This study confined itself to an exploratory interpretive approach aimed at expanding the understanding of some elements that may affect virtual teams. It highlights the advantage of virtual teams over FTF teams.

Organizations are increasingly utilizing knowledge-sharing technologies to increase the amount of knowledge within their organization. While in most organizations, knowledge sharing is seen as a benefit, for law enforcement agencies it is viewed as a necessity. In order to protect against future terrorist attacks like September 11th, law enforcement agencies are trying to increase knowledge sharing across their current organizational boundaries. Given this massive undertaking, we have to wonder what are the potential unintended effects of this increase in knowledge sharing. This dissertation seeks to address this issue by understanding the relationships between individual and organizational factors, the use of knowledge sharing technology, and organizational outcomes.After a general discussion on knowledge, knowledge management strategies and technologies, a two-part model of knowledge sharing is proposed that 1) predicts outcomes given the use of knowledge sharing technology and 2) investigates the individual and organizational factors that serve as antecedents to the use of the knowledge sharing technology.The findings of this research suggest that given the characteristics of a police organization, an increase in the use of the knowledge sharing technology to communicate with external groups results in decreased productivity and job perceptions. Furthermore, this relationship may be moderated by factors within the police organization. Previous research on knowledge sharing has found that as knowledge sharing increases between individuals in different groups, productivity also increases. The results of this dissertation indicate that this is not always the case. By pulling together different areas of research, such as knowledge management, information technology, communication, and organizational behavior, this dissertation addresses the gaps in the research and contributes to the existing understanding of knowledge sharing. This dissertation also provides an important notice to law enforcement and other organizations: although they may approach knowledge sharing with the best intentions, there can be unintentional effects to increasing the use of knowledge sharing technology.

This research considers one of the most important of resources - knowledge. There is a widespread view that knowledge is important to organizations and this has led to the study of knowledge management. There are a plethora of definitions of knowledge and knowledge management, but knowledge sharing is recognised as being of fundamental importance. The literature shows the success of knowledge sharing is not only affected by factors including culture, management, technology, processes and structure but, more importantly, it is affected by how these factors interact and fit together. However there is little literature on alignment or strategic fit in knowledge sharing. This research adds to the literature by investigating the enablers and constraints of knowledge sharing and the possible effects of alignment. An interpretive approach using case studies triangulated with a survey is adopted, involving semi-structured interviews with 23 people across five organizations. The findings suggest that significant top management support and a strategy for knowledge sharing are necessary precursors of effective knowledge sharing. In the organizations which lacked this, there is little to encourage people to share and almost none of these organizations measured well on any aspect of knowledge sharing. There are widely varying uses of technology, but many are aimed at sharing data or information. Fewer uses of technology are geared to enabling or encouraging the communication necessary for knowledge sharing. The lack of senior management support may prevent any significant internal or external alignment so a possible approach to strategic fit for knowledge sharing is that strategy has to come first (and the management support that goes with it) and that this should lead to the embedding of the necessary behaviours for knowledge sharing. Only after this are processes and technology able to support knowledge sharing.

This study confined itself to an exploratory interpretive approach aimed at expanding the understanding of some elements that may affect virtual teams. It highlights the advantage of virtual teams over FTF teams.

Business today is faced with discontinuity and unpredictable change, which makes many of the structured processes of yesteryear redundant or obsolete. Process-based transactions are being replaced with technology and increasingly organisations are recognising the importance of proactively managing their knowledge transactions, to remain competitive. While research on knowledge sharing is gaining the attention of researchers, almost invariably their focus has been on the factors influencing knowledge transfer at the macro-level in large multi-national organisations. Few have attempted to unravel the complexities of individual-to-individual micro-level knowledge sharing and those that have, for the most part have directed their investigations towards exploring factors that enhance or impede the source individual sharing their knowledge, rather than the recipient's receiving of knowledge. While questioning is implicit in knowledge sharing there are assumptions that underpin the structure of a question and these assumptions affect both the source and the recipient. This study investigates how the structure of a question posed to a source individual when eliciting knowledge, influences the attitude of a recipient individual towards the knowledge they receive from the question response. Drawing upon theoretical assumptions that underpin question structure, three hypotheses are posed to compare binary, open-ended and directed question responses. To test the hypotheses a progression of three independent studies were performed using laboratory and field experiments. The first study conducted in a laboratory, used a contrived scenario case as the knowledge context and the second study replicated this experiment in the field. The last study conducted in a single organisation, used real organisational knowledge as the knowledge context. Recipients of shared knowledge were found to be more favourably disposed towards question responses that were structured in a complex manner; open-ended and directed question responses were more favoured than binary question responses. ii There was no difference in recipient attitude between open-ended and directed question responses and recipient attitude towards the shared knowledge was found to be positively related to their intention to use the knowledge in the future. These findings are of significance as they illustrate the importance of structuring questions in a manner that is consistent with recipients of the shared knowledge being more favourably disposed towards the knowledge they have received. In an environment of ambiguity, complexity and uncertainty where decisions are nonprogrammed, strategic and imperative to the competitiveness of the organisation, no longer is the binary 'Yes' or 'No' compliance or audit style question, with its implicit assumptions, sufficient to elicit knowledge. It is important to recognise that often we do not know what we need to know until it is shared by someone. Further, when shared knowledge is cognitively processed with our current knowledge base, the new knowledge is likely to facilitate more informed decision-making. The more favourably disposed the recipient is towards the knowledge the more likely it is that they will use it in the future; knowledge is transferred.

By using multiple regression analyses from 365 managers distributed four kind of industries in Taiwan, the study tested total of 9 hypotheses that respectively partially proposed to explore relationships of perception of organizational politics related to knowledge sharing. Four theoretical perspectives embedded in the literature review to strengthen the theme¡Xorganizational politics. The four main findings of the study included: (1) Perceptions of organizational politics simultaneously negatively effected to trust, organizational restructuring satisfaction and knowledge sharing. (2) Trust not only did positively effect to organizational restructuring satisfaction and knowledge sharing, it also fully mediated effect between perception of organizational politics and knowledge sharing. (3) Organizational restructuring satisfaction positively effected to knowledge sharing; besides, it not only did partially mediate effect between perceptions of organizational politics and knowledge sharing, but also did fully mediate effect between perceptions of organizational politics and trust. (4) Concreted confirmatory model examined Goodness Fit perfectly. Implications of the results to those of organization, manager and future research were discussed.

With the advancement of technology, knowledge management (KM) has become more and more important in research and practice. In the research of KM, researchers believe that organizations are abundant in knowledge, and the sharing of knowledge can utilize knowledge well. Therefore, how to share knowledge stored in organizations and individuals is the most important issue. Recently, firms take outside resources as potential sources of firm-addressable knowledge. By interacting with customers constantly, firms can get lots of valuable information and knowledge, such as market information, professional experiments and communication skills. Our research selects knowledge intensive service firms as the subject of research and tries to understand the processes of interorganizational knowledge sharing within the development of the information project. First, from literature review we found that knowledge sharing is affected by four factors: project¡¦s background, characteristics of organizations, characteristics of knowledge, and characteristics of tasks. Because the processes of knowledge sharing are dynamic and complex processes, and there is no a well-defined framework, this research is an explorative research, using qualitative research method to carry out this research. This research uses multi-case research method to collect data from individual interviews and official documents. To analyze the data, we choose grounded theory as an analysis method to induce an explanative framework from our data. This research analyzes data from two aspects: affecting factors and stages of the project, trying to understand the factors affecting cross-organization knowledge sharing method and the progress of knowledge sharing in different stages of the project. We also found that information department will change the processes of knowledge sharing and two variations are found. Finally, this research concludes that the information department plays the very important role as a mediator for knowledge sharing, and firms can adopt it when there is a knowledge gap between firms and their clients.

<p>In order to stay competitive, companies need to take into account many different aspects such as Knowledge Management (KM). Knowledge sharing (KS) is an important aspect in the field of KM. Organizations today increasingly recognize the need to support, in one way or another, knowledge sharing amongst employees. Employees and specifically managers are searching, testing and using various proactive interventions to facilitate knowledge sharing. By effectively enhancing knowledge sharing a company can develop a higher degree of competitive advantage.</p><p>The purpose of our thesis is to make recommendations for how knowledge sharing may be improved amongst the sales representatives in the sales department at a customeroriented company, Arctic Paper. In order to fulfil this purpose and to present a reliable and valid report a qualitative analysis method was used. We wanted to get a deeper understanding of the chosen subject matter in this company and therefore conducted the interviews in a semi-structured manner in order to have the flexibility to follow up the interviewed participants perceptions and thoughts.</p><p>Conducting the interviews on the two levels, strategic and operational, turned out to be rather informative. We found that the view on the chosen subject, knowledge sharing, differed in the two levels. There seemed to exist a notion of problem-free view on the higher level of the company, while the employees on the operational level could more easily target the main problems that they face. The most evident problems regarding the sharing of knowledge in the Sales Department concerns the tacit knowledge, since this is prevalent here and do not have structured means of transfer among the sales representatives and therefore easily can get lost. The informal direct sharing of knowledge causes loss of information and errors in production and delivery. Drawing from this we have gathered some recommendations for the company to consider, which will be presented in the study. Some of the most important recommendations that we could conclude deriving from the probelms concerns the transferring of a certain amount of tacit knowledge into explicit, which means paying more attention to the process of externalization from Nonaka’s model which we present in the our Frame of Reference.</p>

Social software has become pervasive including technologies such as blogs, wikis, and social networking sites. Interactive Web 2.0 technology is distinguished from earlier Internet channels, with content provided not only from the website host, but also and most importantly, user-generated content. These social technologies are increasingly entering the enterprise, involving complex social and psychological aspects as well as an understanding of traditional technology acceptance factors. Organizations trying to reap potential benefits of enterprise social software (ESS) must successfully implement and maintain ESS tools. This research develops a framework for assessing knowledge sharing based on reciprocal determinism theory and augmented with technology acceptance, sociological, and psychological factors. Semi-structured interviews with IT professionals, followed by a written survey of employees using ESS are used to collect data. The hermeneutic circle methodology is used to analyze the interview transcripts and structural equation modeling is used to analyze the survey data. Results show technological advantage has no significant effect on the intention to share knowledge, but community cohesiveness and individual willingness significantly affect knowledge sharing intention and behavior. The study offers a synthesized model of variables affecting knowledge sharing as well as a better understanding of best practices for organizations to consider when implementing and maintaining ESS tools for employee knowledge sharing and collaboration.

This thesis study explores the existing knowledge management and sharing practices in donor organizations, particularly working in the developing countries. The potentional of knowledge management and sharing to facilitate development organizations in carrying out development work has been recognised in the literature. Literature presented mix of critique and appreciation to the existing efforts of donor agencies. Knowledge sharing platforms revolves around the country initiatives and donor agencies like UNDP and World Bank which are proactive in establishing these platforms for partner organizations. This research contributes practical insight to the question of delivery of these platforms, through an empirical investigation based on the development professionals&apos; experiences. As earlier research shows enormous amount of literature on individual, team and organizational level knowledge sharing, this study sets prime focus on community level or external knowledge sharing, an area where there exist a dearth of emperical research or contributing literature on examing the role of sharing initiatives and possible contribution in improving risk management in development projects. Literature shows the potential of knowledge management and sharing practices, as their possible contribution in the global development practices and in bridging gap between North-South stakeholders. However, cultural, technological, organizational and individual level issues escalate with external level of knowledge sharing and thesis rightly, identifies success factors from the literature alongwith their viability from the professionals. It is even more inadequate when it comes to projects of donor organizations in under developed and developing countries. With 80% of documented failure rates of knowledge sharing systems, external knowledge sharing with partner organizations or network organizations is really not adequate and do not have supporting culture. As this whole process of sharing knowledge, heavily relies on the perceived motivation and willingness to share, study has tried to identify the challenges facing wider use of these sharing systems. Study also contributes with suggestions for knowledge management and sharing system developers, policy and decision makers and system users, to improve the overall contribution of knowledge sharing in better risk management. Apart from the cultural barriers, there are technical and policy level issues which need more concerted efforts to improve the use of these sharing systems by various organizations and individuals. / House No. 174-A, St. 61, I-8/3, Islamabad, Pakistan Contact: +92-336-5666065, Email: noman-1985@hotmail.com