There is a current debate in Swedish media regarding the negative aspects of Internet and social media, a debate which is also virtual in blogs and forums. This started with a post on the clothing company H&M’s Facebook page where a user was virtually attacked in an aggressive manner by other users. This kind of online behavior between customers can be seen as a new challenge for organizations, especially as social media is continuously growing.   We have investigated the area of misbehaving customers, also known as dysfunctional customer behavior, by looking into the theoretical area of knowledge transfer. Within knowledge transfer we have focused on the strategies codification, which concerns transferring knowledge from people-to-documents, and personalization, meaning transferring knowledge from people-to-people.   Previous studies within knowledge transfer has investigated this in relation to different contexts, including how different context affects the transfer, how knowledge is transferred between organizations or within specific industries or businesses. However, there is a lack of research regarding knowledge transfer in relation to customers misbehaving. Hence, the purpose of this study was to understand if and how organizations work with a codification and/or personalization strategy for transferring knowledge when handling dysfunctional customer behavior on social media. By comparing the organizations we investigated reasons and underlying factors for their way of transferring knowledge.   In order to fulfill the purpose we made a qualitative research with four companies that are active on social media. We conducted semi-structured interviews with respondents holding both managerial positions as well as with employees working practically with social media.   Our study showed that both codification and personalization are used as knowledge transfer strategies when dealing with customers that misbehave on social media. The codification strategy is pursued by the use of databases, information-systems, guidelines and documentation. These methods were used to make knowledge available for all employees and to make work more effective. The personalization strategy is followed by talking to each other in person, via telephone, email or chat. This knowledge transfer strategy was pursued to exchange ideas in order to receive input and advice from one another.   We also found that when dealing with customers behaving badly towards other customers on social media, personalization holds a higher usage than codification. Further our study showed that three underlying factors affect the usage of the codification and personalization strategy, namely, closeness, previous experience and available knowledge transfer sources.

In the competitive environment, organizational knowledge became one of the most valuable strategic resources for a company. Indeed, it is said to be the only resource that cannot be imitated, and thus, that provides a reliable competitive advantage. Hence, knowledge management has become a highly investigated field of study. In fact, knowledge sharing, one of the facets of knowledge management is considered as a helpful leverage within a company’s strategy. Knowledge sharing has been studied widely, it is found to be a powerful process to ensure that the developed knowledge within the company is kept in the company and made usable. Even though knowledge sharing has been investigated by researchers, when looking at the practices within organizations, it appears that those are not as efficient as they could be, due to organizational, technical, as well as individual hindrances that affect the establishment of such processes.   This thesis aims to increase the understanding of which factors influence individuals’ sharing behavior and which role a knowledge sharing policy takes. Therefore, interviews have been conducted with the employees within the communications department of the Alstom group. Alstom France is multinational company, which is providing transportation and energy producing solutions; this implies that the communication is a support function and needs to work efficient, which makes the matter of knowledge sharing even more important. It was found that the strategic importance of knowledge sharing is highly acknowledged within Alstom, since the company has introduced a knowledge transfer department, which has released the “Alstom Knowledge Management Transfer Handbook”, the company’s internal knowledge sharing policy. It provides a guideline for the managers within the departments. The perceived motivations and hindrances to share knowledge are mainly about the manager’s role, language and the team culture.

Timely student completion of undergraduate nursing programs in order to produce practicing registered nurses (RNs) is of concern to students, faculty, governments, employers, and health care consumers across Canada. The shortage of health care professionals in Saskatchewan, particularly in nursing, is an immediate and growing concern. The average age of RNs in Saskatchewan is 44.9 years (CIHI, 2003). With the inevitability of retirement of many RNs, recruitment and retention of new nurses is critical to the quality of health care in this province. The looming shortage creates a further challenge for key stakeholders in academia, government, and health regions who hold a vested interest in the retention of nurses educated in Saskatchewan. Currently, little is known about the impact of barriers to timely completion of students in the Nursing Education Program of Saskatchewan (NEPS). Considering the aging nursing workforce, frequent, substantial numbers of nursing graduates are important to meet the demand for health human resources in the province of Saskatchewan (SRNA, 2004). <p>The purpose of this research was to conduct a secondary analysis of the NEPS Database including exit surveys completed by 363 graduates over a three-year period, 2002-2003; 2003-2004; 2004-2005. Group membership was determined by splitting data between graduates who had taken four academic years (September to April) or less to complete the program (timely completers) and those who took longer than four academic years (delayed completers). Objectives were to examine the differences between the two aforementioned groups in terms of the following variables: employment hours, financial burden, student loan status, dollar amount of bursaries awarded during the NEPS, primary responsibility the year prior to the NEPS, significant life changes during the NEPS, Aboriginal ancestry and core course averages. <p>Results show that 86% of females in the study group completed the NEPS in a timely manner compared with 58% of their male counterparts. There was a trend of higher employment hours per week in every year of the NEPS for delayed completers. However, this difference approached statistical significance only for students in year one, t (360) = 1.81, p < .07. Fifty percent of delayed completers had three or more significant life changes during the NEPS. Seventy-five percent of timely completers had two or fewer significant life changes. Students require various forms of support to ensure timely completion of the NEPS. It is anticipated that results of this research will inform policy decisions to facilitate timely completion of the NEPS.

Since the opening of the Central, Eastern and South Eastern European (CESEE) banking market, foreign banks, have started to invest in the financial sector of emerging economies. Economic research highlights that foreign banks have brought advanced technology, improved management expertise, upgraded risk management techniques and generally more efficient and competitive banking practices into CESEE countries (Clarke, Cull, Peria and Sànchez, 2002; Eller, Haiss and Steiner, 2006). However, there is hardly evidence about how this large-scale knowledge transfer has been achieved and what knowledge has actually been transferred. This paper intends to fill this gap. Two in-depth case studies of bank acquisitions by Austrian banks in CESEE give insight into the methods and content of knowledge transfer within the post-acquisition integration. A questionnaire sent out to CESEE subsidiaries of Austrian banks additionally provides information on the topic. The results show that knowledge transfer mainly occurs in international teams and during international meetings, trainings and development programs and that it is supported by information and communication technologies. Results further show that the content, methods and magnitude of knowledge transfer efforts change along the stages of post-acquisition integration. (author's abstract)

With the changes in the business environment, there has been an increasing dependence on the skills of companies to deliver customer adapted products quickly and on time around the world. Therefore, instead of being caught in the high cost and unsatisfactory result of managing logistics operation by themselves, many companies have chosen to outsource some or all of their logistics and supply chain activities to specialist third party logistics companies (TPL). Hence, the TPL companies are managing and integrating their customers’ supply chains to increase the competitiveness and profitability.  It is argued, that knowledge is becoming the only resource capable of offering competitive advantage and continued growth and prosperity for supply chain partners. Therefore, the effective transfer and creation of knowledge has become a top priority in a supply chain. Since third party logistics companies have taken on the major responsibility of managing customers’ supply chains, effective knowledge management has become a top priority for them as well. The purpose of this thesis is to describe the knowledge transfer and creation processes within the third party logistics dyadic relationships in the context of supply chain integration. The thesis has been carried out by using inductive and conductive research approaches and the qualitative study has been carried out by applying multiple case studies as a research strategy. The empirical material is gathered from four companies in two third party logistics relationships. Data was collected through several interviews conducted at the target companies and the findings have been analysed using the existing theory stated in the frame of reference. The main conclusions from this study are that the buyer-seller context determines the way knowledge is transferred and created in the dyadic third party relationships, and the companies did not have any specific strategies or governance structures for managing knowledge although considered important. How the companies in the dyadic TPL relationships transfer and create knowledge changes with the evolvement of the relationship. Knowledge transfer must penetrate all companies and all organizational levels to increase a holistic and integrated understating of the whole supply chain to achieve value created. How TPL companies create and utilize knowledge internally vary due to company size and the practices used. In addition, the customer company using multiple TPL providers is able to transfer and create knowledge from all TPL relationships to increase the efficiency and effectiveness of its supply chain. Due to the buyer-seller characteristic, however, there are no or very little barriers for knowledge creation and transfer in a dyadic TPL relationship.

The capability to know what knowledge there is and where it resides within an organization is becoming increasingly important in the new knowledge-based economy. This paper takes on a practise-based view of knowledge in order to decide on a course of action for how to successfully implement knowledge management within a knowledge-based company. By considering all knowledge as more or less contextual and socially constructed, knowledge is divided into three dimensions depending on the degree to which it is tacit, namely: information, knowledge and skills. The paper then discusses inhibitors and enablers for transferring knowledge via these three dimensions respectively.  The empirical findings are based upon a case study of Faveo. It is shown that Faveo, like most organizations, has til now focused on the collection of codified knowledge, i.e. documentation of information. Faveo has the technology established to potentiallymanage information transfer to an adequate degree. Still, the company fails to do so due to its incapability to enable use of its groupware. To surmount this problem, Faveo needs to address the attitudes of its employees towards its groupware and train them in how to use it. To improve Faveo’s knowledge management and thus pursue world class project management, the company also needs to step up its game within the two areas of knowledge and skills transfer. There are some but not sufficient plans for handling knowledge transfer at Faveo and, again, Faveo fails to enable these processes to turn from plans into action. There is an overall need for more formal as well as informal interaction between individual and groups of employees at Faveo. In addition, Faveo needs to acknowledge skills transfer as a vital part of knowledge management. This report finally suggests that Faveo needs to motivate knowledge management, create goals for knowledge management, train its employees in how to carry out knowledge management and evaluate its knowledge management.

Knowledge is nowadays ever-present and often described as an intangible asset, but in contrast to other assets; the consumption of it does not diminish the quantity left for others (Nonaka and Teece, 2001). Due to the importance of knowledge, the premise of this thesis is to identify, describe and analyze how a cluster can transfer knowledge. The methodology used was based on a single case study with a systematic combining approach. The case study within this thesis is about the cluster of Sustainable Sweden Southeast (SSSE) which contains personal interviews with several actors of the cluster of SSSE. The theoretical framework entails the fundament on which the study is based, including definitions of knowledge, knowledge transfer, the actors and the influence of relationships during the transfer of knowledge. There is an analysis done by linking the theoretical framework to the empirical findings on how SSSE can transfer knowledge within its actors. Additionally, there is a description about the barriers faced during the knowledge transfer and the influence of relationship building within this process. Finally the conclusion should provide the reader with valuable insights according to the knowledge transfer within clusters. It incorporates the relevance of special actors and their influence in the process, as well as the possible barriers that could be faced and the relationship building process within clusters. The thesis ends with recommendations and managerial implications for SSSE.

Timely student completion of undergraduate nursing programs in order to produce practicing registered nurses (RNs) is of concern to students, faculty, governments, employers, and health care consumers across Canada. The shortage of health care professionals in Saskatchewan, particularly in nursing, is an immediate and growing concern. The average age of RNs in Saskatchewan is 44.9 years (CIHI, 2003). With the inevitability of retirement of many RNs, recruitment and retention of new nurses is critical to the quality of health care in this province. The looming shortage creates a further challenge for key stakeholders in academia, government, and health regions who hold a vested interest in the retention of nurses educated in Saskatchewan. Currently, little is known about the impact of barriers to timely completion of students in the Nursing Education Program of Saskatchewan (NEPS). Considering the aging nursing workforce, frequent, substantial numbers of nursing graduates are important to meet the demand for health human resources in the province of Saskatchewan (SRNA, 2004). <p>The purpose of this research was to conduct a secondary analysis of the NEPS Database including exit surveys completed by 363 graduates over a three-year period, 2002-2003; 2003-2004; 2004-2005. Group membership was determined by splitting data between graduates who had taken four academic years (September to April) or less to complete the program (timely completers) and those who took longer than four academic years (delayed completers). Objectives were to examine the differences between the two aforementioned groups in terms of the following variables: employment hours, financial burden, student loan status, dollar amount of bursaries awarded during the NEPS, primary responsibility the year prior to the NEPS, significant life changes during the NEPS, Aboriginal ancestry and core course averages. <p>Results show that 86% of females in the study group completed the NEPS in a timely manner compared with 58% of their male counterparts. There was a trend of higher employment hours per week in every year of the NEPS for delayed completers. However, this difference approached statistical significance only for students in year one, t (360) = 1.81, p < .07. Fifty percent of delayed completers had three or more significant life changes during the NEPS. Seventy-five percent of timely completers had two or fewer significant life changes. Students require various forms of support to ensure timely completion of the NEPS. It is anticipated that results of this research will inform policy decisions to facilitate timely completion of the NEPS.

Den här uppsatsen handlar om hur ett teknikkonsultföretag, där majoriteten av tjänsterna sker i form av projekt, kan utnyttja kunskapsöverföring för att skapa konkurrenskraft. Här studeras hur kunskapsöverföring, genom att ta hänsyn till tre olika lärprocesser, kan bidra till ekonomisk fördel för företaget. Efter identifiering av vilka verktyg/aktiviteter som används för kunskapsöverföring på fallföretaget analyserades vilka lärprocesser som är möjliga med respektive verktyg/aktivitet enligt dagens teori och medarbetares upplevelser. Empirisk data samlades in från olika delar av organisationen i form av intervjuer och enkätundersökning. Utifrån analysen sammanfattades vilka lärprocesser som utnyttjas och med vilka verktyg/aktiviteter samt vilka som kan utnyttjas bättre för att skapa ekonomiska fördelar för företaget, och därmed också konkurrenskraft. Skillnader i vilka kunskaper medarbetare med mycket lång arbetsliverfarenhet upplever att de lär sig med verktygen/aktiviteterna jämfört med medarbetare med kortare arbetslivserfarenhet har observerats, vilket skapar nya frågor för framtida forskning. Det ges också förslag på vidare forskning om hur hänsyn till lärprocesser vid strategi för kunskapsöverföring skulle kunna generera konkurrenskraft i form av hur förbättringar uppfattas av kunderna. / This master’s thesis is about how a technology consulting firm, where the majority of services is executed as projects, can use knowledge transfer to create competitive advantage. By taking into account three different learning processes this degree project focus on how the transfer of knowledge can contribute to economic benefits to the company. Identification of tools and activities used for knowledge transfer in this specific case company supported the analysis of what learning processes those are possible for each tool/activity with respect to today’s research and employees experiences. Empirical data were collected from different parts of the organization through interviews and questionnaire survey. Based on the analysis a conclusion of what learning processes are mainly used and with what tools and activities. The conclusion also define the economic benefits that could be gained by the company and hence create competitive advantage. Differences in type of knowledge learned by the employees carrying a long work experience compared to employees with shorter work experience has been observed, which creates new questions for further research. This degree project also provides suggestions for further research on how, with respect to learning processes, the strategy of knowledge transfer would generate competitiveness through quality improvements perceived by customers.

Increased globalization has come with it increased competition, multitude of international competitors, dramatic and frequent changes in customer tastes, shorter product life cycles, and frequent and rapid technological/product upgrading. Resultant competitive pressures have led to the emergence of two trends among some firms and industries. Firstly, there is an increased premium placed on the role of continuous learning and knowledge accumulation as the most dependable base for sustainable competitive advantage in today’s dynamic global markets. Secondly, there is increased trend towards organizing more economic activities as distinct projects. The above two trends provides both opportunities and challenges for any firms, especially project-based firms (PBFs). A number of past researches have emphasized the importance of investment in interproject learning as a means to foster continuous upgrading of project competencies. This is equally applicable to more knowledge intensive project-based firms in the Consultancy services sector. However, no study had been done in Sweden on Consultancy firms, from the perspective that they are project-based firms. This study explores, describes and analyzes the various characteristics of interproject learning mechanisms and project competencies found in a sample of consulting firms in Sweden. The study focuses on the perceived importance of different interproject learning mechanisms and their perceived impact in developing project competencies in consulting firms. The study interrogates the ‘perceptions’ of ‘key’ informed project management practitioners, who have experience of managing consulting projects. Their perceptions about project activities in their respective firms helped capture a ‘managerial’ view, as well as, provide ‘expert’ opinion. The study find that the most highly ranked and valued interproject learning mechanisms involved some degree of face-to-face interactions. Learning mechanisms that enable the capture, storage and transfer of explicit knowledge, though important, were not ranked highly in importance as person-to-person communication. The difference might be due to the efficient way the latter mechanisms have in transferring socially embedded and context-dependant tacit knowledge, which comprise a large part of knowledge applied in projects. Most of the respondents seem to indicate that their respective firms emphasized development of project competencies that were underpinned by ‘product knowledge’, which emphasize capabilities to deliver short-term project goals (i.e., delivering a particular service/product on a certain date). Respective firms didn’t seem to invest more in project competencies that are underpinned by ‘process knowledge’. The latter is aimed at long-term continuous improvement of project processes, which in turn has impact on developing dynamic competitive advantage. With regard to organizational learning infrastructure needed to support interproject learning and the development of project competencies, the results from the survey provides a mixed picture. While some firms had put in place a series of well implemented organizational structures, procedures, processes and routines to support interproject learning, some other learning supporting infrastructure were not that well implemented (i.e., explicit scheduling of time to do ‘reflections’ during project execution, emerging of a ‘no blame’ culture, instilling a culture of experimentations). Based on our research findings, a number of recommendations are outlined.