Sensemaking on the Pragmatic Web: A Hypermedia Discourse Perspective

The complexity of the dilemmas we face on an organizational, societal and global scale forces us into sensemaking activity. We need tools for expressing and contesting perspectives flexible enough for real time use in meetings, structured enough to help manage longer term memory, and powerful enough to filter the complexity of extended deliberation and debate on an organizational or global scale. This has been the motivation for a programme of basic and applied action research into Hypermedia Discourse, which draws on research in hypertext, information visualization, argumentation, modelling, and meeting facilitation. This paper proposes that this strand of work shares a key principle behind the Pragmatic Web concept, namely, the need to take seriously diverse perspectives and the processes of meaning negotiation. Moreover, it is argued that the hypermedia discourse tools described instantiate this principle in practical tools which permit end-user control over modelling approaches in the absence of consensus

Absorptive capacity and relationship learning mechanisms as complementary drivers of green innovation performance

This paper aims to explore in depth how internal and external knowledge-based drivers actually affect the firms\u2019 green innovation performance. Subsequently, this study analyzes the relationships between absorptive capacity (internal knowledge-based driver), relationship learning (external knowledge-based driver) and green innovation performance. This study relies on a sample of 112 firms belonging to the Spanish automotive components manufacturing sector (ACMS) and uses partial least squares path modeling to test the hypotheses proposed. The empirical results show that both absorptive capacity and relationship learning exert a significant positive effect on the dependent variable and that relationship learning moderates the link between absorptive capacity and green innovation performance. This paper presents some limitations with respect to the particular sector (i.e. the ACMS) and geographical context (Spain). For this reason, researchers must be thoughtful while generalizing these results to distinct scenarios. Managers should devote more time and resources to reinforce their absorptive capacity as an important strategic tool to generate new knowledge and hence foster green innovation performance in manufacturing industries. The paper shows the importance of encouraging decision-makers to cultivate and rely on relationship learning mechanisms with their main stakeholders and to acquire the necessary information and knowledge that might be valuable in the maturity of green innovations. This study proposes that relationship learning plays a moderating role in the relationship between absorptive capacity and green innovation performance

Autonomous agile teams: Challenges and future directions for research

According to the principles articulated in the agile manifesto, motivated and empowered software developers relying on technical excellence and simple designs, create business value by delivering working software to users at regular short intervals. These principles have spawned many practices. At the core of these practices is the idea of autonomous, self-managing, or self-organizing teams whose members work at a pace that sustains their creativity and productivity. This article summarizes the main challenges faced when implementing autonomous teams and the topics and research questions that future research should address

Discovery-led refinement in e-discovery investigations: sensemaking, cognitive ergonomics and system design.

Given the very large numbers of documents involved in e-discovery investigations, lawyers face a considerable challenge of collaborative sensemaking. We report findings from three workplace studies which looked at different aspects of how this challenge was met. From a sociotechnical perspective, the studies aimed to understand how investigators collectively and individually worked with information to support sensemaking and decision making. Here, we focus on discovery-led refinement; specifically, how engaging with the materials of the investigations led to discoveries that supported refinement of the problems and new strategies for addressing them. These refinements were essential for tractability. We begin with observations which show how new lines of enquiry were recursively embedded. We then analyse the conceptual structure of a line of enquiry and consider how reflecting this in e-discovery support systems might support scalability and group collaboration. We then focus on the individual activity of manual document review where refinement corresponded with the inductive identification of classes of irrelevant and relevant documents within a collection. Our observations point to the effects of priming on dealing with these efficiently and to issues of cognitive ergonomics at the human–computer interface. We use these observations to introduce visualisations that might enable reviewers to deal with such refinements more efficiently

Knowledge Cartography: Software tools and mapping techniques

Knowledge Cartography is the discipline of mapping intellectual landscapes.The focus of this book is on the process by which manually crafting interactive, hypertextual maps clarifies one’s own understanding, as well as communicating it.The authors see mapping software as a set of visual tools for reading and writing in a networked age. In an information ocean, the primary challenge is to find meaningful patterns around which we can weave plausible narratives. Maps of concepts, discussions and arguments make the connections between ideas tangible and disputable. With 17 chapters from the leading researchers and practitioners, the reader will find the current state–of-the-art in the field. Part 1 focuses on educational applications in schools and universities, before Part 2 turns to applications in professional communitie

A debate dashboard to enhance on-line knowledge sharing

Purpose – Web 2.0 technologies have radically modified the way in which knowledge is created, managed and shared, improving productivity and accelerating innovation processes for the enterprises. These technologies have allowed enterprises to produce knowledge, leverage collective intelligence and build social capital on a scale that was unimaginable a few years ago. In this paper we focus on a particular kind of web-based collaborative platforms known as argument mapping tools and we discuss the main barriers to the adoption of them. Literature has proved that these argument mapping tools provide large and small and medium enterprise with several advantages, but nevertheless, they have low level adoption. In this paper we explore new technological solutions to support the adoption of argument mapping tools. In particular, we propose the design of a Debate Dashboard to provide visual feedback to support online deliberation. These visual feedback aims at compensating the loss of information due to the mediation of the technology. The Debate Dashboard is composed of a set of suitable visualization tools that have been selected on the basis of a literature review of the visualization tools. Design/methodology/approach - We propose a literature review of existing visualization tools. Building on the literature review we selected thirty visualization tools, which have been classified on the basis of the kind of feedback they are able to provide. We identify three classes of feedback: Community feedback (identikit of users), Interaction feedback (about how users interact) and Absorption feedback (about generated content and its organization). We distilled the Debate Dashboard features by building on results of a literature review on Web 2.0 tools for data visualization. As output of literature review we selected six visualization tools. We consider these selected tools as a sort of starting point. Indeed, our aim is the improvement of them through the addition of further features and functions in order to make them more effective in providing feedback. Originality/value – Our paper enriches the debate about computer mediated conversation and visualization tools. We propose a Dashboard prototype to augment collaborative knowledge mapping tools by providing visual feedback on conversations. The Dashboard will provide at the same time three different kinds of feedback about: details of the participants to the conversation, interaction processes and generated content. This will allow the improvement of the benefits and reduce the costs deriving from the use of mapping tools. Moreover, another important novelty is that visualization tools will be integrated to mapping tools, as until now they have been used only to visualize data contained in forums (as Usenet or Slash.dot), chat or email archives Practical implications – The Dashboard provides feedback about participants, interaction processes and generated contents, thus supporting the adoption of mapping tools as technologies able to foster knowledge sharing among remote workers or/and customers and supplier. The integration of Debate Dashboard with common online argument mapping tools aims at enabling the following advantages: 1. Reduction of misunderstanding; 2. Reduction of cognitive effort required to use argument mapping tools; 3. Improvement of the exploration and the analysis of the maps - the Debate Dashboard feedback improves the usability of the object (the map), thus allowing users to pitch into the conversation in the right place

Design collaboration as organisational sense-making and sense-giving

Construction design has largely been pictured as a fragmented effort that is prone to ineffectiveness due to its multi-disciplinary and multi-organizational nature. As a result, design management is traditionally considered to be focused on adjusting and integrating disparate disciplinary contributions with the intention of overcoming consequences of this fragmentation. However, existing empirical work reveals that design in construction does not develop through such adjustment and integration of separately created disciplinespecific parts, but rather as a whole through interdisciplinary interactions which present a continuous path of unfolding decisions and activities. This paper will argue that, for the purposes of design management, multidisciplinary construction design can be viewed as an organisational endeavour; thus, suggesting a shift away from management centred upon design outputs to management centred upon design interactions. Based on this argument, interdisciplinary interactions from the practices of a construction design project are analysed using an ‘organisational sense-making’ perspective which is originated in organisational studies. When seen from an organisational sense-making perspective, the problematic issues of disciplinary and organizational fragmentation and integration become reformulated as issues of sense-giving and sense-making among various design stakeholders that are part of the same organisational whole. Under this perspective interdisciplinary interactions are not seen as the means for design integration that imply compromises for discipline-specific design solutions. Rather they are the means for sense-giving and sense-making to continuously redefine the organisational direction, thereby continuously reconfiguring discipline-specific tasks in a consistent and coherent manner. As a result, an organisational sense-making perspective enables conceiving the fragmentation in construction design as a productive force. Ultimately, the paper provides fresh insights into design collaboration and management. It concludes that fragmentation is not something to be 'resolved' through simplistic measures of integration, such as design data integration, but it is rather something that needs to be 'cultivated' through raising an explicit awareness of the means and processes of sense-giving and sensemaking

Sensemaking handoff: When and how?

Computer support helpdesks often engage in sensemaking while working on atypical problems. Handoffs are common in these sensemaking situations due to shift changes, because a different skill or perspective is needed or simply because the current sensemaker may be exhausted. Though handoff may be needed, it may not always be successful. This could be true because sensemaking involves non-routine activities for which no structural support for handoff may exist, or because sensemakers may not be sure what to handoff if sensemaking is not complete. This study examined the issues related to sensemaking handoff in computer support helpdesks. Existing theories of sensemaking (Russell et al, 1993 and Weick, 1996 ) were used as a framework. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with two different computer helpdesk personnel groups at a large mid-western university. Successful handoffs occurred either very early or very late in the sensemaking process. This choice of handoff time as well as other aspects of handoffs are discussed using the principles of least collaborative effort [13] and mindfulness [18].Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/63060/1/1450450234_ftp.pd

"Shared sense of purposefulness": a new concept to understand the practice of coordinating design in construction

Construction management literature sees the collective task of coordinating design as being about the “‘integration’” of “fragmented” discipline-specific design tasks/outputs, thus overlooking the important role of social interactions. This is not only conceptually problematic but also presents a practical management problem. As a response, a practice-based approach, which relies on a “becoming” ontology, is adopted for a practical explanation of design coordination for more effective design management. The adopted methodology suggests that design develops as a result of unfolding (path-dependent) individual actions and interdisciplinary interactions. Based on this, the concept of a “shared sense of purposefulness” is proposed to refer to the temporary and precarious organizational state of a design team in which each of the interacting team members has achieved a state of purposefulness to resume individual action. Hence, design coordination in construction is redefined as continuously re-establishing and maintaining “a shared sense of purposefulness”. The concept’s usefulness for understanding the practice of design coordination is demonstrated using data collected from a project in the UK. The discussion enables fresh insights into the everyday operation of design coordination. It is concluded that the proposed conception paves a way forward both for the research and practice in construction design management

Making Sense of Strategic Change at a University: How faculty understood their implementation of a cluster hiring initiative

Over the past half-century, American universities have come under increasing scrutiny by their stakeholders, and numerous interdisciplinary initiatives have been launched in response to this trend. However, little is known about how faculty members understand their implementation of these initiatives. It is critical that the experiences of such faculty be understood because the outcomes of interdisciplinary initiatives can be diminished by a lack faculty support. A qualitative case study was conducted of faculty members’ implementation of the Interdisciplinary Faculty Initiative at the University of Michigan between 2007 and 2012. Over two years, 49 interviews were conducted and analyzed along with hundreds of collected documents. Guided by the theory of sensemaking, I find that faculty largely understood that the contributions of the initiative were realized through their cultivation of expertise. Essentially, faculty implemented the initiative in ways that they believed allowed their scholarly activities to reflect some distinctive aspect of their expertise. But rather than doing this by equipping specific subject matter they had mastered or by collaborating with other recognized experts, they also used a specific form of communication – reflective sensegiving – to do this work. They engaged in reflective sensegiving by asking a series of general and exploratory questions to a wide range of colleagues over time. Doing so surfaced discrepant cues that they incorporated into their ongoing sensemaking which allowed them to better understand exactly how they could cultivate their expertise through the initiative they implemented. These findings make a contribution to the literature by investigating the conceptual relationships that exist between sensegiving and the sensemaking process. By showing how faculty search out ways to cultivate their expertise, this work also provides a contrast to many existing depictions of faculty work as being essentially competitive, paradigmatic, or pedagogical in nature. Finally, the findings of this study have implications for the use of interdisciplinary initiatives to facilitate organizational change in large American research universities. They suggest that without ensuring that the expectations of the participating faculty are aligned with each other over time in complementary ways, the intended outcomes of interdisciplinary initiatives may be unrealized, diverted, or delayed.PhDHigher EducationUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/113474/1/eliasms_1.pd