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Keeping knowledge within the company using knowledgemanagement can be a difficult task, as many studies have shown. The main reason for failures with the implementation and use of knowledge sharing systems has often been due to human factors. It is common to blame the system intended to facilitate the knowledge sharing, however, studies have shown that humans’ unwillingness to share their knowledge is one of the main causes for underutilization of these systems. This study aims to explore the attitudes towards and suitability of a knowledgesharing system in a workplace where computers are not the main tool for carrying out your work. It has been found to be of importance to evaluate the fit of an informationsystem pre-, during, and post-implementation. Therefore, this study was conducted during the pre-implementation phase in order to discover any obstacles and user attitudes towards the implementation of such a system. One of the big challenges within knowledge sharing is to transform tacit knowledge into explicit knowledge. Tacit knowledge would in the workplace, considered in the present study, be knowledge such as creative thinking or design decisions which are useful when customers ask for assistance. To understand how the knowledge sharing currently worked inthe workplace as well as the employees’ attitudes towards a digital knowledge sharing system, an ethnomethodology inspired method was adopted. This entailed observations and interviews at the workplace. The employees’ attitudes towards a digital knowledge sharing was found to be quite positive. It was also found that, if implemented, the knowledge sharing system should be an integrated part of their new system.

This study aims to understand the knowledge sharing process between developers within an IT-consultant organization. As with today’s fast-paced and knowledge-driven society, there’s been a growing interest within organizations to manage their collective knowledge. Thus, this study doesn’t merely focus on what’s currently going on in a specific setting, but also what can be done to further influence the process of knowledge sharing. Previous research within the field of knowledge sharing has been studied, mainly based upon the theoretical framework developed by Minu Ipe (2003). This study has been further divided into several influential factors regarding the process of knowledge sharing. We, therefore, strive to understand where the act of sharing knowledge occurs, how the employees learn from one another and what motivates them to participate in the process. This was done through qualitative methods, where several employees and a few representatives of the management of a certain organization were interviewed. The results gathered were further analyzed and conclusions were made regarding future improvements to the knowledge sharing process. Social and communicational aspects were determined to be core influential factors of knowledge sharing. / Studiens mål är att undersöka och förstå kunskapsdelningsprocessen mellan utvecklarna på ett IT-konsultföretag. I och med dagens snabbt växande och kunskapsdrivna samhälle har intresset för att effektivt hantera den kollektiva kunskap som företag besitter märkbart ökat. Således strävar inte studien enbart att undersöka hur kunskapsdelningsprocessen ser ut idag, utan även vad som kan göras för att främja processen ytterligare. Tidigare forskning inom området kunskapsdelning har studerats, i huvudsak baserat på det teoretiska ramverk utformat av Minu Ipe (2003). Studien har vidare delats in i flertalet faktorer som anses influera och främja kunskapsdelningsprocessen. Vi strävar efter att förstå vart kunskapsdelningen sker, hur de anställda lär av varandra och vad som motiverar dem att delta i processen. Detta gjordes genom kvalitativa metoder, där flertalet anställda och ett fåtal personer från ledningen av ett IT-konsultföretag intervjuades. De erhållna resultaten analyserades, för att vidare generera framtida förbättringar tänkt att främja kunskapsdelningsprocessen inom företaget. Sociala och kommunikativa aspekter ansågs vara de centrala faktorer för främjandet av kunskapsdelning.

This thesis focuses on integrating learning paradigms that ‘share to learn,’ i.e., Multitask Learning (MTL), and ‘learn (how) to share,’ i.e., meta learning. MTL involves learning several tasks simultaneously within a shared network structure so that the tasks can mutually benefit each other’s learning. While meta learning, better known as ‘learning to learn,’ is an approach to reducing the amount of time and computation required to learn a novel task by leveraging on knowledge accumulated over the course of numerous training episodes of various tasks. The learning process in the human brain is innate and natural. Even before birth, it is capable of learning and memorizing. As a consequence, humans do not learn everything from scratch, and because they are naturally capable of effortlessly transferring their knowledge between tasks, they quickly learn new skills. Humans naturally tend to believe that similar tasks have (somewhat) similar solutions or approaches, so sharing knowledge from a previous activity makes it feasible to learn a new task quickly in a few tries. For instance, the skills acquired while learning to ride a bike are helpful when learning to ride a motorbike, which is, in turn, helpful when learning to drive a car. This natural learning process, which involves sharing information between tasks, has inspired a few research areas in Deep Learning (DL), such as transfer learning, MTL, meta learning, Lifelong Learning (LL), and many more, to create similar neurally-weighted algorithms. These information-sharing algorithms exploit the knowledge gained from one task to improve the performance of another related task. However, they vary in terms of what information they share, when to share, and why to share. This thesis focuses particularly on MTL and meta learning, and presents a comprehensive explanation of both the learning paradigms. A theoretical comparison of both algorithms demonstrates that the strengths of one can outweigh the constraints of the other. Therefore, this work aims to combine MTL and meta learning to attain the best of both worlds. The main contribution of this thesis is Multi-task Meta Learning (MTML), an integration of MTL and meta learning. As the gradient (or optimization) based metalearning follows an episodic approach to train a network, we propose multi-task learning episodes to train a MTML network in this work. The basic idea is to train a multi-task model using bi-level meta-optimization so that when a new task is added, it can learn in fewer steps and perform at least as good as traditional single-task learning on the new task. The MTML paradigm is demonstrated on two publicly available datasets – the NYU-v2 and the taskonomy dataset, for which four tasks are considered, i.e., semantic segmentation, depth estimation, surface normal estimation, and edge detection. This work presents a comparative empirical analysis of MTML to single-task and multi-task learning, where it is evident that MTML excels for most tasks. The future direction of this work includes developing efficient and autonomous MTL architectures by exploiting the concepts of meta learning. The main goal will be to create a task-adaptive MTL, where meta learning may learn to select layers (or features) from the shared structure for every task because not all tasks require the same highlevel, fine-grained features from the shared network. This can be seen as another way of combining MTL and meta learning. It will also introduce modular learning in the multi-task architecture. Furthermore, this work can be extended to include multi-modal multi-task learning, which will help to study the contributions of each input modality to various tasks.

Motivation In the upcoming decades, traditional firms will transition to becoming a more regenerative version, with a socio-ecological purpose at the core of the firm. In this transition phase, regenerative firms, with a focus on impact maximisation of the socio-ecological purpose and traditional firms, with a focus rather on profit maximisation, need to coexist and be resilient somehow. While in the coming decades the number of regenerative firms will grow, it is important to understand how these regenerative firms can enable organisational resilience. Yet, prior research neglects how especially inter-organisational collaboration could enhance the organisational resilience of regenerative firms. Therefore, the context of this study is within the consumer goods industry in the Netherlands and the United Kingdom, focusing on regenerative firms. Purpose This study aims to shed light on how inter-organisational collaboration can strengthen the organisational resilience of regenerative firms. The first part of the research will mostly address the question how regenerative firms can strengthen organisational resilience with a focus on the capabilities needed. In addition, the study will demonstrate how regenerative firms approach and use inter-organisational collaboration. Methodology The study, with a qualitative approach, used a multi-case study design. Various people were interviewed, such as CEOs, founders, quality managers, consultants, impact officers, following a semi-structured interview design. For transcription purposes, the interviews were audio-recorded and the results from the interviews were labelled, following an open coding process. The results, with matching open codes, were then connected back to the theoretical framework. Results The results of this study indicated how inter-organisational collaboration is used to strengthen the organisational resilience of regenerative firms. Contradicting prior research about traditional firms, regenerative firms do not fear competition, yet these firms rather achieve system resilience by being resilient as a collective. Regenerative firms realise this by being transparent, absorbing and sharing knowledge to achieve success for the system they are embedded in. Sharing knowledge in a transparent manner and aiming for reciprocity among inter-organisational collaboration actors contributes positively to their system resilience. Thus, inter-organisational collaboration is a powerful tool for regenerative firms to enhance this system resilience and consequently maximising the impact of their collective socio-ecological purpose.

Industry 4.0 (I4.0) productions are complex environments driven by production data to make informed decisions affecting the events and items on the production line. This complexity can have a negative effect on the factory workers’ adoption rate of the new technology. More specifically, it can lead to the factory workers feeling passive and lacking influence over the tools used. Therefore, new UX methods and increased UX maturity are called for, to better suit the ever changing environments of I4.0 organizations. To ensure adoption, positive attitudes and intentions regarding user ownership, expertise and knowledge sharing are required. In this thesis project, participatory design (PD) methods are used to evaluate, whether PD has a positive effect on such attitudes and intentions toward new tools introduced on the production line. Five participants, employees from the I4.0 company Northvolt, were recruited to take part in a PD workshop to design a human-machine interface (HMI). The participants attitudes and intentions towards the tool were measured and explored through the PD workshop, surveys and user interviews. The outcome was also compared to the survey results on the tools already in use on the production line. The study resulted in increased positive attitudes and intentions towards user ownership, knowledge sharing and expertise concerning the HMI. Thus, the application of PD in I4.0 environments had an overall positive impact. Researchers are called to assess these effects in the long term, by allowing the participants to use the tool in a practical context overtime. / Industry 4.0 (4.0) produktioner är komplexa miljöer drivna av produktionsdata för att kunna göra informerade beslut som påverkar händelserna och produkterna på produktionslinjen. Denna komplexitet kan ha en negativ effekt på fabriksarbetarnas adoptionsfrekvens av den nya teknologin. Mer specifikt, kan det leda till att fabriksarbetarna känner passivitet och att de saknar inflytande över de digitala verktygen som används. För att bättre passa de föränderliga miljöerna i I4.0 organisationer, behövs nya User Experience (UX) metoder och ökad UX mognad. För att säkerställa adoption, positiva attityder och avsikter angående ”user ownership”, behövs expertis och kunskapsdelning. I detta examensprojekt, används ”participatory design” (PD) metoder för att evaluera om PD har en positiv effekt på sådana attityder och avsikter gentemot nya digitala verktyg introducerade på produktionslinjen. Fem deltagare, anställda från I4.0 företaget Northvolt, rekryterades för att ta del av en PD workshop för att designa ett ”human-machine interface” (HMI). Deltagarnas attityder och avsikter gentemot verktyget mättes och utforskades genom PD workshopen, enkäter och användarintervjuer. Utfallet blev jämfört med enkätresultat gällande digitala verktyg som redan används på produktionslinjen. Projektet resulterade i ökade positiva attityder och avsikter rörande user ownership, kunskapsdelning och expertis gentemot HMIt. Således, appliceringen av PD i I4.0 miljöer hade en övergripande positiv påverkan. Forskare uppmanas att bedöma dessa effekter långsiktigt, genom att tillåta deltagarna att använda det digitala verktyget i en praktiken över tid.

There is a lack of technology that facilitates knowledge sharing in the medical sector. In several countries there is a shortage of medical staff with the proper education to take care of patients suffering from dementia. However, modern mobile and web technology pave the way for new online knowledge sharing platforms which could help remedy this problem. This study investigates how an interface of a mobile e-library, aimed at sharing dementia-related knowledge, could be created. It also examines how care workers perceive it and if they could be willing to adopt the technology in the future. This thesis project was carried out at Svenskt Demenscentrum, a non-profit organization with the purpose of disseminating and collecting knowledge concerning dementia. The prototype was designed using the double diamond process. This included an initial literature study and state-of-the-art analysis, which was followed by two workshops with professional care workers. The final design was created iteratively with feedback from a focus group. A total of four sessions with the focus group were organized. The final prototype was evaluated using the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) model. 12 participants took part in the user tests, all had previously taken care of patients suffering from dementia. The findings of the user tests suggest that the users perceived the interface as both useful and easy to use. This finding also indicates that the users, according to the TAM model, would be willing to adopt the technology if fully developed. All of the participants found the application fitting for smartphone devices. Some suggestions regarding further implementations of the interface included the addition of an onboarding process for those less familiar with modern design conventions and the inclusion of a social forum or discussion page that would allow for a direct knowledge exchange between the users. / Det finns en brist på teknologier som förenklar kunskapsdelning inom den medicinska sektorn. I flera länder har det dokumenterats en tilltagande brist vårdpersonal med tillräcklig utbildning för att ta hand om patienter som lider av demens. Kunskapsdelning kan underlättas med mobila onlineplattformar, utvecklade for att användare ska kunna dela expertis med varandra. Den här studien undersöker hur gränssnittet till ett mobilt e-bibliotek, med mal att dela demensrelaterade kunskaper, skulle kunna utvecklas. Den undersöker även om vårdpersonal och släktingar till demenssjuka kan förväntas anamma teknologin i framtiden. Detta masterarbete utfördes i samarbete med Svenskt Demenscentrum, en stiftelse som arbetar för att samla, strukturera och sprida kunskap om demens.  En prototyp for gränssnittet designades efter 'double Diamond'-modellen. Detta inkluderade genomförandet av en litteraturstudie, en 'state-of-the-art'-analys samt två workshops med professionell vårdpersonal. Den slutgiltiga designen togs fram iterativt med feedback från en fokusgrupp. Totalt organiserades fyra sessioner med fokusgruppen.  Den slutgiltiga prototypen utvärderades sedan efter 'Technology Acceptance'-modellen (TAM). Tolv deltagare rekryterades till användartesterna, alla med tidigare erfarenhet av demensvård, som vårdarbete eller släktingar. Resultatet från testerna antydde att användarna uppfattade prototypgranssnittet som både användbart och lättanvänt. I enlighet men TAM-modellen, implicerar detta att målgruppen är mottaglig för att använda en full implementation av teknologin. Alla deltagare uppfattade även prototypen som lämplig för 'smartphone'-enheter. Testdeltagarna lyfte även fram ett antal rekommendationer gällande vidareutvecklingen av gränssnittet. Bland annat föreslogs det att en 'onboarding'-process skulle kunna implementeras samt en diskussionssida; eller dylikt som skulle tillåta användarna att delta i ett direkt kunskapsutbyte med varandra.

Inter-organisational knowledge sharing between airport security organisations has become increasingly vital to maintain the highest standards of security and public safety. Social networks are considered a significant space for knowledge sharing within and across organisations. The purpose of this research is to investigate inter-organisational knowledge sharing in social media between key organisations in policing and airport security. A cross-sectional case study strategy combining qualitative and quantitative methods was employed to investigate the use of social media in inter-organisational knowledge sharing in the context of airport security in the UAE. Findings showed that the structural characteristics within knowledge sharing were highly centralised and polarised with low intensity in knowledge sharing. Social capital was constrained at a relational level due to cultural factors of trust, risk aversion and power distance that influenced a closed culture and reduced the scope for tacit knowledge sharing practices as well as low level cognitive capital. Analysis of dimensions of the SECI model for knowledge creation revealed that knowledge and the process of knowing was impacted by cultural distinctions that constrained socialisation, externalisation, combination and internalisation processes. The key barriers to knowledge sharing were identified and associated with trust, risk aversion, organisational culture, resource constraints and interoperability factors. This study makes a contribution to theory and practice in terms of the relationship between social capital dimensions and knowledge creation processes and the characteristics of knowledge-sharing within social media. The study further adds to knowledge on the antecedents of inter-organisational knowledge sharing, particularly in the Arabic context. / UAE Government and Ministry of Interior

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Background: An ever-changing environment requires organizations such as universities to rapidly adaptto any new circumstances imposed by internal or external shocks. The role of rapid adaptation in virtualitybecomes crucial in times of crisis when organizations have to either adapt or risk collapse. Universities arethreatened by abrupt changes in their teaching routines due to the COVID-19 pandemic, and more that maycome. The process of transitioning to new teaching routines, short of social interaction, requires a multi-pronged response. Understanding routines, their rapid adaptation, the role of virtual tools and agencypresents a window of opportunity for responding to uncertainty. Aim: The aim of this study is to gain insights on how rapid adaptation occurs through the processes of routine re-adjustment, regeneration facilitated by the intellective processes of sense-making, collaboration,and knowledge transfer and sharing within organizations. Methodology: By conducting a qualitative case study, we investigated two universities in Sweden and Zimbabwe. The qualitative study is based on 15 interviews with teaching staff at Linköping University andthe University of Zimbabwe, conducted through semi-structured interviews. This study followed a processstudy approach to investigate how routines are adapted and the effect of artifacts in the adaptation processof teaching staff at universities. Findings: We posit that teaching staff from the two case universities contributed significantly to the rapid adaptation process. This was achieved through sense-making involving heuristic processes whenresponding to adjustment in online virtual teaching routines. This prevented the routine from collapsingand, instead, led to its adjustment. Some old teaching routines remained unchanged, thereby enabling theadjustment process. Artifacts (virtual tools) have also contributed to both constraining and enabling thetransition to new routines. The virtual tools used during the transition were few in number, with simplefunctionalities. Moreover, teaching staff committed themselves to quickly adapt and use the new virtualtools, even without prior knowledge, effectively making adaptation more rapid.