing context. It showed that e-manufacturing made for a dynamic integration of the complex manufacturing business practice in real-time. It linked shop floors to top floors, as well as all the other areas of the whole manufacturing supply chain. Adequate relevance was established for designing e-business and e-manufacturing models. This was achieved through rigorous literature review as well as a questionnaire survey. A hypothesis design and test based on the literature review was made to ascertain what models are utilized and in what context. Currently used models in different company sectors were discovered, and their subsequent benefits identified. Also reasons behind the adoption of the different models in the firms investigated were identified. Barriers associated with the e-business practice as well as the implementation of an e-business model were also identified. A measurement system was utilized to ascertain if the investigated models met that stated in the literature (i.e. product innovation, infrastructure and the network of partners, customer relation, and finance). This was adopted from that presented in the literature review. Based on the study, a conclusion was drawn and recommendations suggested.

An Investigation of How Intranets Support User Tasks

This case study describes how the appearance, content, and organization of an Intranet can impact the user's work process. Information about how users find resources and complete work tasks via Intranets was gathered through qualitative interviews and observations with twelve employees in various roles of a real estate company in Raleigh, North Carolina. The study viewed users as active participants who could provide valuable insight into how Intranets should be structured to best support user needs. The study revealed characteristics of Intranets that support users such as organization, content, and visual appearance. The true effectiveness of the Intranet actually depended on the willingness of the user to take advantage of the resources. If users find the information on the Intranet valuable, they are more likely to implement the task into their daily work routines

Managing Open Innovation: An Exploration of Information Technologies and Open Search Patterns

Product presentation in e-commerce has gained substantial attention from disciplines including information systems, marketing, psychology and management. Many studies compare newly emerging technologies and innovative presentation formats to traditional use of two-dimensional text and pictures. However, the emergent nature of these new technologies, like consumer focused virtual reality, results in instability of form and function in three-dimensional environments. This literature review synthesises the findings of extant literature, discusses important theoretical foundations and identifies the most popular research theories and research methods utilised. Additionally, it classifies constructs used to capture characteristics of presentation formats, consumers’ reactions and performance, as well as marketing-related effects (e.g. attitudes to product and purchase intention). Furthermore, some potential misinterpretation of terms used to describe product presentation have been identified. The literature review concludes with a discussion of implications and suggestions for future research of product presentation in e-commerce contexts

Effective Work Unit Knowledge Management (KM): An Exploratory Investigation of the Roles of Network, Task Environment, and KM Strategies

Many organizations have initiated knowledge management practices to improve the effectiveness of knowledge creation, transfer, and utilization. However, few studies have been attempted to address what makes some work units within the organization more effective in their use of knowledge than others. In this study we explore the potential contribution of inter-unit network structure as well as intra-unit task environment to the overall KM effectiveness within an organization. The results indicated that both a unit’s boundary-spanning role and its extensive interaction with other units help promote the overall effectiveness of the unit’s KM activities. In addition, we found that a unit’s KM strategy played a mediating role between intra-unit task characteristics and KM effectiveness

Open collective innovation

Report published by Advanced Institute of Management ResearchThe innovation context is changing. The production of knowledge is accelerating. Knowledge creation is now a globally distributed activity. Globalisation has massively increased the range of markets and segments – putting pressure on innovation search routines to cover much more territory. The proliferation of the internet and emergence of large-scale social networks necessitates the development of new approaches to innovation. The involvement of active users in innovation is accelerating. As a result of the changing context in which innovation is taking place established organisations need to review their approaches to innovation management.Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) and Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC

The relationship between individual organizational and interpersonal factors and tacit knowledge sharing with usage the mediator

The main focus of this study is twofold. Firstly, the thesis attempts to examine the direct relationship between individual (individual attitude, organizational commitment, and knowledge self-efficacy), organizational (organizational climate, management support, reward system and organizational structure), and interpersonal (interpersonal trust and social network) factors, and tacit knowledge sharing. Secondly, it is to examine the mediating effect of information and communication technology (ICT) usage on the relationship between individual, organizational and interpersonal factors, and tacit knowledge sharing. A total of 400 questionnaires were distributed to the technical staff of ICT sector in Jordan. Out of 400, only 375 questionnaires were returned. However, only 365 were usable for further analysis, representing a response rate of 92.75%. Hypotheses for direct relationships were tested using multiple regression, while the mediating effect were tested using the Preacher and Hayes analyses. Results indicated that individual attitude, knowledge self-efficacy, organizational climate, organizational structure, management support and interpersonal trust were significantly related to tacit knowledge sharing. However, the mediating analysis showed that ICT usage only partially mediated the relationship between knowledge self-efficacy, organizational climate, organizational structure and interpersonal trust, and tacit knowledge sharing. The current research have several implications. Knowledge wise, it provides understanding on the factors that affects tacit knowledge sharing. Practise wise, it suggests to managers that they should focus on providing the right management support, organizational structure and climate for sharing tacit knowledge. In addition, any practices that could promote organizational commitment, knowledge self-efficacy and interpersonal trust should also be implemented. The use of ICT should also be enforced so as to facilitate tacit knowledge sharing. Besides that, suggestions were also made for further research to be conducted the exploration of the variables tested in this study on other settings, and with different sample frames, in order to achieve a more robust finding towards a better understanding of the role of individual, interpersonal and organizational factors on tacit knowledge sharin

Iterative usability testing of a corporate Intranet

This paper details an effort to apply usability techniques to the redesign of a corporate intranet. The process included interviews, a heuristic review and three rounds of user testing. The goal of the project was to determine whether user performance and attitude improved across the three tests, and, if so, to suggest design principles which might account for this improvement. Intranets have become an important part of the business infrastructure for many companies. While they are often used to deliver organizational information, some intranets have evolved to become an integral part of the company's actual business processes and task workflow. Intranets have a tendency to grow through accretion rather than design, however, and as more of a company's information resources are added, the intranet can outgrow its ability to make the information easily available. User testing of the site can help developers design an intranet that is efficient and easy to use

KNOWLEDGE SHARING AND COLLABORATION THROUGH SOCIAL MEDIA - THE CASE OF IBM

Intellectual capital is the single most important asset owned by any organization. Business continuity, innovation, and long-term sustainability of Small Medium Enterprises depend partly on accumulated organizational knowledge. Knowledge is hard to capture and manage due to its implicit nature. This paper seeks to investigate how Web 2.0 technologies are being used to overcome knowledge sharing and collaboration issues. The new web technologies, which are based on platforms, are referred to as emergent social software platforms (ESSP’s). The use of ESSP’s within a business enterprise to achieve business goals is known as enterprise 2.0 (E2.0). Central to this research is the proposed knowledge sharing cycle model, which has three main stages - internalization, externalization, and objectification. This model is adapted based on the findings of a case study of IBM Corporation. The findings indicate that ESSP’s can be used to support knowledge sharing practices and to help convert knowledge into its different forms