Knowledge sharing via enterprise intranets

Successful enterprises are those that consistently create new knowledge, disseminate it widely throughout the enterprise and quickly embed it in new technologies and products. These ‘knowledge-creating’ enterprises understand what knowledge is and what they should do to exploit it. In other words, they successfully manage and share their knowledge throughout their enterprise. When launching a knowledge management initiative, it is important to identify which knowledge management processes are most relevant to the enterprise’s environment and systems, and steps should be taken to support these activities and integrate them into daily operations. Broader elements and issues should also be identified and recognised for the influence they have on the knowledge management process. For example that enterprises should encourage individuals to interact, to work together on projects, or to share their ideas on an informal basis and systems are needed to codify the knowledge of individuals so that others can use it. Applying these elements involves: information technology; formal and informal structures; and specific knowledge management tools. Another important factor in the success of a knowledge management project is to ground knowledge management and knowledge sharing within the context of the enterprise’s business strategy seeing that the intranet can assist in the creation of economic value and competitive advantage for the enterprise. The knowledge sharing or knowledge contribution part of the knowledge management process seems to be the most difficult for enterprises. Knowledge sharing often takes place in enterprises via employees’ informal networks. Knowledge management could turn this informal, ad hoc process into a more systematic process. Creating a corporate culture where knowledge is valued and shared effectively is a challenge. Part of the solution could be for an enterprise to be aware of their specific corporate culture and how it influences their behaviour and attitude towards knowledge sharing. Because the employee’s behaviour determines the sharing of knowledge, leadership has an important role to play and they could use various motivational practices to encourage knowledge sharing. Leadership should commit to creating an environment, within which employees are able to share, assess and experiment with new knowledge gained. The corporate intranet could be used as such an environment, but employees need to be trained to use their knowledge management IT tools, making it as easy as possible for employees to contribute to the enterprise knowledge base. Effective intranet usage should be embedded in the enterprise’s general corporate and knowledge sharing culture. The intranet should be seen as an essential part of the enterprise’s knowledge management system and should be designed to suit and enhance the enterprise knowledge sharing activities and culture. It is also important that intranets should be evaluated regularly to determine its current contribution to as well as future potential of the knowledge sharing capability of the enterprise. The importance of evaluating and measuring the enterprise intranet and various measurement tools were discussed in depth, which consequently led to the formulation of an intranet evaluation tool in the form of a questionnaire. The prototype questionnaire was compiled by using measurement tools developed previously. The questionnaire brought together the concepts of knowledge management, knowledge sharing cultures and intranet functionalities. The evaluation tool was then applied to measure the effectiveness of a management consulting business’s intranet in enhancing the enterprise’s knowledge sharing culture. Recommendations were made to enterprises use the questionnaire when using the questionnaire in similar environments. An intranet represents a tool of potentially high value to any enterprise, but in order to realise this value, the intranets should be properly measured and managed and every employee needs to take ownership and buy into the concept of the intranet as a knowledge sharing enabler. This calls for an employee to be motivated to participate in knowledge sharing, so that they can experience the value they could add and receive by using the intranet for knowledge sharing activities.Prof. P.A. van Brakel Mnr. J.A. Ko

Pengaruh Kesediaan Berbagi Pengetahuan pada Sikap dalam Bekerja Tim

 This study aims to determine the influence of willingness to share knowledge of attitudes in team work. In the measurement of attitude in team work, this study uses two dimensions that is perceptions of team performance effectiveness and student interest in team work. The research method used a quantitative method approach. This study uses primary data. The instrument  method  is Likert scale. Sampling research using purposive sampling method. The author set the number of samples to be studied at least 200 samples with the category of students who are in accounting majors. The results of this study indicate that the willingness to share knowledge affect the perceptions of the effectiveness of team work and willingness to share knowledge affect the student's interest in team work. Future research is expected to add a wider sample and can add an assessment dimension to the knowledge sharing willingness variable. This research can be used as consideration or as a reference and additional information for researchers who will conduct further research on team work

Knowledge sharing framework for sustainability of knowledge capital

Knowledge sharing is one of the most critical elements in a knowledgebased society. With huge concentration on communication facilities, there is a major shift in world-wide access to codified knowledge. Although communication technologies have made great strides in the development of instruments for accessing required knowledge and improving the level of knowledge sharing, there are still many obstacles which diminish the effectiveness of knowledge sharing in an organization or a community. The current challenges include: identification of the most important variables in knowledge sharing, development of an effective knowledge sharing measurement model, development of an effective mechanism for knowledge sharing reporting and calculating knowledge capital that can be created by knowledge sharing. The ability and willingness of individuals to share both their codified and uncodified knowledge have emerged as significant variables in knowledge sharing in an environment where all people have access to communication instruments and have the choice of either sharing their own knowledge or keeping it to themselves.This thesis addresses knowledge sharing variables and identifies the key variables as: willingness to share or gain knowledge, ability to share or gain knowledge, complexity or transferability of the shared knowledge. Different mechanisms are used to measure these key variables. Trust mechanisms are used to measure the willingness and ability of individuals to share or acquire knowledge. By using trust mechanisms, one can rate the behavior of the parties engaged in knowledge sharing and subsequently assign a value to the willingness and ability of individuals to share or obtain knowledge. Also, ontology mechanisms are used to measure the complexity and transferability of a particular knowledge in the knowledge sharing process. The level of similarity between sender and receiver ontologies is used to measure the transferability of a particular knowledge between knowledge sender and receiver. Ontology structure is used to measure the complexity of the knowledge transmitted between knowledge sharing parties.A knowledge sharing framework provides a measurement model for calculating knowledge sharing levels based on trust and ontology mechanisms. It calculates knowledge sharing levels numerically and also uses a Business Intelligence Simulation Model (BISIM) to simulate a community and report the knowledge sharing level between members of the simulated community. The simulated model is able to calculate and report the knowledge sharing and knowledge acquisition levels of each member in addition to the total knowledge sharing level in the community.Finally, in order to determine the advantages of knowledge sharing for a community, capital that can be created by knowledge sharing is calculated by using intellectual capital measurement mechanisms. Created capital is based on knowledge and is related to the role of knowledge sharing in increasing the embedded knowledge of individuals (human capital), improving connections, and embedding knowledge within connections (social capital). Also, market components (such as customers) play a major role in business, and knowledge sharing improves the embedded knowledge within market components that is defined as market capital in this thesis. All these categories of intellectual capital are measured and reported in the knowledge sharing framework

How do entrepreneurs learn and engage in an online community-of-practice? A case study approach

This paper investigates the ways in which entrepreneurs use communities of practice (CoPs) to express themselves, using narrative theory and rhetorical analysis, to gain insight into an electronic social network medium, namely, YoungEntrepreneur.com. In particular, the study focuses on CoPs themes, including why entrepreneurs engage in CoPs, what role the moderators and resident entrepreneurs can play in managing online CoPs, on communication rituals of the knowledge sharing through interactivity, and on ‘how to develop an intervention’ to maintain and stimulate entrepreneurs for engaging in an online community. Findings reveal that the topic title plays a major role in attracting people. Successful topics with successful conclusions (in terms of the original query that was answered) will not necessarily get high responses and vice versa. It is observed that the domain expert does not play a big role in keeping the discussion going. Finally, the study also discovered that entrepreneurs like to communicate in a story telling genre. A comprehensive set of engagement measurement tools are introduced to effectively measure the engagement in a virtual CoP, along with a classification to define and categorise discourse of messages in terms of content and context, which allow practitioners to understand the effectiveness of a social networking site

Using the Asian Knowledge Model “APO” as a Determinant for Performance Excellence in Universities- Empirical Study at Al -Azhar University- Gaza

This study aims to use the Asian knowledge model “APO” as a determinant for performance excellence in universities and identifying the most effecting factors on it. This study was applied on Al-Azhar University in Gaza strip. The result of the study showed that (APO) model is valid as a measure and there are four dimensions in the model affecting significantly more than the others (university processes, KM leadership, personnel, KM outputs). Furthermore, performance excellence produced though modernizing the means of education, curriculum development, technology and flexibility in the organizational structure. The study recommends expanding the usage of (APO) model, enhancing the role of knowledge leadership, technology, organizational flexibility, sharing culture and incentive systems that encouraging innovation

Development of a project level performance measurement model for improving collaborative design team work

This research explored a new direction of improving collaborative design by performance measurement. More specifically, a novel 3-dimensional performance measurement model is developed and the purpose of this model is to help project managers improve team collaboration by indicating strengths and weaknesses of team members during the project development process. Considering the complexity of collaborative design work, a multiple criteria model is proposed to reflect the design dynamics, which highlights five performance indicators: efficiency, effectiveness, collaboration, management skills and innovation. These five indicators are mostly influenced by role-based performance measurement criteria (the second dimension). Design and development process (time) is also considered (the third dimension). This 3D model allows all involved design participants to measure work performance at any time during the product development process. In order to develop this model, the role-based task analysis and industrial survey methods were utilized. Three groups of role-based product design and development performance measurement criteria were identified for measuring design performance of the top managers, middle managers and individual designers in a project team. A 3-dimensional performance measurement method was proposed to calculate final performance scores from a performance measurement matrix. The proposed model was evaluated as a tool which can support project managers to reduce potential design and collaboration risks and increase confidence in decision-making process. The model has been discussed on implementing in a web-based application for measuring design performance throughout the product design and development proces

Towards a knowledge management assessment tool : the operations management perspective

Copyright and all rights therein are retained by the authors. All persons copying this information are expected to adhere to the terms and conditions invoked by each author's copyright. These works may not be re-posted without the explicit permission of the copyright holdersPractitioners are often confused by the wide range of Knowledge Management (KM) solutions that researchers and consultants offer. Part of this confusion is because they cannot determine how these solutions fit into their existing KM systems. KM assessment should be the starting point for any KM initiative yet extant literature provides little guidance in this area. In this paper we propose a tool that organisations can use to assess their Knowledge Management (KM) practices in order for them to make informed decisions and invest wisely. To that end we propose the Operations perspective of KM which encapsulates existing thinking. Our proposal goes further to outline key elements that a KM assessment tool must have and review existing tools against these elements. The KM assessment tool proposed in this paper has its roots in Quality literature and is ideal for assessing as well as designing KM systemsFinal Published versio

Global Human Resource Metrics

[Excerpt] What is the logic underlying global human resources (HR) measurement in your organization? In your organization, do you measure the contribution of global HR programs to organizational performance? Do you know what is the most competitive employee mix, e.g., proportion of expatriates vs. local employees, for your business units? (How) do you measure the cost and value of the different types of international work performed by your employees? In the globalized economy, organizations increasingly derive value from human resources, or “talent” as we shall also use the term here (Boudreau, Ramstad & Dowling, in press). The strategic importance of the workforce makes decisions about talent critical to organizational success. Informed decisions about talent require a strategic approach to measurement. However, measures alone are not sufficient, for measures without logic can create information overload, and decision quality rests in substantial part on the quality of measurements. An important element of enhanced global competitiveness is a measurement model for talent that articulates the connections between people and success, as well as the context and boundary conditions that affect those connections. This chapter will propose a framework within which existing and potential global HR measures can be organized and understood. The framework reflects the premise that measures exist to support and enhance decisions, and that strategic decisions require a logical connection between decisions about resources, such as talent, and the key organizational outcomes affected by those decisions. Such a framework may provide a useful mental model for both designers and users of HR measures

Team Learning: A Theoretical Integration and Review

With the increasing emphasis on work teams as the primary architecture of organizational structure, scholars have begun to focus attention on team learning, the processes that support it, and the important outcomes that depend on it. Although the literature addressing learning in teams is broad, it is also messy and fraught with conceptual confusion. This chapter presents a theoretical integration and review. The goal is to organize theory and research on team learning, identify actionable frameworks and findings, and emphasize promising targets for future research. We emphasize three theoretical foci in our examination of team learning, treating it as multilevel (individual and team, not individual or team), dynamic (iterative and progressive; a process not an outcome), and emergent (outcomes of team learning can manifest in different ways over time). The integrative theoretical heuristic distinguishes team learning process theories, supporting emergent states, team knowledge representations, and respective influences on team performance and effectiveness. Promising directions for theory development and research are discussed