It has been recognised that the oil sector in developing countries is facing challenges from a dynamic environment characterised by rapid technological change and increased demand. As innovation becomes critical to the survival of organisations, organisational context including organisational culture (OC), structure (OS) and information technology (IT) has been found to have an important influence on innovation, leading to increase social relationships among employees and flow knowledge within organisation through face to face employees interaction and information system. Social capital and knowledge sharing are recognised as the most significant resources for competitive advantage and the key to enhancing innovation. It has long been argued that social capital, a concept represented by the value embedded in the social relationships of individuals and collectives constitute strategic resources for individuals and organisations. Social networks perceived by individuals are a key issue in generating and facilitating knowledge sharing among employees to enhance innovation within organizations. It has also been shown that knowledge management and the promotion of knowledge sharing among the members of an organisation are an important part of the learning process as they help to convert the tacit knowledge embedded in individuals into explicit knowledge through interaction. Prior literature has pointed out that organisational context is one of the most important factors affecting social capital and knowledge sharing and enhanced innovation in an organisation. However, there is a lack of models linking organisational context, social capital and knowledge sharing, and innovation within oil sectors in general within developing countries, particularly Libya. Against this background, the thesis investigates the impact of organisational context on innovation. Using social capital and knowledge sharing, the integrative and comprehensive conceptual model are developed in order to reveal the direct and indirect impacts of organisational context on innovation. The model is then tested with a sample of 418 employees from two sectors; namely, public and the private. These were analysed through a IV multivariate analysis using a variance-based statistical technique known as Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modelling. The findings of this thesis are three-fold. First, with respect to the direct effect of organisational context on innovation, the study finds that both public and private sectors’ innovation are positively affected by organisational context. Second, regarding the indirect impact of organisational context on innovation, the study confirms its indirect nature through the social capital and knowledge sharing in both sectors. Third, the results show that there are significant differences between the public and private oil sectors in terms of the effect of organisational context on social capital, knowledge sharing and innovation, product and process. These findings have both theoretical and practical implications in that the results have provided empirical evidence on the direct and indirect impact of organisational context and can serve as an indication in practice for both firm managers and policy makers who are looking to establish strategies for achieving innovation. These would benefit from expending their efforts on promoting social capital and knowledge-sharing practices among their employees.

Coopetition literature has been given a lot of interest in recent years but research on coopetition on the individual level of analysis and its effects on employees are scarce.The aim of the thesis is to indicate how coopetitive situations in coopetitive environments affect individual employees and knowledge sharing between them. From our findings, we found that coopetitive situations affect individual level knowledge sharing in two stages. First, individuals' attitudes towards knowledge sharing are influenced by the actor's position as either cooperative or competitive dominant. Ultimately, regardless of the actor's position, the choice to share knowledge is affected by the type of knowledge, by individual factors and by organizational factors.

Knowledge sharing between project teams has obtained significant attention in research. Despite wide attention, many organizations still experience difficulties of effective knowledge sharing between their project team members, and the problem still remains which appears to be contradictory. Previous research has had a tendency to assume that the knowledge sharing activity is affected by the performance climate as well as individuals, and often ends up with knowledge hiding behavior under these circumstances. However, limited research has considered the relationship between knowledge sharing and performance in project based organizations, which is considered to be equally important for effective knowledge sharing.

M.Phil. (Information Management) / Given the current knowledge economy, knowledge sharing has become a vital process in contributing to the success of any given organisation, whether academic or industry related. It is therefore essential for organisations to be aware of and to understand the various knowledge sharing techniques that exist. Consequently it is also relevant to acknowledge the potential contribution that knowledge sharing can make between peers, for educational purposes. An in-depth literature review was conducted which focused on knowledge sharing, and the various concepts associated with knowledge sharing. A sequential mixed-methods research methodology was followed in order to contribute to the lack of literature pertaining specifically to knowledge cafés. A qualitative Delphi study was conducted to document the guidelines, criteria and potential contribution of knowledge cafés as a knowledge sharing application. The main objective of this study was to evaluate the application of knowledge cafés as a technique for knowledge sharing. The quantitative component of the mixed-methods research was initiated by implementing three knowledge cafés using univariate quantitative data analysis on structured questionnaires to measure participant’s views towards knowledge cafés as a knowledge sharing technique. Essentially this study firstly gathered and documented information on knowledge cafés as a knowledge sharing technique and recommended that knowledge cafés can be used effectively as a technique for knowledge sharing, when appropriate criteria and guidelines are applied.

Each disaster presents itself with a unique set of characteristics that are hard to determine a priori. Thus disaster management tasks are inherently uncertain, requiring knowledge sharing and quick decision making that involves coordination across different levels and collaborators. While there has been an increasing interest among both researchers and practitioners in utilizing knowledge management to improve disaster management, little research has been reported about how to assess the dynamic nature of disaster management tasks, and what kinds of knowledge sharing are appropriate for different dimensions of task uncertainty characteristics. Using combinations of qualitative and quantitative methods, this research study developed the dimensions and their corresponding measures of the uncertain dynamic characteristics of disaster management tasks and tested the relationships between the various dimensions of uncertain dynamic disaster management tasks and task performance through the moderating and mediating effects of knowledge sharing. Furthermore, this research work conceptualized and assessed task uncertainty along three dimensions: novelty, unanalyzability, and significance; knowledge sharing along two dimensions: knowledge sharing purposes and knowledge sharing mechanisms; and task performance along two dimensions: task effectiveness and task efficiency. Analysis results of survey data collected from Miami-Dade County emergency managers suggested that knowledge sharing purposes and knowledge sharing mechanisms moderate and mediate uncertain dynamic disaster management task and task performance. Implications for research and practice as well directions for future research are discussed.

4700 years ago, tea culture was born in China. For thousands of years, drinking tea has become one of the popular part of the daily life in many places around the world. Tea culture is no longer limited to the tea itself, it is also reflected in the way people drinking tea, in other words, tea ceremony. But fast-paced life has forced people to simplify the seemingly unnecessary process in their lives. The invention of the teabag replaced the complicated tea ceremony, but at the same time, the story and meaning behind drinking tea disappeared. In addition, in today's globalization, no matter where we are in the world, we always can see the spreading of culture. We can buy everything imported from other countries in the world. However, culture exists not only in people's creations but also in people's behaviors. More and more people are beginning to pay attention to the cultural significance behind the items. People began to try to experience another culture by doing rather than owning objects. So I started this project with the idea of critical design and slow design aiming to improve people's awareness of slowing down their lives through the spread of complex tea ceremony cultures. At the same time, the user experience and emotional design are also used as my guidance to stimulate people’s senses, which goes beyond reading to offer the opportunity to perform the tea rituals.

Der Austausch von Wissen zwischen Organisationen gewinnt aufgrund beschleunigter Entwicklungsschleifen und begrenzten internen Möglichkeiten zur Wissensgenerierung immer mehr an Bedeutung. Der vorliegende Beitrag untersucht in diesem Zusammenhang, welche Barrieren den interorganisationalen Wissensaustausch auf der Ebene einzelner Personen einschränken. Dazu wurde anhand einer Literaturanalyse ein ganzheitlicher Ordnungsrahmen zur Identifikation, Zuordnung und Beschreibung der Barrieren gebildet. Darauf aufbauend wurden Methoden entwickelt, die eine Messung und Bewertung der Barrieren ermöglichen. Die Ergebnisse dienen Entscheidungsträgern in Wirtschaft und Wissenschaft, um Störungsquellen in interorganisationalen Wissensflüssen zu identifizieren und liefern eine Grundlage für die Ableitung gezielter Maßnahmen.

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There is a lack of understanding of the factors that determine one's motivation to share knowledge within a public sector community of practice. Additionally, the impact of knowledge sharing in communities of practice on the work performance of members remains under-investigated. The purpose of this study was first to investigate how motivational factors, enablers and barriers influence knowledge sharing within a community of practice in a public organization and, second, to examine how community of practice members' work performance is associated with knowledge sharing. Findings are as follow. First, all three motivating factors considered in the study, community related considerations, normative considerations, and personal benefits, were found to have a unique contribution to the variance in knowledge sharing. Second, results showed that three enablers have a significant main effect on knowledge sharing: social interaction, reward, and support. Third, two of the four barriers, degree of courage and degree of empathy, which measured organizational culture, were found to have a significant main effect on knowledge sharing. Fourth, the interaction of normative consideration with social interaction, personal benefit with support, and normative considerations with courage had a moderating effect on the relationship between motivating factors and knowledge sharing. Fifth, there was a moderate positive correlation between knowledge sharing and work performance. Trust and reward were not significant predictors of one's willingness to share knowledge in a community of practice

ABSTRACT ONTOLOGIES AND METHODS FOR INTEROPERABILITY OF ENGINEERING ANALYSIS MODELS (EAMS) IN AN E-DESIGN ENVIRONMENT SEPTEMBER 2007 NEELIMA KANURI, B.S., BIRLA INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY AND SCIENCES PILANI INDIA M.S., UNIVERSITY OF MASSACHUSETTS AMHERST Directed by: Professor Ian Grosse Interoperability is the ability of two or more systems to exchange and reuse information efficiently. This thesis presents new techniques for interoperating engineering tools using ontologies as the basis for representing, visualizing, reasoning about, and securely exchanging abstract engineering knowledge between software systems. The specific engineering domain that is the primary focus of this report is the modeling knowledge associated with the development of engineering analysis models (EAMs). This abstract modeling knowledge has been used to support integration of analysis and optimization tools in iSIGHT FD , a commercial engineering environment. ANSYS , a commercial FEA tool, has been wrapped as an analysis service available inside of iSIGHT-FD. Engineering analysis modeling (EAM) ontology has been developed and instantiated to form a knowledge base for representing analysis modeling knowledge. The instances of the knowledge base are the analysis models of real world applications. To illustrate how abstract modeling knowledge can be exploited for useful purposes, a cantilever I-Beam design optimization problem has been used as a test bed proof-of-concept application. Two distinct finite element models of the I-beam are available to analyze a given beam design- a beam-element finite element model with potentially lower accuracy but significantly reduced computational costs and a high fidelity, high cost, shell-element finite element model. The goal is to obtain an optimized I-beam design at minimum computational expense. An intelligent KB tool was developed and implemented in FiPER . This tool reasons about the modeling knowledge to intelligently shift between the beam and the shell element models during an optimization process to select the best analysis model for a given optimization design state. In addition to improved interoperability and design optimization, methods are developed and presented that demonstrate the ability to operate on ontological knowledge bases to perform important engineering tasks. One such method is the automatic technical report generation method which converts the modeling knowledge associated with an analysis model to a flat technical report. The second method is a secure knowledge sharing method which allocates permissions to portions of knowledge to control knowledge access and sharing. Both the methods acting together enable recipient specific fine grain controlled knowledge viewing and sharing in an engineering workflow integration environment, such as iSIGHT-FD. These methods together play a very efficient role in reducing the large scale inefficiencies existing in current product design and development cycles due to poor knowledge sharing and reuse between people and software engineering tools. This work is a significant advance in both understanding and application of integration of knowledge in a distributed engineering design framework.