A thesis submitted to the Department of Information Studies for the award of a degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Library and Information Studies, Faculty of Arts, at the University of Zululand, South Africa, 2012. / Knowledge management (KM) is increasingly popularized in various societies, organizations and governments because of its confirmed importance in fostering knowledge creation, codification and transfer, and development of knowledge capital capability. Indigenous knowledge (IK), which forms part of KM, is also generally thought to have crucial functions and importance in the knowledge management process (creation or production, storage, processing or codification, transfer and utilization) and should therefore receive significant attention. The aim and objectives of the study was to map and audit the current IK environment and practices in Kenya and South Africa with specific attention to identifying the IK policies and legislation in place, exploring and analyzing the IK governance structures, examining the IK centres and systems in terms of their roles, identifying what IK programmes and activities are in existence and when are they held, determining the status, trends and types of IK research. The study used the survey method. The study was conducted in two countries, i.e. Kenya and South Africa, but was not defined geographically. It was restricted to the capital cities of Nairobi in Kenya and Pretoria in South Africa, which house the administrative governments of the two countries. Since the population of this study consisted of organizations, institutions, databases and activities, and because it was impractical to collect data from them all, the population was narrowed down to a representation or sample of the population. Non-probability sampling techniques were used to create a sampling frame through cluster and multi-stage sampling. Purposive sampling technique was applied to select centres and activities from the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Gender in Kenya and South Africa that deal with IK. Both snowball sampling and purposive sampling were applied to select the key informants who headed the various IK Departments of Science and Technology in South Africa and the Department of Culture in Kenya. This resulted in a fair representation of the cultural diversity of the two countries and the various levels of knowledge, management and development of the personnel. A sample size of twenty organizations, 13 from Kenya and 7 from South Africa, was selected for this study. The sample size was different for the two countries because of the different management systems and the use of the snowball sampling technique to select xiv informants. The key informants (senior management positions within organizations) in many cases consisted of more than one person per organization. Research instruments consisted of field visits, interview guides, observation, and a document review/ critical literature review. The study used detailed interview guides with both structured and unstructured questions as the main research instrument. This was used to obtain both quantitative and qualitative data. A pilot study was carried out to test and verify the research instruments. This was done through the Department of Culture in Kenya. The study found that both Kenya and South Africa have active IK policies and management in place to ensure its sustainability. A defined institutional framework is vital for the effective management of IK. A case in point is the existence of the South African National Indigenous Knowledge Systems Office (NIKSO) under the Department of Science and Technology (DST). The functions and rationale for NIKSO are stipulated in South Africa‘s IK Policy. However, such a mechanism does not seem to exist in Kenya, especially because of the nomadic nature of the Department of Culture. Ministries that housed the department include the Ministries of Culture and Social Services, Women and Youth, Home Affairs, and National Heritage, among others. The presence of the various IK-related policy initiatives by different institutions within the same government points to lack of coordination, especially in Kenya. Examples of such duplicated initiatives include the National Policy on Culture of the Republic of Kenya, Ministry of Gender, Sports, Culture and Social Services, and the development of laws for the protection of traditional knowledge, genetic resources and folklore by the Office of the Attorney General. The importance of IK cannot be stressed enough. According to WHO, countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America use traditional medicine to help meet some of their primary healthcare needs. In Africa, up to 80 % of the population uses traditional medicine for primary healthcare. This clearly indicates that unless measures for the protection of IK are beefed up, then the Access and Benefit-Sharing (ABS) of indigenous knowledge may never be realized. Based on the study‘s findings, this study recommends an IK awareness program or campaign that targets those charged with the management of IK as well as the citizenry of the two countries. There should be heightened efforts to create an independent department in a vibrant ministry that deals with IK to ensure that indigenous knowledge is put to the best possible use. Further research should be done in order to find ways in which indigenous knowledge can blend with modern technology to solve current problems. Academic institutions need to play a more proactive role in promoting IK in Kenya. IK programmes and activities should also focus on all features and aspects of IK rather than capitalize on culture only. / University of Nairobi

No / This paper presents a discussion based on a literature review and a case study on the suitability of using an intranet as a platform to implement Knowledge Management System (KMS). A description of Knowledge Management (KM) and the current research carried out in this area, with examples of web-based KMS systems currently implemented in organisations, are presented. Further, this paper then describes how knowledge mapping of an organisation's intranet as a form of a KMS can be used to promote the re-utilisation of knowledge, which will contribute to the competitiveness of the organisation. A case study that illustrates and presents evidence of the need and suitability of such a system is provided. The paper ends with a proposal for future research to be carried out in this area.

Yes / Information systems (IS) facilitate organisations to increase responsiveness and reduce the costs of their supply chain. This paper seeks to make a contribution through exploring and visualising knowledge mapping from the perspective of IS investment evaluation. The evaluation of IS is regarded as a challenging and complex process, which becomes even more difficult with the increased complexity of IS. The intricacy of IS evaluation, however, is due to numerous interrelated factors (e.g. costs, benefits and risks) that have human or organisational dimensions. With this in mind, there appears to be an increasing need to assess investment decision-making processes, to better understand the often far-reaching implications associated with technology adoption and interrelated knowledge components (KC). Through the identification and extrapolation of key learning issues from the literature and empirical findings, organisations can better improve their business processes and thereby their effectiveness and efficiency, while preventing others from making costly oversights that may not necessarily be only financial. In seeking to enlighten the often obscure evaluation of IS investments, this paper attempts to inductively emphasise the dissemination of knowledge and learning through the application of a fuzzy Expert System (ES) based knowledge mapping technique (i.e. Fuzzy Cognitive Map [FCM]). The rationale for exploring knowledge and IS investment evaluation is that a knowledge map will materialise for others to exploit during their specific technology evaluation. This is realised through conceptualising the explicit and tacit investment drivers. Among the several findings drawn from this research, the key resulting knowledge mapping through FCM demonstrated the complex, multifaceted and emergent behaviour of causal relationships within the knowledge area. The principal relationships and knowledge within IS investment evaluation are illustrated as being determined by a blend of managerial and user perspectives.

Search for the knowledge within big companies could become pain not only for knowledge seekers, but as well for knowledge managers in case they want a solution, that reflects well actual state of knowledge of a company, allows discovering emerging areas of knowledge and at the same time its maintenance does not require huge amounts of effort. This doctoral thesis starts by a comprehensive analysis of needs of expertise location of current company, description of theoretical backgrounds, related approaches and fundamental directions in expertise location, analyses their advantages and disadvantages and on the ground of this analysis presents a new expertise location technique that tries to avoid disadvantages of current expertise location systems by keeping their advantages. The technique is designed to respect the needs of effective knowledge management within a company, which main assets are their employees, their knowledge reflected in unstructured documents they produce as a part of their daily work. Described knowledge mapping technique analyses document publication history of company members and proposes various measures to asses and characterize their knowledge. The implementation of the knowledge mapping technique allows its direct usage (as an expert search engine) as well as its own evaluation (validity of search engine results). The efficiency of proposed measures on various types of document sources (project directories/versioning repositories/etc.) and within various dimension configurations (current/overall knowledge search) is evaluated by the practical evaluation method introduced within the thesis. The evaluation took place in the environment of a middle-sized software company allowing seeing directly a practical usability of the expertise location technique. The results of the evaluation are presented not only in statistical form, but in a form of suggestions of how to implement the model on various document sources within the company. The results suggest that described knowledge mapping technique is a viable approach in expertise location.