Peer - Mediated Distributed Knowledge Management

Distributed Knowledge Management is an approach to knowledge management based on the principle that the multiplicity (and heterogeneity) of perspectives within complex organizations is not be viewed as an obstacle to knowledge exploitation, but rather as an opportunity that can foster innovation and creativity. Despite a wide agreement on this principle, most current KM systems are based on the idea that all perspectival aspects of knowledge should be eliminated in favor of an objective and general representation of knowledge. In this paper we propose a peer-to-peer architecture (called KEx), which embodies the principle above in a quite straightforward way: (i) each peer (called a K-peer) provides all the services needed to create and organize "local" knowledge from an individual's or a group's perspective, and (ii) social structures and protocols of meaning negotiation are introduced to achieve semantic coordination among autonomous peers (e.g., when searching documents from other K-peers). A first version of the system, called KEx, is imple-mented as a knowledge exchange level on top of JXTA

The rationale of development practices for expert systems : an empirical investigation

Practices of expert system development are not widely investigated. In this paper I describe results of case studies on the inhouse deployment of small expert systems in two companies, along with a review of empirical research. The investigation focuses on the underlying rationale of the observed practices during the stages of design, field transfer and use. The examples show the importance of integrative approaches to technical and organizational aspects of development projects. The remaining potential for organizational turbulences is explained with inherent tensions of the rationale

Semantic web services for simulation component reuse and interoperability: An ontology approach

Commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) Simulation Packages (CSPs) are widely used in industry primarily due to economic factors associated with developing proprietary software platforms. Regardless of their widespread use, CSPs have yet to operate across organizational boundaries. The limited reuse and interoperability of CSPs are affected by the same semantic issues that restrict the inter-organizational use of software components and web services. The current representations of Web components are predominantly syntactic in nature lacking the fundamental semantic underpinning required to support discovery on the emerging Semantic Web. The authors present new research that partially alleviates the problem of limited semantic reuse and interoperability of simulation components in CSPs. Semantic models, in the form of ontologies, utilized by the authors’ Web service discovery and deployment architecture provide one approach to support simulation model reuse. Semantic interoperation is achieved through a simulation component ontology that is used to identify required components at varying levels of granularity (i.e. including both abstract and specialized components). Selected simulation components are loaded into a CSP, modified according to the requirements of the new model and executed. The research presented here is based on the development of an ontology, connector software, and a Web service discovery architecture. The ontology is extracted from simulation scenarios involving airport, restaurant and kitchen service suppliers. The ontology engineering framework and discovery architecture provide a novel approach to inter-organizational simulation, by adopting a less intrusive interface between participants Although specific to CSPs this work has wider implications for the simulation community. The reason being that the community as a whole stands to benefit through from an increased awareness of the state-of-the-art in Software Engineering (for example, ontology-supported component discovery and reuse, and service-oriented computing), and it is expected that this will eventually lead to the development of a unique Software Engineering-inspired methodology to build simulations in future

Maximizing Enrollment for Kids: Results From a Diagnostic Assessment of Enrollment and Retention in Eight States

Examines strengths, challenges, and areas for improvement in Medicaid and Children's Health Insurance Plan enrollment and retention systems, policies, and procedures for children in eight grantee states. Outlines best practices in simplifying processes

An Empirical Investigation into the Matching Problems among Game Theoretically Coordinating Parties in a Virtual Organization

Virtual organization emerged as a highly flexible structure in response to the rapidly changing environment of 20th century. This organization consists of independently working parties that combine their best possible resources to exploit the emerging market opportunities. There are no formal control and coordination mechanisms employed by the classical hierarchical structures. Parties, therefore, manage their dependencies on each other through mutual understanding and trust. Mathematician John Nash, having significant contributions in Game Theory suggests that in every non-cooperative game there is at least one equilibrium point. At this point, according to him, every strategy of the player represents a response to the others’ strategies. Such equilibria could exist in a virtual organization, at which parties coordinate which each other to optimize their performance. Coordination/Matching problems are likely to arise among game theoretically coordinating parties in a virtual organization, mainly due to lack of binding agreements. By identifying and resolving these matching problems, virtual organizations could achieve efficiency and better coordination among parties.Virtual organization, Game theory, Matching problems, Coordination

Together we stand, Together we fall, Together we win: Dynamic Team Formation in Massive Open Online Courses

Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) offer a new scalable paradigm for e-learning by providing students with global exposure and opportunities for connecting and interacting with millions of people all around the world. Very often, students work as teams to effectively accomplish course related tasks. However, due to lack of face to face interaction, it becomes difficult for MOOC students to collaborate. Additionally, the instructor also faces challenges in manually organizing students into teams because students flock to these MOOCs in huge numbers. Thus, the proposed research is aimed at developing a robust methodology for dynamic team formation in MOOCs, the theoretical framework for which is grounded at the confluence of organizational team theory, social network analysis and machine learning. A prerequisite for such an undertaking is that we understand the fact that, each and every informal tie established among students offers the opportunities to influence and be influenced. Therefore, we aim to extract value from the inherent connectedness of students in the MOOC. These connections carry with them radical implications for the way students understand each other in the networked learning community. Our approach will enable course instructors to automatically group students in teams that have fairly balanced social connections with their peers, well defined in terms of appropriately selected qualitative and quantitative network metrics.Comment: In Proceedings of 5th IEEE International Conference on Application of Digital Information & Web Technologies (ICADIWT), India, February 2014 (6 pages, 3 figures

Systemic effector conceptual model in groupware implementation

Network software systems and groupware within organizations differ from other information technologies, requiring individuals to 'design' their own use. Users and groups can choose how to engage with these systems (Hassall, 1998), and use is dependent upon existing technological framing (Orlikowski, 1992). Groupware provides opportunities to study interaction between technological and organizational potentials. The action and structure duality of structuration theory (Giddens, 1984) points to the need for systemic understandings. Moreover, deconstructive schemes (e.g. Dudley and Hassall 1995,1996) demonstrate a plurality of overt and ulterior motivations in use. The Systemic Effector Model has been developed based upon longitudinal research in groupware implementation. This abstracted perspective relates choice of facility and design of action to important motivators at the individual and systemic levels. The genesis and explanatory power of the model is explored through survey and case study data

A Semantic-based framework for discovering business process patterns

Patterns currently play an important role in modern information systems (IS) development and their use has mainly been restricted to the design and implementation phases of the development lifecycle. Given the increasing significance of business modeling in IS development, patterns have the potential of providing a viable solution for promoting reusability of recurrent generalized models in the very early stages of development. This paper focuses on business process patterns and proposes an initial framework for the discovery and reuse of business process patterns within the IS development lifecycle. The framework synthesizes the idea from the domain engineering literature and proposes the use of semantics to drive both the discovery of patterns as well as their reuse

Towards a theoretical foundation of IT governance: the COBIT 5 case

Abstract: COBIT, (Control Objectives for Information and Information related Technologies) as an IT governance framework is well-known in IS practitioners communities. It would impair the virtues of COBIT to present it only as an IT governance framework. COBIT analyses the complete IS function and offers descriptive and normative support to manage, govern and audit IT in organizations. Although the framework is well accepted in a broad range of IS communities, it is created by practitioners and therefore it holds only a minor amount of theoretical supported claims. Thus critic rises from the academic community. This work contains research focusing on the theoretical fundamentals of the ISACA framework, COBIT 5 released in 2012. We implemented a reverse engineering work and tried to elucidate as much as possible propositions from COBIT 5 as an empiricism. We followed a qualitative research method to develop inductively derived theoretical statements. However our approach differs from the original work on grounded theory by Glaser and Strauss (1967) since we started from a general idea where to begin and we made conceptual descriptions of the empirical statements. So our data was only restructured to reveal theoretical findings. We looked at three candidate theories: 1) Stakeholder Theory (SHT), 2) Principal Agent Theory (PAT), and 3) Technology Acceptance Model (TAM). These three theories are categorized and from each theory, several testable propositions were deduced. We considered the five COBIT 5 principles, five processes (APO13, BAI06, DSS05, MEA03 and EDM03) mainly situated in the area of IS security and four IT-related goals (IT01, IT07, IT10 and IT16). The choice of the processes and IT-related goals are based on an experienced knowledge of COBIT as well of the theories. We constructed a mapping table to find matching patterns. The mapping was done separately by several individuals to increase the internal validity. Our findings indicate that COBIT 5 holds theoretical supported claims. The lower theory types such as PAT and SHT contribute the most. The presence and contribution of a theory is significantly constituted by IT-related goals as compared to the processes. We also make some suggestions for further research. First of all, the work has to be extended to all COBIT 5 processes and IT-related goals. This effort is currently going on. Next we ponder the question what other theories could be considered as candidates for this theoretical reverse engineering labour? During our work we listed already some theories with good potential. Our used pattern matching process can also be refined by bringing in other assessment models. Finally an alternative and more theoretic framework could be designed by using design science research methods and starting with the most relevant IS theories. That could lead to a new IT artefact that eventually could be reconciled with COBIT 5

Expert Finding by Capturing Organisational Knowledge from Legacy Documents

Organisations capitalise on their best knowledge through the improvement of shared expertise which leads to a higher level of productivity and competency. The recognition of the need to foster the sharing of expertise has led to the development of expert finder systems that hold pointers to experts who posses specific knowledge in organisations. This paper discusses an approach to locating an expert through the application of information retrieval and analysis processes to an organization’s existing information resources, with specific reference to the engineering design domain. The approach taken was realised through an expert finder system framework. It enables the relationships of heterogeneous information sources with experts to be factored in modelling individuals’ expertise. These valuable relationships are typically ignored by existing expert finder systems, which only focus on how documents relate to their content. The developed framework also provides an architecture that can be easily adapted to different organisational environments. In addition, it also allows users to access the expertise recognition logic, giving them greater trust in the systems implemented using this framework. The framework were applied to real world application and evaluated within a major engineering company