Organizational memory: the role of business intelligence to leverage the application of collective knowledge

Nowadays, the major challenge to organizations managers is that they must make appropriate decisions in a turbulent environment while it is hard to recognize whether information is good or bad, because actions resulting from wrong decisions may place the organization at risk of survive. That is why organizations managers try to avoid making wrong decisions. In order to improve this, managers should use collective knowledge and experiences shared through Organizational Memory (OM) effectively to reduce the rate of unsuccessful decision making. In this sense, Business Intelligence (BI) tools allow managers to improve the effectiveness of decision making and problem solving. In the light of these motivations, the aim of this chapter is to comprehend the role of BI systems in supporting OM effectively in real context of crowdsourcing academic initiative called CrowdUM.This work is financed by Fundos FEDER through the Programa Operacional Fatores de Competitividade - COMPETE and Fundos Nacionais through FCT – Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia under the Project: FCOMP-01-0124-FEDER-02267

Reflections on the impact of social technologies on lecturers in a pathway institution

Education has evolved over time from face-to-face teaching to computer-supported learning, and now to even more sophisticated electronic tools. In particular, social technologies are being used to supple- ment the classroom experience and to ensure that students are becoming increasingly engaged in ways that appeal to them. No matter how educationally beneficial, however, new technology is affected by its users. To investigate this, lecturers at the Eynesbury Institute of Business and Technology (EIBT)—a Higher Education pathway provider—were surveyed to determine their perception and application of social technolog(ies) in their personal, but predominantly ‘professional’ lives. Utilising a qualitative and autoethnographic approach, one author provides an insight into their own attitude toward social technologies, coupled with responses to three open-ended questions. Thereafter, the same questions were posed to EIBT academic staff to understand their willingness or reluctance to use social technologies in their practice as part of their first-year pathway course(s)