This thesis examines the retention of best practices by clinicians after the implementation of an integrated care pathway for patients with congestive heart failure. While the literature suggests there are many reasons why the implementation of best practices is difficult, there is little information on the sustainability of best practices once implemented.<p>Using a qualitative research design guided by Rogers theory of Diffusion of Innovations the researcher interviewed seven clinicians who participated in the implementation of the pathway. A thematic analysis revealed several themes that ran throughout participants responses. <p>While the participants indicated they see value in best practices, they also identified barriers to getting that knowledge into practice and keeping it there. A spectrum of factors, including individual autonomy, time, resources, organizational support and the organization of the system all played a role.<p>In the end, participants revealed that although small pieces of the pathway remain in practice, the pathway itself is no longer used by clinicians to manage patients with congestive heart failure.

Kunskapsöverföring har ansetts vara av vikt inom företag och organisationer för att bevara kunskapen, informationen och för att kunna förmedla den vidare till andra medlemmar. Studiens primära syfte var att genom forskningsteorier och intervjuer effektivisera Rädda barnens Ellen och Allan projekt i deras kunskapsöverföring. 5 aktiva medlemmar inom Ellen och Allan projektet intervjuades samt 1 kontrollintervju genomfördes med en rutinerad projektledare från Svenska kyrkan, för att få fram dennes syn på projektets nuvarande situation gällande kunskapsöverföring.      Resultatet visade att det finns en viss otrygghet i rollerna och framförallt hos projektledarna, som inte har någon specifik roll- eller uppdragsbeskrivning. Genom resultatet kunde vi även se att kunskapsöverföringen bör vara ett ingående moment i organisationens projektbeskrivning för att det ska fungera på bästa sätt. Fysiska möten och god kommunikation mellan deltagarna bör även prioriteras för att effektivisera kunskapsöverföringen inom projektet.

Due to increased globalization, MNCs are increasingly relocating employees on international assignments. During their international assignments, expatriates gain a vast amount of knowledge that can be valuable to the firm. This valuable source of knowledge often remains untapped however and MNCs do often not exploit and harvest knowledge from expatriates. Given this problem we have investigated what the process of knowledge transfer looks like and how MNCs exploit knowledge from Swedish expatriates. We also wanted to find out how factors such as knowledge characteristics, corporate culture, debriefing, and post-assignment position effected this process. By conducting qualitative interviews with former expatriates, we could conclude that formal programs or structured mechanisms to harvest knowledge from expatriates were not very common, the corporate culture had a fairly big impact on expatriates’ well-being, and debriefing sessions varied depending on the size of the company, position of the expatriate as well as the number of expatriates a MNC had. Furthermore, we were able to conclude that the MNCs we investigated utilized knowledge from expatriates by giving them suitable post-assignment positions. Given the tacit nature of expatriates’ knowledge, we recommend managers to assign more time for socialization between coworkers.

With the development of globalization, increasingly more companies began to use worldwide resources to do product or service research and development. Multinational corporations (MNC) became to more rely on their subunits that located in different countries to conduct innovations. As a result, keep a good knowledge transfer between headquarter and subunits or among peer subunits is crucial for MNC to operate R &amp; D activities. This study explores the relationship between knowledge transfer and R &amp; D operations through two knowledge transfer mechanisms and three categories of R &amp; D configurations.   By applying the qualitative strategy with a focus on four case companies (three are from Sweden, one is from China), we conduct a cross case analysis and the result shows that both expatriate management policy and communication frequency are very important knowledge transfer mechanisms for MNC to keep a good knowledge transfer in global R &amp; D operations. In terms of expatriate management policy, it is very important for MNC sending engineers from headquarter to subunits or between peer subunits in order to transfer technology knowledge and facilitate R &amp; D operations. Moreover, send top managers from headquarter to subunits could also help transfer process knowledge and keep overall control of subunits. In terms of communication frequency, if MNC employs a concentrated development in headquarter (or R &amp; D center), it is very important to maintain a frequent communication between headquarter and subunits so as to keep a smooth knowledge transfer between them. And if MNC applies a dispersed research and development configuration, keep a frequent communication between peer subunits is crucial. In addition, this study also found certain connections between innovation process and R &amp; D configurations.

Modern organizations within IT-developing needs to be prepared to face challengesthat are not necessarily connected to the mere technological aspects of softwares.These challenges might lie within e. g. communication between stakeholders, userinvolvement, organizational regulations, the need for standards and maintainability ofthe products. This study is investigating the software development at one of thevarious IT-departments at Swedish bank Nordea, in order to point out the mostinteresting areas of improvement. Many different tools, standards, organizationalprocesses and methodologies are available to the developers, whereof some of themmight be inhibitory rather than enhancing the effectiveness. Nordea is also having anoffshoring-oriented strategy, having development resources located in India. Thediscussion is concerned with modern methodologies such as Scrum and other agiledevelopment concepts, and their use in a geographically dispersed context and withina non-agile organization.

This thesis examines the retention of best practices by clinicians after the implementation of an integrated care pathway for patients with congestive heart failure. While the literature suggests there are many reasons why the implementation of best practices is difficult, there is little information on the sustainability of best practices once implemented.<p>Using a qualitative research design guided by Rogers theory of Diffusion of Innovations the researcher interviewed seven clinicians who participated in the implementation of the pathway. A thematic analysis revealed several themes that ran throughout participants responses. <p>While the participants indicated they see value in best practices, they also identified barriers to getting that knowledge into practice and keeping it there. A spectrum of factors, including individual autonomy, time, resources, organizational support and the organization of the system all played a role.<p>In the end, participants revealed that although small pieces of the pathway remain in practice, the pathway itself is no longer used by clinicians to manage patients with congestive heart failure.

The purpose of this study was to examine how Swedish-based MNCs handle their repatriation process with a focus on knowledge transfer upon return. Moreover, the study reviewed whether a global mindset is present or not in the companies and if it is associated with how repatriates’ knowledge is utilized. The study was conducted through interviews with seven repatriates and six HR managers in six different MNCs. The findings show a lack of awareness about what the repatriates have learnt during their assignments, and that there are no routines in place for capturing the knowledge upon return. Also, it identifies a gap between the companies’ and the repatriates’ views about the goals of the assignment and the value of the overall international experience. Finally, the study suggests various improvements for companies on how to better utilize their resources and enhance their global mindset in order to create a sustainable competitive advantage.

There is a common agreement in literature that a company can create a sustainable competitive advantage by mastering knowledge and knowledge transfer. This requires to forward knowledge to other units at the correct time and in the right way. The purpose of this research study is to explain in the first step general theoretical considerations related to the concept of knowledge, knowledge management as well as knowledge transfer. In a second step these concepts are illustrated with the help of four points of impact. Some important aspects are discussed. First, the individual in the process of knowledge transfer is regarded: its behaviors, its interactions with its professional environment. Second, key tools are extended and finally the factors which influenced the process are presented. Out of this a model is developed in an approach divided into three parts: the individual, social/collective and company perspective. This model also includes a process of knowledge transfer, the knowledge sharing achievement through a description of the main tools and actions which create a dynamic between the actors. In the last part we focus on a technical solution which can help companies to implement a knowledge transfer dynamic.

Knowledge transfer is an interaction between knowledge receiver and provider. They acquire new knowledge through all kinds of media during this process. Furthermore, they assimilate, develop, innovate, and apply it. When there is some knowledge lacked inside an organization, there will be a knowledge gap. In order to bridge the knowledge gap, they need to obtain external knowledge through knowledge transfer. Knowledge transfer is the most important and difficult one in all of the knowledge management issues. The study is to analyze the important factors, which influence knowledge transfer by probing into the process of information system development. This study develops based on the research of Harald et al. (2002). Three contexts of constructs influencing knowledge transfer were induced: (1) domain knowledge dimension, including tacitness, complexity, and specificity, (2) system development team dimension, including system development experience and the degree of domain knowledge understanding, (3) partnership quality, including trust, mutual understanding, benefit and risk sharing, and commit. This study focuses on these three constructs to find the impacts on knowledge transfer performance. This study tested the impact of knowledge transfer on ISD performance, and analyzed the critical factors influencing inter-team knowledge transfer through empirical survey. And the samples are the members of domestic system development teams. The research result reveals that knowledge transfer performance has significant impact on system development performance. On the other hand, partnership quality has the most impact on knowledge transfer performance and system development experience is the next. Furthermore, ISD performance is affected by partnership quality, too. This result will provide a different point of view of ISD, which can guide teams to produce more successful systems from the knowledge management perspective.

The acquisition and creation of technological knowledge could be treated as a means to strengthen the innovative capabilities of SMEs. Knowledge management, therefore, plays an important role in company¡¦s performance and innovation. But knowledge transfer and sharing are the most difficult issues when implementing knowledge management. Many companies often encounter setbacks due to neglecting human nature and knowledge trading mechanism within organizations while implementing knowledge sharing. This paper is aimed to propose an integrated knowledge sharing and transfer model by applying network embeddedness, game theory, co-opetition and agent contest to solve the employee¡¦s dilemma and free-rider behavioral problems. This paper exploits the knowledge network to transfer knowledge across organizations, and discusses game theory in depth for knowledge sharing within organization. Based on knowledge sharing mechanism, we categorize high-tech firms into four types of knowledge sharing such as job guarantee, individual performance, team performance, and team learning. Empirical results showed that the type of team learning firm with agent contest and reward systems designed for both team and individual could build a co-opetitive knowledge-sharing environment. Based on knowledge transfer mechanism, the results show that IT, organizational culture, reward system and governmental policies have positive effects on enhancing knowledge network linkages. Steady and robust network linkages can benefit knowledge transfer and learning. The major sources of obtaining external knowledge are frorm academic research and international knowledge network for Taiwanese SMES. This paper suggest that overemphasize on domestic network and ignore the academic research and international networks may impede SMEs to acquire heterogeneous knowledge and innovation. The reward system and governmental policies have positive effects on corporate innovation. High levels of knowledge sharing and knowledge transfer capabilities are the major factors of improving innovation and organizational performance.