Knowledge Management: Are We Missing Something?

As commercial organisations face up to modern pressures to downsize and outsource they have begun to realise that they have lost knowledge as people leave and take with them what they know. This knowledge is increasingly being recognised as an important resource and organisations are now taking steps to manage it. In addition, as the pressures for globalisation increase, collaboration and co-operation is becoming more distributed and international. Knowledge sharing in a distributed international environment is becoming an essential part of Knowledge Management (KM), although this area does not yet appear to be given much attention. In this paper we make a distinction between hard and soft knowledge within an organisation and argue that much of what is called KM deals with hard knowledge and emphasises capture-codify-store. This is a major weakness of the current approach to KM, equating more with Information Management than Knowledge Management. Soft knowledge is concerned more with the social and cultural aspects of knowledge, its construction and the processes through which it is sustained and shared. This paper addresses this weakness by exploring the sharing of 'soft' knowledge using the concept of communities of practice.Knowledge Management, Lost Knowledge, Distributed Working, Communities of Practice

Memory, the TRC and the significance of oral history in post-apartheid South Africa

Paper presented at the Wits History Workshop: The TRC; Commissioning the Past, 11-14 June, 199

Connective Memory Work on Justice for Mike Brown

This chapter addresses what I term the "connective memory work" carried out on Facebook page dedicated to achieving justice for Michael Brown, an African America teenager whose death at the gun of white police officer Darren Wilson in early August 2014 led to the Ferguson protests. The chapter outlines four types of connective memory work evident on the page. These types include the ‘memetic resurrection’ that involved the appropriation of iconic historical imagery alongside those of networked commemoration, digital archiving and curation, and crowd reconstruction. Central to this contribution the call to rethink the digital memory work practices of activists so as to integrate a concern for the agency of social media platforms themselves.<br/

Excavaciones arqueológicas y el entorno urbano de Berlín : recordar y olvidar la huellas de la Segunda Guerra Mundial

This essay examines how the Second World War can be remembered through archeology at two tourism sites in Berlin. Through data collected from site visits and observations, the motifs of burial, authenticity, and historical value are found to engage directly with ongoing negotiations of remembering the Second World War. This contributes a revised way of examining cultural remembering through material traces of the war on Berlin’s urban environment.Este ensayo examina cómo la memoria de la Segunda Guerra Mundial está mediada por la arqueología en dos sitios turísticos en Berlín. A través de los datos compilado de sitios visitados y observaciones del sitio, los motivos de entierro, autenticidad y valor histórico se relacionan directamente con la negociación en curso de recordar y olvidar la Segunda Guerra Mundial, ya que está integrada en el entorno urbano de Berlín

Facilitating Requirements Negotiating: Modeling Alternatives and Arguments

Co-development aims to ensure the alignment of business processes and support technical systems. During co-development stakeholders need an early understanding of the potential impact of different requirement choices on the enterprise. An early impact analysis understanding is more likely to actively engage stakeholders, highlight strategic options and deliver useful and sustainable systems. However, when multiple stakeholders are involved with differing backgrounds, experiences and frequently competing goals it is inevitable that conflicts occur during the early phases when requirements tend to be opaque. This paper puts forward a conceptual framework for co-development to support collaborative reasoning and decision-making through the modelling of requirements alternatives and arguments, promoting critical reflection, negotiation and discussion

Facilitating Requirements Negotiation: Modelling Alternatives and Arguments

Co-development aims to ensure the alignment of business processes and support technical systems. During co-development stakeholders need an early understanding of the potential impact of different requirement choices on the enterprise. An early impact analysis understanding is more likely to actively engage stakeholders, highlight strategic options and deliver useful and sustainable systems. However, when multiple stakeholders are involved with differing backgrounds, experiences and frequently competing goals it is inevitable that conflicts occur during the early phases when requirements tend to be opaque. This paper puts forward a conceptual framework for co-development to support collaborative reasoning and decision-making through the modelling of requirements alternatives and arguments, promoting critical reflection, negotiation and discussion

Decasticization, Dignity, and ‘Dirty Work’ at the Intersections of Caste, Memory, and Disaster

In this qualitative study we examine the role of caste, class, and Dalit janitorial labor in the aftermath of floods in Chennai, India, in 2015. Drawing from a variety of sources including interviews, social media, and news coverage, we studied how Dalit (formerly known as ‘untouchable’) janitors were treated during the performance of janitorial labor for cleaning the city. Our study focuses on two theoretical premises: (a) caste-based social relations reproduce inequalities by devaluing Dalit labor as ‘dirty work’; and (b) Dalit subjectivities, labor, and sufferings including occupational hazards become invisible and ungrievable forcing Dalits to provide a counter narrative to preserve the memory of their trauma and dignity injuries. We find that the discursive construction of janitorial labor as dirty work forced Dalit janitors to work in appalling and unsafe working conditions. Janitors suffered several dignity injuries in terms of social exclusion and a lack of recognition for their efforts and accomplishments. Specifically, we examine various ways through which caste, dirty work, and dignity intersected in the narrative accounts of Dalit janitors. We also explore memory and how processes of remembering and forgetting affected the dignity claims of Dalit janitors

Revealing the Heritage of Post-Military Landscapes

In Germany, the fall of the Iron Curtain led to the extensive withdrawal of allied troops stationed there, as well as the reduction in number of the German armed forces. This process was accompanied by the repurposing of formerly restricted military terrain in both urban contexts and the countryside. Post-military landscapes are full of traces of former usage and comprise a heritage that ranges from their earlier civilian history to their militarisation, from past to recent conflicts. This paper focuses on the remembered and forgotten narratives of these fascinating sites and relates them to current management policies for the development of former military sites. Two examples show how landscape design can contribute to preserving or even revealing the forgotten political dimensions of post-military landscapes