Knowledge is the resource that provides the best possibilities of being competitive since it increases while used and is difficult to copy. Knowledge sharing has been shown to increase organizational performance in both tangible and intangible measures. Therefore, it is important that employees of a research and development department in a large Swedish industry, that were recommended to telework in combination with short-time working due to covid-19, continue sharing knowledge. This study aimed to analyze how employees in a development department share knowledge while teleworking and how it differs from knowledge sharing in a traditional office. The phenomenon was analyzed in-depth, especially what prevents the knowledge from being shared and knowledge sharing barriers that exist during telework. The objective was to gain further knowledge of how departments can share knowledge efficiently while teleworking. A qualitative single case study was conducted and 8 semi-structured interviews were held with employees at the department. The findings suggest that knowledge sharing occurs with tools that are used in a traditional office and that is no difference in terms of whom employees share knowledge with, but the face-to-face meetings are missing. A further suggestion is that it occurs by less informal knowledge sharing and that the meetings tend to have a stricter agenda that is kept at a higher degree than when working in a traditional office. The knowledge sharing barriers identified were: challenging to express knowledge, time constraints, uncertainty which knowledge to share with whom, less informal places to share knowledge, lack of trust, differences in experience/knowledge/education, attitude, and culture & leadership. The results give companies in similar situations cognizance of how knowledge sharing occurs and differ when suddenly teleworking is required and knowledge sharing barriers that exist. These findings identify risks and difficulties of knowledge sharing when teleworking.

No description available.

No description available.

This study confined itself to an exploratory interpretive approach aimed at expanding the understanding of some elements that may affect virtual teams. It highlights the advantage of virtual teams over FTF teams.

Large family studies of complex disorders can be used to detect a genomic region linked with a particular illness. Where multiple families are found with common regions of linkage, this could be due to an ancestral mutation common to these families. In this thesis, I describe a method for studying allele sharing in families that share a linkage region, to identify a common founder mutation, thus maximising the results of replicated linkage studies. The method tests the hypothesis that the evidence for shared linkage is derived from the sharing of a common affected ancestor. By comparing the allelic similarity of haplotypes across common linkage regions, it is possible to identify any regions that are identical by descent between the families. A method of permutation analysis followed by a nested permutation technique have been developed to assess the statistical significance of allele sharing scores. Chapter 3 describes the proof of principle of the method through its application to known cystic fibrosis mutations and through simulated datasets. This provides both a real dataset and a much more diverse range of simulated conditions on which to test the method. The range of simulated data was also used to develop a set of criteria for the effective us of the method. In Chapter 4, the allele sharing method was applied to two replicated linkage regions on chromosome 4p15-16 that segregate with bipolar affective disorder. This was done over two phases, first taking in markers covering the genic regions of the shared linkage region and then followed up with a complete coverage of the region. This analysis identified a 200kb region with significant confidence within the 8Mb of the two linkage regions. The study of this region presents a clear example of how replicated linkage results that are caused by some founder effect, can be examined, and refined using this allele sharing method to vastly reduce the region under investigation.

published_or_final_version / Education / Master / Master of Education

Organizations are increasingly utilizing knowledge-sharing technologies to increase the amount of knowledge within their organization. While in most organizations, knowledge sharing is seen as a benefit, for law enforcement agencies it is viewed as a necessity. In order to protect against future terrorist attacks like September 11th, law enforcement agencies are trying to increase knowledge sharing across their current organizational boundaries. Given this massive undertaking, we have to wonder what are the potential unintended effects of this increase in knowledge sharing. This dissertation seeks to address this issue by understanding the relationships between individual and organizational factors, the use of knowledge sharing technology, and organizational outcomes.After a general discussion on knowledge, knowledge management strategies and technologies, a two-part model of knowledge sharing is proposed that 1) predicts outcomes given the use of knowledge sharing technology and 2) investigates the individual and organizational factors that serve as antecedents to the use of the knowledge sharing technology.The findings of this research suggest that given the characteristics of a police organization, an increase in the use of the knowledge sharing technology to communicate with external groups results in decreased productivity and job perceptions. Furthermore, this relationship may be moderated by factors within the police organization. Previous research on knowledge sharing has found that as knowledge sharing increases between individuals in different groups, productivity also increases. The results of this dissertation indicate that this is not always the case. By pulling together different areas of research, such as knowledge management, information technology, communication, and organizational behavior, this dissertation addresses the gaps in the research and contributes to the existing understanding of knowledge sharing. This dissertation also provides an important notice to law enforcement and other organizations: although they may approach knowledge sharing with the best intentions, there can be unintentional effects to increasing the use of knowledge sharing technology.

This research considers one of the most important of resources - knowledge. There is a widespread view that knowledge is important to organizations and this has led to the study of knowledge management. There are a plethora of definitions of knowledge and knowledge management, but knowledge sharing is recognised as being of fundamental importance. The literature shows the success of knowledge sharing is not only affected by factors including culture, management, technology, processes and structure but, more importantly, it is affected by how these factors interact and fit together. However there is little literature on alignment or strategic fit in knowledge sharing. This research adds to the literature by investigating the enablers and constraints of knowledge sharing and the possible effects of alignment. An interpretive approach using case studies triangulated with a survey is adopted, involving semi-structured interviews with 23 people across five organizations. The findings suggest that significant top management support and a strategy for knowledge sharing are necessary precursors of effective knowledge sharing. In the organizations which lacked this, there is little to encourage people to share and almost none of these organizations measured well on any aspect of knowledge sharing. There are widely varying uses of technology, but many are aimed at sharing data or information. Fewer uses of technology are geared to enabling or encouraging the communication necessary for knowledge sharing. The lack of senior management support may prevent any significant internal or external alignment so a possible approach to strategic fit for knowledge sharing is that strategy has to come first (and the management support that goes with it) and that this should lead to the embedding of the necessary behaviours for knowledge sharing. Only after this are processes and technology able to support knowledge sharing.

This study confined itself to an exploratory interpretive approach aimed at expanding the understanding of some elements that may affect virtual teams. It highlights the advantage of virtual teams over FTF teams.

Business today is faced with discontinuity and unpredictable change, which makes many of the structured processes of yesteryear redundant or obsolete. Process-based transactions are being replaced with technology and increasingly organisations are recognising the importance of proactively managing their knowledge transactions, to remain competitive. While research on knowledge sharing is gaining the attention of researchers, almost invariably their focus has been on the factors influencing knowledge transfer at the macro-level in large multi-national organisations. Few have attempted to unravel the complexities of individual-to-individual micro-level knowledge sharing and those that have, for the most part have directed their investigations towards exploring factors that enhance or impede the source individual sharing their knowledge, rather than the recipient's receiving of knowledge. While questioning is implicit in knowledge sharing there are assumptions that underpin the structure of a question and these assumptions affect both the source and the recipient. This study investigates how the structure of a question posed to a source individual when eliciting knowledge, influences the attitude of a recipient individual towards the knowledge they receive from the question response. Drawing upon theoretical assumptions that underpin question structure, three hypotheses are posed to compare binary, open-ended and directed question responses. To test the hypotheses a progression of three independent studies were performed using laboratory and field experiments. The first study conducted in a laboratory, used a contrived scenario case as the knowledge context and the second study replicated this experiment in the field. The last study conducted in a single organisation, used real organisational knowledge as the knowledge context. Recipients of shared knowledge were found to be more favourably disposed towards question responses that were structured in a complex manner; open-ended and directed question responses were more favoured than binary question responses. ii There was no difference in recipient attitude between open-ended and directed question responses and recipient attitude towards the shared knowledge was found to be positively related to their intention to use the knowledge in the future. These findings are of significance as they illustrate the importance of structuring questions in a manner that is consistent with recipients of the shared knowledge being more favourably disposed towards the knowledge they have received. In an environment of ambiguity, complexity and uncertainty where decisions are nonprogrammed, strategic and imperative to the competitiveness of the organisation, no longer is the binary 'Yes' or 'No' compliance or audit style question, with its implicit assumptions, sufficient to elicit knowledge. It is important to recognise that often we do not know what we need to know until it is shared by someone. Further, when shared knowledge is cognitively processed with our current knowledge base, the new knowledge is likely to facilitate more informed decision-making. The more favourably disposed the recipient is towards the knowledge the more likely it is that they will use it in the future; knowledge is transferred.