This thesis analyses the integration of knowledge (disciplinary, expert and lay) in order to contribute to the understanding of how knowledge can be integrated for conservation.  Specifically, the thesis asks: a) how the knowledge of social and natural sciences can be integrated to better manage social-ecological systems; b) what the barriers are to integrating different types of knowledge; c) what the outcomes are of integrating different forms of knowledge; d) what type of participation can best sustain action; and e) how participation can improve adaptive capacity. In Chapter 3 the underlying philosophies of the social and natural sciences are mapped out and evaluated, demonstrating how taking one philosophical stance over another influences project methodology and outcome.  The mapping process may also benefit knowledge integration by enabling researchers to make their underlying assumptions explicit.  In Chapter 4 current cross-disciplinary research in conservation is analysed: results suggests more integrative research (interdisciplinary or trans-disciplinary) has a higher impact on practitioners whereas less integrative research has a higher impact on colleagues.  Using conservation case studies from England, Scotland and Wales, Chapters 5 and 6 investigate some claims made for participation in conservation.  Chapter 5 analyses the satisfaction of participants with implications for participant recruitment and retention. Chapter 6 evaluates how participation and how particular participatory approaches may influence participant learning.  Results indicate a strong link between the integration of participants and types of learning that are considered to build adaptive capacity. Findings indicate that the approach taken to integrating knowledge can directly affect who benefits from the research, methodological flexibility participant satisfaction and learning.

Learning organizations is a concept which is little understood and researched in Southern Africa, particularly in Zimbabwe. The researcher chose the subject matter of learning organizations because she feels it is critical to the success of organizations. To date in most organizations the understanding of learning organizations and what they represent has been understood to a very small extent, if any at all. The concept of learning organizations has been researched and practiced mainly in the European and American parts of the world but not to the same extent in Africa. This paper seeks to examine, The extent to which organizations in Zimbabwe are learning organizations, a case study of BancABC.

Current trends indicate that the prevalence of ontologies will continue to increase within many domains. They are already commonly used to define controlled medical terminologies and form the backbone of the Semantic Web initiative. Very few tools that support versioning of ontologies are currently available, and those that provide difference detection and visualization are particularly lacking. We have implemented a tool called PROMPT-Viz that provides advanced visualizations using treemaps to help understand the location, impact, type and extent of changes that have occurred between versions on an ontology. PROMPT-Viz runs as a plug-in for the popular ProtCgC knowledge engineering environment and as such should be applicable to a large number of ontology developers.

In the FORCEnet Functional Concept document published by the Chief of Naval Operations and the Commandant of the Marine Corps, the leaders of the US Naval Forces called for the development of "adaptive, distributed networks of commanders, staffs, operating units, supporting organizations, sensors, weapons and other equipment interacting with one another on an underlying infrastructure, as well as the associated command and control policies, concepts, organizations... to allow them to interact." Posed to invest in the development of the FORCEnet architecture, the Navy and Marine Corps require a means of analysis to determine the value of information technologies prior to development and acquisition. The Knowledge Value Added (KVA) methodology can provide the decision makers with quantitative tools to make informed and accurate decisions in the acquisitions process of information technologies within the FORCEnet Functional Concept framework. Historically, these decisions were based on costs, schedule, and capabilities, with the emphasis on cost. A Proof of Concept analyzing the Joint Forces Maritime Component Command Planning Process was developed to demonstrate the utility of the KVA method. This analysis demonstrates the current inefficiencies within the process and the potential value of notional information technologies that could be developed to support the planning process. / US Marine Corps (USMC) author.

M.B.A. / The following study concerns Knowledge Management and Outsourcing in an IT environment. More specifically, it gives a brief description of what Knowledge Management is; the different types and phases, the economics and strategies, different drivers, the outcomes, critical success factors, the benefits, frameworks and the influence that Knowledge Management has on competitiveness and innovation in the workplace. The topic is concluded with a discussion around technologies for enabling Knowledge Management. Also discussed in the study is the definition of Outsourcing, the different theories, critical success factors, drivers and moving from traditional to transformational Outsourcing. Mention is also made about some of the obstacles and problems associated with Outsourcing and the different prescriptive models around. Lastly, the determinants of organisational adoption and the stages of the Outsourcing framework are discussed in depth. The original decision was to develop a questionnaire and distribute it throughout the company, Business Connexion, a leader in the IT Outsourcing industry. However, due to time constraints and the number of potential employees, approximately 4700, it was agreed upon to only target the staff members within the Outsourcing division. At the time of the questionnaire, the total number of employees was 539 and 127 participated in this study by responding via a URL link set up by Statkon, a division of the University of Johannesburg. The responses were fed into a database which produced the relevant results for this particular study. These questionnaires were designed to specifically measure the varying issues surrounding Knowledge Management and Outsourcing in an IT environment. Due to the fact that this study was implemented within only one division of the organisation, it is important to note that the findings of this study cannot be generalised, thus providing an opportunity for future comparative research.

Organisations in all spheres of industries are facing constant change and need to be innovative to carve out a competitive market share. Knowledge is universally recognised as the organisation’s most valuable asset and strategic resource. The competitive business environment is impelling organisations to utilise and strengthen their knowledge capital in order to manage these changes. The relationship between knowledge management and innovation is not well understood and there is a need to explicitly examine this relationship explicitly. The objective of this study is to focus on the internal environment of listed companies in South Africa and determine to what extent knowledge management practices can contribute to an organisational culture of innovation and whether or not these practices are antecedents to innovative behaviour by knowledge workers Senior members in these companies were contacted by email and requested to access a questionnaire that was available via a Web address and complete the questionnaire. All completed questionnaires were analysed, using Item analysis, multiple regression and discriminant analysis. Results show that knowledge management practices: the organisation's science and technology human capital profile and the organisation is flexible and opportunistic are important predictors of innovativeness in organisations that are perceived to have an organisational culture of innovation.

M.A. / The impact of the New Economy on the enterprise is major and the change drivers required for success are pervasive and significant. At the same time traditional geographic boundaries to the flow of information and commercial transactions disappear. To position for success, the requirement to develop the capability to manage risk and operate under high levels of uncertainty becomes as important as the capacity for change. This demands a paradigm shift in management’s approach away from “the answer” to an approach which allows for portfolio management and the ability to investigate, fund and manage approaches to multiple strategic and operational options. The strategic challenges lies in when to lead and when to follow, the organisational challenge then becomes building flexibility, environment-sensing capabilities and an internal capacity to develop, nurture and harness knowledge and innovation. Whilst the benefits of leveraging innovation as a strategic business growth driver is accepted, the management of the process of doing so is manifestly difficult in most enterprises. This is due to outdated management processes and organisational structures, cultural prejudices caused by the enterprise being more comfortable with core activities and a lack of adequate skills within the enterprise to research, develop and manage innovative ideas to fruition. Enterprises can manage this process of leveraging innovation in a number of ways by inter alia, staff management via continuing education and training, a corporate culture with such characteristics as: “Off-line” innovation time, internal competition, knowledge management tools, cross- functional meetings, a knowledge capture Intranet, etc. and an organisational accountability which relates to a well-defined process that affords the enterprise and its employees the opportunity to move ideas across organisational boundaries without being inhibited by the usual organisational politics and turf-protection. An approach to this is via strategic internal consulting groups or a “New Ventures” division – essentially entities set up to incubate and manage new business opportunities Such a new venture division or business incubator requires as a critical component an established process and evaluation methodology to effectively manage innovation initiatives. This research will focus on the development, application and management of such a new ventures division along the structure of a business incubator. It is an accepted adage that all “healthy” enterprises generate and use knowledge, but this is, as with the management of innovation, easier said than done. Whilst many enterprises will simply hire smart people and leave them to their own devices, research have indicated that successful knowledge generation initiatives not only address the processes but also focus on the team structure and the internally on the working circumstances. Businesses faced with disruptive technologies such as the Internet find it very difficult to redesign or rearrange their organisational structures to face the challenges of the New Economy. Also there has always been a measure of distinct tension, between the boardrooms of enterprise and the technical, scientific or other resources on which the former depends for the creation of new wealth – the net result is that the role of the traditional “Corporate R&D” is being diminished. There is a strong perception that views the arrival of the incubator as an approach for corporates / enterprises to set this mindset apart and to get some speed, vitality, action and urgency back into enterprises inhibited by, inter alia, excessive bureaucracy. Although the concept of incubators has now surfaced in Europe and in South Africa, it is not new. What today underscores the interest is the success that enterprises like Idealab!, eToys, GoTo.com and NetZero achieved. The more comprehensive intra-enterprise or corporate incubators offer a range of services that exceed that of the traditional venture capitalist. Corporate incubation grew out of the realisation that innovation and entrepreneurship were severely limited by the typical corporate environment. In addition enterprises realised that they were losing their brightest talent and best innovative ideas as people left to start their own businesses. To this threat they responded by offering employees’ incentives to either build their ideas as enhancements to the current business, extensions or entirely as new spin-offs. These incentives were modelled on share participation, a "safe" best practice rich environment and access to corporate resources that in many instances culminated in corporate business incubators. Corporate incubators constitute a logical extension to knowledge management, innovation and R&D, as a means of profiting from intellectual capital and extending competitive advantage. Indeed it has been said that the only sustainable competitive advantage is continuous innovation. Incubators of various types are sine qua non with the dot.com start-up ventures towards the latter part of the nineteen nineties. It was viewed as one of many approaches to capitalise on knowledge available and to allow for the fast tracking of innovative advances. Many of these start-up incubators failed and incubators became looked upon as not being the ideal vehicle for innovative quick-to-market and thus first mover advantage. Yet, the very nature of the approaches used in an incubator lends it to the harnessing of knowledge and innovation in an enterprise which can be applied as part of a process to gain a competitive advantage from engaging in such a process.

Student Number : 9707570P - M Com dissertation - School of Economic and Business Sciences - Faculty of Commerce / Business managers have used principles of Knowledge Management to improve organisational performance by: o Identifying the knowledge that is needed to solve various problems o Acquiring the needed knowledge from sources that already have it o Creating the needed knowledge if it is not yet available o Validating the acquired or created knowledge o Retaining the validated knowledge o Destroying invalid or obsolete knowledge o Representing the knowledge in a consistent, easily readable format o Enabling people to easily access relevant knowledge o Enabling people to share the retained knowledge o Enabling people to apply the retained knowledge to improve performance Statistical analysis of data obtained from 84 respondents confirmed that information systems practitioners can also benefit from applying the principles to their system development methods.

After discussion of the relationship between KM and NPD, the study defines electronic new product development (E-NPD) as the convergence of customer relationship, business processes, enterprise IT applications, and knowledge management system necessary to perform continuous innovation and develop new quality products in efficient way. A circular E-NPD value chain is depicted to explore the mechanism how E-NPD takes advantage of KM. E-NPD value chain describes new ways of envisioning the NPD process, which states that NPD cannot be effectively managed without a deep understanding of the knowledge interdependencies between core activities along the value chain, The study undertakes detailed case studies of three industries, in which three patterns of E-NPD are examined. / Establishing on both industrial structure-based view and resource-based view on competitive advantage, knowledge-based view on competitive advantage is suggested for the theoretical basis of knowledge value chain. By analyzing knowledge value chain model, we can see clearly that the competitive advantage comes from core competence of organization---knowledge and KM. / Knowledge management (KM) is of growing interest in today's business and academic community. With the importance of KM being realized, companies are viewing KM as a critical success factor in today's dynamic borderless society. In addition to the growing literature on the subject, organizations are creating managerial positions, such as chief knowledge managers, and creating knowledge teams. Obviously, KM penetrates every business process within organization. As a core process, new product development (NPD) always makes great contribution to organizational performance. This study proposes a framework of KM and the link between KM and NPD performance aiming at identifying the key facilitators of NPD and enabling companies to launch their products into market more successful than their competitors. / The value of KM is difficult to pinpoint and has led senior management to manage it without actually measuring it. An essential aspect of KM is the acquisition and dissemination of knowledge and an attempt is made to measure KM in terms of knowledge acquisition and dissemination. Employing confirmatory factor and path analyses, this thesis examines the relationship between KM and the performance of NPD, and finds that some interactions between KM and moderators also have a significant effect on the performance of NPD. These findings imply that if organizations fail to understand the subtle ways by which different features of KM influence product development, they may fail to harvest the full value of KM. / Yang Jie. / Adviser: Lee Ching-Chyi. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 62-09, Section: A, page: 3111. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2001. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 117-130). / Electronic reproduction. Hong Kong : Chinese University of Hong Kong, [2012] System requirements: Adobe Acrobat Reader. Available via World Wide Web. / Electronic reproduction. Ann Arbor, MI : ProQuest dissertations and theses, [200-] System requirements: Adobe Acrobat Reader. Available via World Wide Web. / Electronic reproduction. Ann Arbor, MI : ProQuest Information and Learning Company, [200-] System requirements: Adobe Acrobat Reader. Available via World Wide Web. / Abstracts in English and Chinese. / School code: 1307.

Guan, Jiayu. / Thesis (M.Phil.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2013. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 61-79). / Electronic reproduction. Hong Kong : Chinese University of Hong Kong, [2012] System requirements: Adobe Acrobat Reader. Available via World Wide Web. / Abstracts also in Chinese.