Dynamic Knowledge Creation Through Value Management Teams

With the intention of introducing unique and value-added products to the market, organizations have become more conscious of how to best create knowledge as reported by Ganesh Bhatt in 2000 in 'Information dynamics, learning and knowledge creation in organizations'. Knowledge creation is recognized as having an important role in generating and sustaining a competitive advantage as well as in meeting organizational goals, as reported by Aleda Roth and her colleagues in 1994 in 'The knowledge factory for accelerated learning practices.' One of the successful ingredients of value management (VM) is its utilization of diverse knowledge resources, drawing upon different organizational functions, professional disciplines, and stakeholders, in a facilitated team process. Multidisciplinary VM study teams are viewed as having high potential to innovate due to their heterogeneous nature. This paper looks at one of the VM workshop's major benefits, namely, knowledge creation. A case study approach was used to explore the nature, processes, and issues associated with fostering a dynamic knowledge creation capability within VM teams. The results indicate that the dynamic knowledge creating process is embedded in and influenced by managing team constellation, creating shared awareness, developing shared understanding, and producing aligned action. The catalysts that can speed up the processes are open dialogue and discussion among participants. This process is enhanced by the use of facilitators, skilled at extracting knowledge.

Translating evidence into practice: A shared priority in public health?

Translational and transdisciplinary research is needed to tackle complex public health problems. This article has three aims. Firstly, to determine how academics and non-academics (practitioners, policy makers and community workers) identified with the goals of the UKCRC Centre of Excellence for Public Health in Northern Ireland and how their attitudes varied in terms of knowledge brokerage and translation. Secondly, to map and analyse the network structure of the public health sector and the placement of the Centre within this. Thirdly, to aggregate responses from members of the network by work setting to construct the trans-sectoral network and devise the Root Mean Sum of Squares to determine the quality and potential value of connections across this network.The analysis was based on data collected from 98 individuals who attended the launch of the Centre in June 2008. Analysis of participant expectations and personal goals suggests that the academic members of the network were more likely to expect the work of the Centre to produce new knowledge than non-academics, but less likely to expect the Centre to generate health interventions and influence health policy. Academics were also less strongly oriented than non-academics to knowledge transfer as a personal goal, though more confident that research findings would be diffused beyond the immediate network. A central core of five nodes is crucial to the overall configuration of the regional public health network in Northern Ireland, with the Centre being well placed to exert influence within this. Though the overall network structure is fairly robust, the connections between some component parts of the network - such as academics and the third sector - are unidirectional.Identifying these differences and core network structure is key to translational and transdisciplinary research. Though exemplified in a regional study, these techniques are generalisable and applicable to many networks of interest: public health, interdisciplinary research or organisational involvement and stakeholder linkage.

Shared Services in Ireland

The global financial crisis has forced governments across the globe to seek new ways of achieving efficiencies and savings in running their state administrations. Prominent amongst the variety of approaches adopted is the concept of shared services, which purports to offer a means of consolidating common tasks, reducing duplication, and achieving greater value for money. Based on successful experiences in the private sector, the phenomenon of shared service centres (SSCs) as a new co-ordination practice is of particular interest. In this chapter, the use of shared services and SSCs in Ireland is considered.

Reconciliation in Northern Ireland: The Value of Intergroup contact

Northern Ireland is still a country riven by segregation, caught between peace and reconciliation. Extensive survey research shows that intergroup contact has a key role to play in achieving reconciliation, whether through generic contact, cross-group friends (most effective) or indirect forms of contact. Segregation is most profound in education, but we show the benefits of contact in all mixed schools. A recent evaluation of a new Shared Education Programme (SEP), that provides children with the opportunity to study with and meet pupils from the other community, reveals reliable effects via promoting contact. The Northern Ireland Assembly’s support for SEP is based on sound psychological principles and robust research evidence.

The adaptive value of polyembryony.

From an evolutionary standpoint, the production of offspring is the single most important aspect of an animal's life. Offspring carry an individual's genes into the next generation and it is the differential representation of genes in a population that drives evolutionary change. There are a variety of ways in which animals create offspring, ranging from cases where parents make identical copies of themselves by budding or parthenogenesis, to the standard case in vertebrates where gametes from a male and female fuse in sexual reproduction to produce the next generation. In this article we describe an usual variant of sexual reproduction, polyembryony.

Can diagnostic triage by general practitioners or rheumatology nurses improve the positive predictive value of referrals to early arthritis clinics?

Objectives: To determine whether diagnostic triage by general practitioners (GPs) or rheumatology nurses (RNs) can improve the positive predictive value of referrals to early arthritis clinics (EACs).

Methods: Four GPs and two RNs were trained in the assessment of early in?ammatory arthritis (IA) by four visits to an EAC supervised by hospital rheumatologists. Patients referred to one of three EACs were recruited for study and assessed independently by a GP, an RN and one of six rheumatologists. Each assessor was asked to record their clinical ?ndings and whether they considered the patient to have IA. Each was then asked to judge the appropriateness of the referral according to predetermined guidelines. The rheumatologists had been shown previously to have a satisfactory level of agreement in the assessment of IA.

Results: Ninety-six patients were approached and all consented to take part in the study. In 49 cases (51%), the rheumatologist judged that the patient had IA and that the referral was appropriate. The assessments of GPs and RNs were compared with those of the rheumatologists. Levels of agreement were measured using the kappa value, where 1.0 represents total unanimity. The kappa value was
0.77 for the GPs when compared with the rheumatologists and 0.79 for the RNs. Signi?cant stiffness in the morning or after rest and objective joint swelling were the most important clinical features enabling the GPs and RNs to discriminate between IA and non-IA conditions.

Conclusion: Diagnostic triage by GPs or RNs improved the positive predictive value of referrals to an EAC with a degree of accuracy approaching that of a group of experienced rheumatologists.