Why organizations fail to share knowledge: an empirical investigation and opportunities for improvement

Purpose: This paper explores critical failure factors (CFFs) in the context of knowledge sharing. It provides further insights into what can cause knowledge sharing failures, inflexible knowledge sharing strategies and ineffective knowledge sharing mechanisms. It also examines how practitioners can reduce or even mitigate such dysfunctions. Design/methodology/approach: A case-based inductive approach was conducted. Data was collected from two studies applying mixed methods. The first data set included nine in-depth, semi-structured interviews with highly skilled personnel from an Aerospace and Defense organization. The second data source included 375 successfully completed questionnaires from participants employed at the same organization. Findings: The paper identifies six CFFs with an impact on knowledge sharing. It also reveals that managing organizational ignorance can play a key role in generating new knowledge and averting failure. Study findings provide insights into the importance of identifying these failures when sharing knowledge and propose relevant mitigation strategies. Originality/value: This paper identifies a range of empirically validated CFFs that complement the extant work on the complexity of knowledge sharing and have hitherto not been seen in the literature. It also provides a more nuanced understanding of why both organizations and their people often fail to share knowledge by exploring the role of organizational ignorance

Knowledge management in smart city development: a systematic review

The notion of ‘smart cities’ has gained the attention of policymakers, urban developers and government authorities around the world and is emerging as a major response to urbanization, economic regeneration and other environmental challenges faced by cities globally. Smart cities depend not only on a city's endowment of hard infrastructure (physical capital), but also and increasingly so, on the availability and quality of knowledge communication and social infrastructure (human and social capital). This emerging role of cities as information hubs and knowledge repositories is particularly decisive for urban competitiveness. Arguably, many smart city projects die after the pilot stage and the lessons learned from previous projects never scale up to inform subsequent implementations. This is a major impediment in the future development of smart cities, particularly around facilitating successful technological and procedural replication. In line with recent calls for a cautious rethink of the very rationale and relevance of the smart cities debate pointing to new avenues of research into interdisciplinary aspects, this paper reviews the extant smart city literature in an attempt to identify current theoretical streams and provide further insight into the role of Knowledge Management in smart city development. It also explores how cities can realise the full benefits of tacit knowledge, learning and collaboration. A review of forty-eight peer-reviewed articles is conducted. The findings suggest the lack of Knowledge Management models for smart city replication and reveal how socio-technical approaches can help to support collaboration and knowledge sharing. Policy recommendations for local and national governments on how cities can benefit from a shift towards collaborative knowledge-making are also provided

Supplier satisfaction with public sector competitive tendering processes

Purpose: This paper aims to explore the supplier perspective on competitive tendering processes and build on an increasing and developing interest in supplier satisfaction with public sector procurement activities. Design/methodology/approach: Qualitative data was collected from 20 interviews with a variety of suppliers to the UK public sector, which was then analysed using Nvivo and a series of empirically supported propositions developed. Findings: The findings are combined into an integrated supplier satisfaction model, which explains how a multi-layered set of expectations (past and ideal) and quality dimensions (fairness, ambiguity, unnecessary information, tender focus, relationship irrelevance, unresponsiveness, outcome success) lead to dissatisfaction. This paper also establishes the implications of these judgments (non-response, poor quality and relationship impact) and that they are impacted by comparison to alternatives. Practical implications: Supplier dissatisfaction can have serious ramifications for public sector buying organisations by reducing the pool of applicants, creating relationship barriers and a disconnect between the tender and the eventual services provided. This paper gives empirically derived advice to managers and policymakers on how to avoid these issues. Social implications: Ensuring that as wide a pool of possible suppliers can respond to tender requests, means that the services that are provided by the public sector can make the most effective and efficient use of available resources. In addition, small to medium-sized enterprises may be encouraged to overcome their feelings of dissatisfaction and respond more frequently and readily to tender requests. Originality/value: This paper contributes to the field of public sector procurement and in particular that which looks at increasing supplier satisfaction, by developing a supplier satisfaction model based on supplier generated data, which uses disconfirmation theory to explain the dynamics of how individuals make judgments by comparing perceptions of performance with a multi-layered set of expectations. This paper identifies service quality dimensions that influence satisfaction judgments and the implications of these judgments

Modelling Realistic User Behaviour in Information Systems Simulations as Fuzzing Aspects

In this paper we contend that the engineering of information systems is hampered by a paucity of tools to tractably model, simulate and predict the impact of realistic user behaviours on the emergent properties of the wider socio-technical system, evidenced by the plethora of case studies of system failure in the literature. We address this gap by presenting a novel approach that models ideal user behaviour as workflows, and introduces irregularities in that behaviour as aspects which fuzz the model. We demonstrate the success of this approach through a case study of software development workflows, showing that the introduction of realistic user behaviour to idealised workflows better simulates outcomes reported in the empirical software engineering literature

Exploring knowledge management perspectives in smart city research: a review and future research agenda

There is a growing body of literature calling for work on the emerging role of smart cities as information hubs and knowledge repositories. This article reviews the existing smart city literature and integrates knowledge management perspectives to provide an overview of future research directions. By demonstrating the multi-stakeholder relationships involved in smart city development, it takes a crucial step towards looking into the role of knowledge management in future smart city research. Eighty-two peer-reviewed publications were analyzed covering smart city studies in various research domains. The systematic review identifies five different themes: strategy and vision, frameworks, enablers and inhibitors, citizen participation, and benefits. These themes form the basis for developing a future research agenda focused on knowledge sharing and co-learning among cities via three research directions: socio-technical approaches, knowledge sharing perspectives and organizational learning capabilities. The paper also proposes a series of knowledge-driven policy recommendations to contribute towards the UN Sustainable Development Goals

Examining Information and Knowledge Processes to Enhance Best Practices in Agile Knowledge Intensive Environments

This paper examines the information and knowledge processes of one of the largest innovative and agile computer software organisations in the world. The aim of this research is to increase the performance of the employees at the case study organisation by learning lessons from previous implemented knowledge strategies that have failed. The research methods used are based on a positivism approach to reduce potential bias views of employees and an interpretivist approach to add richness and depth to the collected data. The findings of the study suggest that the company should stop investing in building asynchronous teaching learning environments to aid knowledge management but turn to more traditional methods outlined in this paper. The overall results confirmed the need for a robust communication strategy to enhance the information and knowledge process within the agile knowledge intensive organisation

Why organizations fail to share knowledge: an empirical investigation and opportunities for improvement

Purpose: This paper explores critical failure factors (CFFs) in the context of knowledge sharing. It provides further insights into what can cause knowledge- sharing failures, inflexible knowledge-sharing strategies and ineffective knowledge- sharing mechanisms. It also examines how practitioners can reduce or even mitigate such dysfunctions. Design/methodology/approach: A case-based inductive approach was conducted. Data were collected from two studies applying mixed methods. The first data set included nine in-depth, semi-structured interviews with highly skilled personnel from an aerospace and defense organization. The second data source included 375 successfully completed questionnaires from participants employed at the same organization. Findings: The paper identifies six CFFs with an impact on knowledge sharing. It also reveals that managing organizational ignorance can play a key role in generating new knowledge and averting failure. Study findings provide insights into the importance of identifying these failures when sharing knowledge and propose relevant mitigation strategies. Originality/value: This paper identifies a range of empirically validated CFFs that complement the extant work on the complexity of knowledge sharing and have hitherto not been seen in the literature. It also provides a more nuanced understanding of why both organizations and their people often fail to share knowledge by exploring the role of organizational ignorance. © 2020, Emerald Publishing Limited