Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Texas at Austin, 2002. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references. Available also from UMI Company.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--City University of Hong Kong, 2010. / "Submitted to Department of Information Systems in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy." Includes bibliographical references (leaves 104-118)

Small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) are recognised across the world as having the ability to drive the economy and greatly contribute towards its growth, more so in emerging economies. However, the growth and performance of firms has further been directly linked to the critical development and investment towards its human capital. Even though there is a known importance of human capital development for business growth and competence, little is known about how much SMEs themselves attribute it to the success of their own firm’s performance. As such, this study responds to this gap by exploring the perceptions that SMEs hold regarding human capital as a concept and its developmental role in their business success. Establishing which component of human capital is perceived to be important in the founding of the businesses, during its emergent years and for future growth will enable SMEs to better understand the key human capital components and features to harness at the different stages of their business and in the pursuit for competitive advantage. The study will better equip policy makers in their development of interventions they embark on to promote SME competitiveness. The study followed a qualitative research methodology which used in-depth one-on-one interviews with participants in the petroleum industry of South Africa. The study focused on one segment of the petroleum value chain, while still using several subgroups for data triangulation. The results of the study indicated that SMEs perceive knowledge as the most important factor of human capital and rely on it in the founding of their businesses. The study further revealed that SMEs rely predominantly on intangible resources to gain competitive advantage, but are negative affected by institutional constraints to effectively compete. The study generated a framework that can be used by both SMEs and policy makers to enable the development of human capital and promote SME competitiveness. / Mini Dissertation (MBA)--University of Pretoria, 2021. / Gordon Institute of Business Science (GIBS) / MBA / Unrestricted

In spite of the benefits of implementing whole life costing technique as a valuable approach for comparing alternative building designs allowing operational cost benefits to be evaluated against any initial cost increases and also as part of procurement in the construction industry, its adoption has been relatively slow due to the lack of tangible evidence, “know-how” skills and knowledge of the practice i.e. the lack of professionals in many establishments with knowledge and training on the use of whole life costing technique, this situation is compounded by the absence of available data on whole life costing from relevant projects, lack of data collection mechanisms and so on. This has proved to be very challenging to those who showed some willingness to employ the technique in a construction project. The knowledge generated from a project can be considered as best practices learned on how to carry out tasks in a more efficient way, or some negative lessons learned which have led to losses and slowed down the progress of the project and performance. Knowledge management in whole life costing practice can enhance whole life costing analysis execution in a construction project, as lessons learned from one project can be carried on to future projects, resulting in continuous improvement, providing knowledge that can be used in the operation and maintenance phases of an assets life span. This study aims to use knowledge management as a tool to address the obstacle of whole life costing outlined in this study by developing a framework for knowledge capture and recovery in whole life costing practice in construction. An extensive literature review was first conducted on the concept of knowledge management and whole life costing. This was followed by a semi-structured interview to explore the existing and good practice knowledge management in whole life costing practice in a construction project. The data gathered from the semi-structured interview was analysed using content analysis and used to develop the framework. From the results obtained in the study, it shows that the practice of project review is the common method used in the capturing of knowledge and should be undertaken in an organised and accurate manner, and results should be presented in the form of instructions or in a checklist format, forming short and precise insights. In order to efficiently and swiftly recover knowledge from previous whole life costing project, the knowledge must be characterised based on whole life costing processes and activities, by means of an IT system with components designed to manage knowledge and locate expertise. However; the framework developed advised that irrespective of how effective the approach to knowledge capture and recovery, the absence of an environment for sharing knowledge, would render the approach ineffective. Open culture and resources are critical for providing a knowledgesharing setting, and leadership has to sustain whole life costing knowledge capture and recovery, giving full support for its implementation. The framework has been evaluated by academics and practitioners who are experts in the area of whole life costing practice. The results have indicated that the framework and its components are both suitable and efficient.

The construction industry is the largest industry in the world and operates in knowledge-based project organisations. The success of projects relies on the management of both tacit and explicit knowledge. This situation calls for a method for disseminating tacit knowledge from individuals to achieve higher performance and success value in construction projects. For the purpose, this study first articulates the problems of knowledge management in the construction industry. Then, by reviewing some knowledge engineering and management literatures, this research sets a theoretical foundation of knowledge management in the construction industry. A questionnaire survey was used to investigate and examine the current situation of knowledge management in UK and China construction industry. The result of frequency analysis and nonparametric test analysis provides the perceptions on the importance of knowledge transfer, the implementation of knowledge transfer, the resources of knowledge, and barriers for tacit knowledge transfer. From the literature review, this study proposes a tacit knowledge transfer process framework (3I) and identifies a series of factors correlated with effectiveness of knowledge transfer. This thesis also identifies four main independent variables - organsiational culture, organizational structure, IT technology and No-IT technology, and investigates the relationship between organisational elements with these factors and the performance of knowledge transfer. The findings are based on three case studies and responses of questionnaire survey and interviews. The results reveal that there are significant relationships between some of the variables and either the creation of knowledge assets or performance of knowledge transfer. Therefore, it is necessary for construction organsiations to consider these elements in developing and implementing a knowledge management strategy/system in a construction organisation. This study proposes a practical methodology to transfer knowledge by using an integrated system (TKTMS). The TKTMS can be an effective tool for all project members to transfer tacit knowledge across firms' boundaries and accelerate the speed of knowledge creation, share and transfer in the construction industry. The integration of the function model (IDEF0) with the information model (IDEF1) is applied to understand the necessary function/information for consideration in the 3I model and implement TKTMS.

(in English): The thesis investigates knowledge management in the context of information science and human resources management strategy. It includes (1) analysis of the current status of knowledge management and the potential of knowledge management to be evaluated using audit procedures, (2) comparative analysis of knowledge management as approached in the Czech Republic and other countries, and (3) knowledge management audit proposal.