The victorious English language: hegemonic practices in the management academy

This study explores hegemonic linguistic processes, that is, the dominant and unreflective use of the English language in the production of textual knowledge accounts. The authors see the production of management knowledge as situated in central or peripheral locations, which they examine from an English language perspective. Their inquiry is based on an empirical study based on the perspectives of 33 management academics (not English language speakers) in (semi) peripheral locations, who have to generate and disseminate knowledge in and through the English language. Although the hegemony of the center in the knowledge production process has long been acknowledged, the specific contribution of this study is to explore how the English language operates as part of the “ideological complex” that produces and maintains this hegemony, as well as how this hegemony is manifested at the local level of publication practices in peripherally located business and management schools

Human Resources Management in the Knowledge Management

Knowledge is increasingly claimed to be a key critical resource and source of competitive advantage in the modern global economy, especially with the rise of the service economy, the growth in the number of ‘knowledge workers’, the increasingly rapid flow of global information, and the growing recognition of the importance of intellectual capital and intellectual property rights. Knowledge, with its intangible aspects, is becoming a defining characteristic of economic activities, as opposed to tangibles such as goods, services or production processes. The rise of the knowledge economy has seen a proliferation of information and communication technologies, coupled with greater organizational complexity, the growth of virtual and global organizations and rapid change. This in turn requires drastic change within HRM to respond to changing demands of the knowledge economy.human resources management, knowledge management, knowledge economy

Knowledge Services

Knowledge Services converges information management, knowledge management (KM), and strategic learning into a single enterprise-wide discipline for the benefit of the business or organization in which it is practiced. With the success of knowledge services as a management methodology, the practice has become an acknowledged framework for strategic knowledge management applicable to all businesses and organizations

Reforming Project Management: The Role of Planning, Execution and Controlling

In this paper, we focus on the need for reforming the role of plans, execution (or action) and control in project management. We argue that the present style of project management, as described in the Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK Guide) of PMI, is based on two underlying theories in this regard: management-as-planning (for planning and execution) and the thermostat model (for control). Unfortunately, both theories can be shown to be heroically simplistic and insufficient from the point of view of project management reality. In consequence, the practice of project management suffers from three shortcomings. The vague interface between planning and execution is the cause for two of them. First, the role of planning is not realistically defined, and short term planning (that is critical from the point of view of execution) is customarily poorly carried out or simply neglected. Secondly, there is no systematic way of managing execution, i.e. taking into account the actual conditions of the real world as higher level plans are translated into short term plans and then into action. Thirdly, control is too narrowly seen as measuring and taking corrective action, rather than as a process of learning. These arguments are justified by empirical data and theoretical discussion

Argumentation-based fault diagnosis for home networks

Home networks are a fast growing market but managing them is a difficult task, and diagnosing faults is even more challenging. Current fault management tools provide comprehensive information about the network and the devices but it is left to the user to interpret and reason about the data and experiment in order to find the cause of a problem. Home users may not have motivation or time to learn the required skills. Furthermore current tools adopt a closed approach which hardcodes a knowledge base, making them hard to update and extend. This paper proposes an open fault management framework for home networks, whose goal is to simplify network troubleshooting for non-expert users. The framework is based on assumption-based argumentation that is an AI technique for knowledge representation and reasoning. With the underlying argumentation theory, we can easily capture and model the diagnosis procedures of network administrators. The framework is rule-based and extensible, allowing new rules to be added into the knowledge base and diagnostic strategies to be updated on the fly.The framework can also utilise external knowledge and make distributed diagnosi

Discovering the factors impacting the evaluation of knowledge management in the organizational domain

The knowledge, skills and experience possessed by employees, customers, suppliers and other stakeholders are major components of an organization\u27s Intellectual Capital, the effective management of which has been found to be critical for business success. In order to manage knowledge at an organizational level however, it is necessary to be able to define it in the context of the organization, measure its existence and, more importantly, assess how its creation, use, dissemination, evaluation and management impacts business performance and learning. Whilst the term Knowledge Management has evolved since the early nineties into a generally recognisable management discipline in its own right, significant literature over the past eight years has focussed on the management of knowledge as a more generic organizational competence making Knowledge Management Initiatives difficult to identify and define and even more difficult to evaluate. Despite the challenges, the subjects of knowledge management and intellectual capital are gaining strategic management exposure particularly in relation to how investment in, and outputs from, these initiatives can or should be evaluated. Knowledge management and intellectual capital are inextricably related, and whilst some previous research has gone into evaluating knowledge as an extension or derivative of information and into intellectual capital as a discrete item on the balance sheet, little has been done to analyse the development of models that attempt to evaluate the impact of knowledge management as an organizational process or capability. A comprehensive meta-analysis by literature review of international articles dealing with knowledge management and intellectual capital evaluation from a broad range of business and scientific journals was undertaken to identify precisely what has been measured by public and private sector organizations within the Knowledge Management, Intellectual Capital and other closely related domains between the years 1996 to 2002. By the end of 2002, human capital based measures were found to be the most frequently quoted in KM literature. Financial, human capital, internal infrastructure and composite measures such as the Balanced Scorecard have grown in varying degrees in frequency of use, whilst customer, process, intellectual property, innovation and quality related measures have gradually lost ground compared to other metrics between 1996 and 2002. Significant differences occur in the evaluation and reporting of KM initiatives amongst the main geographic regions of North America, Europe, Scandinavia and Japan, but these differences seem to be more related to public policy differences and to management style than to a result of any definitive or deliberate differences in formal evaluation plans and methodologies. Generally, KM evaluation between 1996 and 2002 has focussed on explicit (rather than tacit), internal (rather than external) and outcome (rather than process) oriented measurement processes. Inadequate accounting systems, lack of measurement and reporting standards, lack of long-term vision and poor understanding of the contribution of knowledge to competitive advantage have been and remain major constraints to the future development of KM

Types of Absorptive Capacity as Antecedents of Innovation Capability: Mediating Effect of Knowledge Management

Objectives: The idea of absorptive capacity has become one of the most crucial ideas in the field of strategic management since it is frequently seen as a crucial component in developing innovative potential. Observations have been made regarding whether knowledge management must be present. As a result, the function of knowledge management as a mediating variable to the links between potential and realized absorptive capacity, and ultimately their effects on innovation capability, is discussed in this paper.Methodology: 180 Business Administration graduates with relevant employment experience served as our source for the data. We then observed their potential and discovered their capacity for invention, knowledge management, and absorption using SEM-PLS with SmartPLS software which was utilized as an aid in our analysis of the outcomes.Finding: Our results show that there is no significant association between either type of absorptive capacity or innovative capability. Innovative capability does not greatly lag behind absorptive capacity, whether potential or realized. However, when knowledge management is incorporated as a mediating element, realized absorptive capacity has a positive and significant indirect impact on innovative capability.Conclusion: Knowledge management has a strong mediating effect on realized absorptive capacity and has a positive as well as significant indirect impact on innovative capabilit

The improvement of organisational performance and healthcare service delivery through knowledge management practices in the Gauteng Department of Health

This research was instigated by testimony of the failure and the subsequent crisis in the South African public healthcare system. Official investigations had brought to light alarming operational deficiencies in institutions under the aegis of the Gauteng Department of Health. The South African public sector and government departments, in general, are currently challenged by a complex transformation process which has a prime objective to ameliorate public accountability, service delivery and budgetary control. They are likewise faced with the equally labyrinthine and demanding task of establishing a public-sector organisation with meaningful and effective operational processes that are, in addition, expected to synchronise with the modern economy. The researcher is unequivocal: the success of the GDH in responding to the challenges of improving organisational performance and healthcare service delivery depends essentially on their knowledge management strategy. Knowledge, across public-sector organisations, is increasingly being acknowledged, not only as a strategic resource but also as a valuable organisational asset. In the context of this research, knowledge is defined as the experience that resides in the minds of people; termed tacit knowledge (as opposed to formal, codified or explicit knowledge). In an analogous manner, research studies abound with evidence that has identified knowledge management as having an influence on operational performance for healthcare service delivery. Yet, a brief inquest indicated that our overall understanding of the existence of the relationship between knowledge management and operational performance for healthcare service delivery in the South African public sector is, at best, exiguous. With these appraisals in mind, the researcher developed a theoretical model that revealed factors that could influence organisational performance and healthcare service delivery. The model focused on knowledge management capabilities and organisational performance. The prime objective was to operationalise the theoretically derived knowledge management capabilities constructs, identify statistically the enhancing or impeding factors that impact on organisational performance and develop a structural equation model to verify this theoretical paradigm. The ambition of this study was similarly to investigate the use of knowledge management by the Gauteng Department of Health for its transformation to achieve improved organisational performance and healthcare service delivery. This study in essence addressed four research questions: Firstly, what was the level of understanding of knowledge management in the Gauteng Department of Health and related healthcare facilities? Secondly, how were knowledge management strategies and practices aligned with the Gauteng Department of Health strategies and operational objectives? Thirdly, how was knowledge management used by the employees in the Gauteng Department of Health? and fourthly, how could the results of the literature review and the empirical data be used to create a knowledge-management culture and a collaborative working environment for the Gauteng Department of Health? The elemental, hypothesised pursuit governing the study was to determine the existence of a relationship between the use of knowledge management and an improvement in organisational performance and healthcare service delivery. Collaterally, what enabling environment would be instituted by the gatekeepers of the institutional praxes to capacitate other staff members specifically so as to include the succession planning conundrum? To accomplish this and after reviewing the literature, the effective factors in knowledge management were identified, namely, knowledge infrastructure proficiencies and knowledge process capabilities. The research followed the parallel mixed-methods approach in gathering and analysing research data. Data was collected using questionnaires with 496 respondents and interviews with 35 interviewees. The sample used in this study comprised employees of the Gauteng Department of Health and its regional healthcare centres. The survey respondents and interview participants were the general staff and executive/senior managers of the Gauteng Department of Health. These individuals were considered to possess the most comprehensive knowledge about their organisation’s characteristics and strategy, which included knowledge management adoption. In order to identify the relationships between the model elements, appropriate tests were initiated using the Statistical Package for Social Sciences. Exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses and structural equation modelling were utilised and the proposed model was then extracted and content analysis was applied in evaluating the resulting qualitative data. The findings of this study furthermore indicated that knowledge management concepts were not universally understood in the Gauteng Department of Health. A structural equation model development strategy, postulated in the factor analysis, also produced a new best-fitting knowledge management capability model based on the new constructs. The structural equation model suggested that significant factors influencing the improvement of the organisational performance and healthcare service delivery are those of knowledge management capability. The regression analysis showed that most of the inter-correlations were significant, thus confirming the theory that knowledge management capabilities have a direct influence on organisational performance and healthcare service delivery. The research contributed theoretically to a comprehensive understanding of the relationship between knowledge management principles and factors that influence organisational performance and healthcare service delivery. Practically, the research contributed to confirming the use of knowledge management by the Gauteng Department of Health could to the improvement of its overall organisational performance and healthcare service delivery. The study further demonstrated the impact of knowledge management activities as a driving force for organisational change and the effect of knowledge management on the improvement of workforce productivity and organisational effectiveness. The new knowledge management capability model could additionally assist the Gauteng Department of Health determining the extent to which knowledge management is used and where to focus in developing and implementing knowledge management strategy. The study encourages practitioners to take cognisance of the fact that organisations are unique and that the factors which enhance or impede knowledge management are to be thoroughly examined. This case study was endorsed for its significant contribution to regional healthcare system, as well as the broader national healthcare structure.School of computingPh. D. (Information Systems