Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Central Florida, 2008. / Advisers: Waldemar Karwowski, Linda Malone. Includes bibliographical references (p. 156-169).

Changes in big companies resulting in new organizational structures and cost cutting are pushing more and more of the knowledge and information handling to sub-units in a multi-national structure. For big knowledge-intensive companies that act in the global market place, internal information handling is becoming a challenge. The study and reflections are based on experiences from Ericsson, a knowledge-intensive global telecommunication company. This company delivers complex cross-functional products (solutions) and has a decentralized organization. It faces the cost of managing distributed product information and the challenge to gather relevant information in the sales departments. One can easily characterize the company’s complex and unique product offerings as having multiple dependencies. The solutions are composed by building blocks, i.e. different sub products, delivered by different product units. The different sub products suffer from limitations in how they can be combined into solutions. This study addresses the information gaps in a decentralized organization regarding this specific issue. It focuses on identifying vital information without driving cost and requiring organizational changes. Stakeholder identification was done from a value chain perspective. The type of information that would give the most profitable solutions was identified during group sessions and individual interviews. An asymmetric compatibility matrix (ACM) was developed to fit the purpose of keeping low maintenance cost and without requiring organizational changes. The ACM was applied and process maturity improvements were evaluated with the use of the Process Enterprise and Maturity Model. The Ericsson specific study shows that the use of an ACM for product compatibility information makes it possible to define information responsibility that is sustainable over time. Thereby the maintenance cost for this information can be brought down to a minimum. Furthermore, the study shows that the effort of gathering information for the sales organizations to provide customer solutions can be reduced by the use of an ACM offering generic compatibility information. Users of the ACM would be able to re-use its information and focus on customer specific sales and deployment issues rather than re-do what others already have done. Cost of sales as well as business risks would thereby likely decrease, affecting the bottom line positively. Furthermore new business opportunities are assumed to be addressed better since relevant generic information is made available up front. Other positive expected benefits are prevention of network malfunctions and increased customer satisfaction. From this study it can be concluded that an ACM can be a powerful tool for gathering cross-functional product information in large decentralized organizations at a low cost, without any organizational changes, and with a high process maturity. Further research would be needed if one would consider validating the general applicability of the ACM in other processes.

Educators all over the world are facing the challenges brought by education reform. Schools need to become more aware how Knowledge Management (KM) can help them be more effective in leveraging organizational knowledge to improve organizational effectiveness to face the increasing requirements for school improvement. Although KM has been regarded as the advanced management strategy in the business world for leveraging their intellectual assets, few studies have been conducted in the school setting. The present study will shed light on how to implement KM in a school setting through the leadership provided by the principal. This study can be a model for those educators who would like to implement KM in their schools. Although KM researchers have identified that leadership is a critical factor in KM implementation, few studies have explored the actual impact of leadership in the process of KM implementation. Moreover, the literature review shows that leadership by the principal is the essential element for school success in KM. This study shows that a principal’s leadership-driven approach is necessary for KM implementation and explores its impact on the process of KM implementation for school improvement. The study uses insider action research to explore how the principal’s leadership can be incorporated into KM in a school environment and evaluate the effectiveness of this Leadership-Driven KM Implementation in a school setting, so that this study can offer practical advice and guidance to the principals who would like to try KM in their practice. In this study, KM was implemented in a school by starting with two basic approaches: Information-Based and People-/Interaction Based Approaches. The Principal’s Knowledge Leadership was integrated with the two approaches to strengthen the implementation of the KM strategies. The principal acted as the knowledge leader with the roles of knowledge vision builder, knowledge enabler builder and knowledge role model. Under the strong leadership of the principal, both the Information-Based and People-/Interaction Based Approaches have been implemented with achievements in sharing information/knowledge and nurturing a sharing culture and trust. The principal assessed teacher’ readiness, implemented Information-Based and People-/Interaction-Based approaches and strengthened knowledge leadership through the process. This study can serve as a model for implementing KM in schools. This study shows that the principal’s leadership was the key driver for KM Implementation. The principal performed his leadership with clear direction and thoughtful procedures of implementing Information-Based and People-/Interaction-Based Approaches, thoughtful allocation of the school resources, and shaping learning for staff. As a result, the school developed a Knowledge Base and a Digital Archive as knowledge repositories and Lesson Study and Communities of Practice as platforms for knowledge sharing. The School’s achievements in KM implementation were recognized through improvement in students’ testing achievements, appreciation by KM practitioners, and recognition and awards from government examiners and experts. This study recommends that Leadership-Driven Knowledge Management is of value in the implementation of KM in schools to help schools become learning organizations so they can better face the challenges brought by waves of education reform and societal change. / published_or_final_version / Education / Doctoral / Doctor of Education

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Ideellt arbete pågår! Det ideella arbetet har ett stort ekonomiskt värde och arbetet är betydelsefullt för de mindre föreningarnas möjligheter att bedriva en verksamhet. Föreningarna är beroende av att föräldrar engagerar sig i föreningens arbete. Stora delar av de ideella föreningsinsatserna sker genom att anordna olika evenemang. Evenemangen är ekonomiskt viktiga för de mindre idrottsföreningarna då de är ett sätt att säkerställa verksamhetens inkomst. För att effektivisera arbetet och kvalitetssäkra evenemanget behöver föreningen ta tillvara på de erfarenheter och den kunskap som bildas under evenemanget. Det är även viktigt att det sker en kunskapsöverföring till kommande projekt. Fem intervjuer och en enkätundersökning har genomförts med personer som har erfarenhet av att arbeta ideellt i en mindre idrottsförening. Resultatet av djupintervjuerna visar att de mest frekventa faktorerna som påverkar kunskapsöverföringsprocessen är tid, rollfördelning och rutiner. Faktorerna påverkar i olika grad och resultatet tyder på att det är den tysta personliga kunskapstypen som är den dominerade kunskapstypen bland mindre idrottsföreningar. Faktorerna skapar möjligheter och underlättar kunskapsöverföringen genom att individer känner delaktighet och självständighet. Förutom att faktorerna möjliggör att kunskap förs vidare till kommande projekt bidrar de till att det uppstår hinder i processen. Hindren åskådliggörs genom avsaknad av rutiner, otillräckliga rutiner eller tidsbrist. Studiens resultat lyfter fram den paradox som uppstår när föreningarna effektiviserar sin verksamhet genom att bli allt mer företagslika i sina arbetsformer, organisation och struktur i syfte att minska den ideella arbetsinsatsen. / In the Swedish sports clubs non-profit work is in progress. Much of voluntary work in the smaller sports clubs is done by organizing events. The events are important for securing income. Event Project generates a large amount of knowledge that needs to be transferred to following projects to ensure quality. Five interviews and a questionnaire were carried out, with people, who work in small sports club as volunteers. The results of the interviews show that the most common factors affecting knowledge transfer in smaller sports are time, roles and routines. These factors affect knowledge transfer to different degrees but the result show that it is the individual’s knowledge transfer abilities which is the strength of the small sport clubs. These factors help people participate and feel more auto-nomous, but they can also result barriers to knowledge transfer. People organizing these events develop invaluable knowledge, which needs disseminating to further projects. The study results highlight the paradox that arises when unions are trying to reduce labor input by streamlining.

A critical component needed to maintain National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s (NASA) mission will be Johnson Space Center’s (JSC) ability to build off previous space program’s lessons learned by utilizing knowledge management (KM) activities and practices. Currently, at the local level of NASA JSC, employees lack cultural enablers that can stimulate behaviors that promote knowledge management practices that within the organization. Through surveys conducted with current NASA civil servant employees, this thesis investigates current involvement and attitudes in knowledge management activities/programs and practices of NASA JSC employees at the local level. By understanding the local employee’s involvement and attitudes of knowledge management, recommendations can be made on how to create a culture change that stimulates behaviors that promote knowledge management within the local level’s of NASA JSC. / text

Edited and abridged version of a paper presented at International Conference on Digital Library, New Delhi, 24-27 February, 2004, entitled â Architecture and building of Medical Digital Library at National Informatics Centre: What exists and what is required for MeDLib@NIC?â / ICMR-NIC Centre for Biomedical Information has developed various products that are available over Internet. These includes: i. UNcat (http://uncat.nic.in) - union catalogue of journal holdings of medical libraries of India; ii. IndMED (http://indmed.nic.in) - A bibliographic database of Indian biomedical journals and iii. medIND (http://medind.nic.in) - full texts of Indian biomedical journals being indexed in IndMED. Now, having these services, tools, databases and content in operation, the focus of future activities would be to integrate these â ingredientsâ both internally and externally to provide â single window digital access persistentlyâ . Here we propose an architecture under which each service, tool, database and content collection is an independent layer. These layers are the building blocks of Digital Library (DL) and can interoperate with each other due to either build-in or plug-in(ed) interoperability. They are accessible by their own interfaces as well as through Digital Library interface. In context of the proposed architecture, this article also takes stoke of what is available and what is required to build the digital library.

Artificial Intelligence Lab, Department of MIS, University of Arizona / As information technologies and applications become more overwhelming and diverse, persistent information overload problems have become ever more urgent.1 Fallout from this trend has most affected government, specifically criminaljustice information systems. The explosive growth in the digital information maintained in the data repositories of federal, state, and local criminal-justice entities and the spiraling need for cross-agency access to that information have made utilizing it both increasingly urgent and increasingly difficult. The Coplink system applies a concept spaceâ a statistics-based, algorithmic technique that identifies relationships between suspects, victims, and other pertinent dataâ to accelerate criminal investigations and enhance law enforcement efforts.

Artificial Intelligence Lab, Department of MIS, University of Arizona / In response to the September 11 terrorist attacks, major government efforts to modernize federal law enforcement authorities’ intelligence collection and processing capabilities have been initiated. At the state and local levels, crime and police report data is rapidly migrating from paper records to automated records management systems in recent years, making them increasingly accessible. However, despite the increasing availability of data, many challenges continue to hinder effective use of law enforcement data and knowledge, in turn limiting crime-fighting capabilities of related government agencies. For instance, most local police have database systems used by their own personnel, but lack an efficient manner in which to share information with other agencies. More importantly, the tools necessary to retrieve, filter, integrate, and intelligently present relevant information have not yet been sufficiently refined. According to senior Justice Department officials quoted on MSNBC, Sept. 26, 2001, there is “justifiable skepticism about the FBI’s ability to handle massive amounts of information,” and recent anti-terrorism initiatives will create more data overload problems. As part of nationwide, ongoing digital government initiatives, COPLINK is an integrated information and knowledge management environment aimed at meeting some of these challenges.