Knowledge management in the energy sector:review and future directions

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to examine the state of knowledge management (KM) in the energy sector and more broadly, and consider future directions for research and practice. Design/methodology/approach – The paper reviews the literature on KM and the practice of KM as relevant to the energy sector. Findings – There are many examples of good practice in KM in the sector, and some organisations, especially in the oil industry, are seen as leaders in KM practice. However, other organisations have yet to embark on explicit KM initiatives or projects at all. In addition, some parts of the energy sector discuss KM without any reference to the more general KM literature. Originality/value – Although some parts of the energy sector have justifiably earned a good reputation for KM, other parts are completely unaware of the field, as is apparent from the literature. This review helps to raise awareness and guide future work.

Strategy-as-practice:a review and future directions for the field

This review maps and critically evaluates the rapidly growing body of research in the strategy-as-practice field. Following an introduction on the emergence and foundations of strategy-as-practice, the review is structured in three main parts, based on the terminology, issues and research agendas outlined in the field. First, the paper examines the concepts of practitioners and praxis. A typology of nine possible domains for strategy-as-practice research is developed, based on the way that different studies conceptualize the strategy practitioner and the level of strategy praxis that they aim to explain. Second, the paper reviews the concept of practices, which has been adopted widely but inconsistently within the strategy-as-practice literature. While there is no dominant view on practices, the review maps the various concepts of practices that inform the strategy-as-practice field and outlines avenues for future research. The final section attends to the call for strategy-as-practice research to develop and substantiate outcomes that may better explain or inform strategy praxis. Five categories of outcomes are found within existing empirical studies, and an agenda for building upon this evidence is advanced. The paper concludes with a summation of the current state of the field and some recommendations on how to take strategy-aspractice research forward.

Key themes and future directions in teaching English to young learners:introduction to the Special issue

Despite being something of a ‘Cinderella’ area of study, research into and informed discussion of teaching young learners is on the increase, perhaps mirroring the increasing numbers of children learning English globally in primary schools. This introductory article reviews key themes and issues in the teaching of English to young learners, and explains how the articles in this Special Issue connect to and develop them. It also points forward to some of the areas we expect to be of interest to researchers and practitioners in the years to come.

Management research in India:current state and future directions

Concerned over the lack of high quality, context specific management research in India, and the predilection of Indian researchers to follow Western models of research and publication blindly, the authors take stock of Indian management research in this round table discussion and debate some of the relevant issues. Urging Indian researchers to strive for the levels of rigour of the Western models, they make a case for confident indigenous scholarship to suit the development and educational requirements of the country, following context-relevant constructs and methodologies in research and developing curricula, materials and modes of dissemination independently. These ideas were also explored at the second Indian Academy of Management Conference held at IIM Bangalore in December 2011. © 2012 Indian Institute of Management Bangalore.

Communication in forensic contexts:future directions and conclusions

This chapter reviews the important areas that psychology, linguistics and law enforcement have impacted upon in terms of rigorous and collaborative scientific endeavours. Important areas that will be of interest to both researchers and practitioners for research relating to communication in forensic contexts are discussed in detail, including vulnerability, the use of intermediaries and interpreters in forensic interviews and questioning techniques.

How organizational cognitive neuroscience can deepen understanding of managerial decision-making:a review of the recent literature and future directions

There is growing interest in exploring the potential links between human biology and management and organization studies, which is bringing greater attention to bear on the place of mental processes in explaining human behaviour and effectiveness. The authors define this new field as organizational cognitive neuroscience (OCN), which is in the exploratory phase of its emergence and diffusion. It is clear that there are methodological debates and issues associated with OCN research, and the aim of this paper is to illuminate these concerns, and provide a roadmap for rigorous and relevant future work in the area. To this end, the current reach of OCN is investigated by the systematic review methodology, revealing three clusters of activity, covering the fields of economics, marketing and organizational behaviour. Among these clusters, organizational behaviour seems to be an outlier, owing to its far greater variety of empirical work, which the authors argue is largely a result of the plurality of research methods that have taken root within this field. Nevertheless, all three clusters contribute to a greater understanding of the biological mechanisms that mediate choice and decision-making. The paper concludes that OCN research has already provided important insights regarding the boundaries surrounding human freedom to act in various domains and, in turn, self-determination to influence the workplace. However, there is much to be done, and emerging research of significant interest is highlighted.

Lichenometric dating (lichenometry) and the biology of the lichen genus rhizocarpon:challenges and future directions

Lichenometric dating (lichenometry) involves the use of lichen measurements to estimate the age of exposure of various substrata. Because of low radial growth rates and considerable longevity, species of the crustose lichen genus Rhizocarpon have been the most useful in lichenometry. The primary assumption of lichenometry is that colonization, growth and mortality of Rhizocarpon are similar on surfaces of known and unknown age so that the largest thalli present on the respective faces are of comparable age. This review describes the current state of knowledge regarding the biology of Rhizocarpon and considers two main questions: (1) to what extent does existing knowledge support this assumption; and (2) what further biological observations would be useful both to test its validity and to improve the accuracy of lichenometric dates? A review of the Rhizocarpon literature identified gaps in knowledge regarding early development, the growth rate/size curve, mortality, regeneration, competitive effects, colonization, and succession on rock surfaces. The data suggest that these processes may not be comparable on different rock surfaces, especially in regions where growth rates and thallus turnover are high. In addition, several variables could differ between rock surfaces and influence maximum thallus size, including rate and timing of colonization, radial growth rates, environmental differences, thallus fusion, allelopathy, thallus mortality, colonization and competition. Comparative measurements of these variables on surfaces of known and unknown age may help to determine whether the basic assumptions of lichenometry are valid. Ultimately, it may be possible to take these differences into account when interpreting estimated dates.

Calcitonin gene-related peptide:multiple actions, multiple receptors

Calcitonin gene-related peptide (CGRP) shows diversity both in its effects and its receptors. It is likely to have roles as a neurotransmitter, neuromodulator, local hormone and trophic factor. Its effects include rapid changes in neuronal activity, relaxation of many type of smooth muscle, actions on metabolism and changes in gene expression. Receptor heterogenecity has been revealed from experiments comparing agonist potency ratios and antagonists affinities. the evidence from these approaches is reviewed in this article and a speculative receptor classification scheme is proposed. Some of the likely future directions for CGRP research are discussed. © 1993.

First year qualifying report: neural networks for extracting wind vectors from satellite scatterometer data

The ERS-1 Satellite was launched in July 1991 by the European Space Agency into a polar orbit at about km800, carrying a C-band scatterometer. A scatterometer measures the amount of radar back scatter generated by small ripples on the ocean surface induced by instantaneous local winds. Operational methods that extract wind vectors from satellite scatterometer data are based on the local inversion of a forward model, mapping scatterometer observations to wind vectors, by the minimisation of a cost function in the scatterometer measurement space.par This report uses mixture density networks, a principled method for modelling conditional probability density functions, to model the joint probability distribution of the wind vectors given the satellite scatterometer measurements in a single cell (the `inverse' problem). The complexity of the mapping and the structure of the conditional probability density function are investigated by varying the number of units in the hidden layer of the multi-layer perceptron and the number of kernels in the Gaussian mixture model of the mixture density network respectively. The optimal model for networks trained per trace has twenty hidden units and four kernels. Further investigation shows that models trained with incidence angle as an input have results comparable to those models trained by trace. A hybrid mixture density network that incorporates geophysical knowledge of the problem confirms other results that the conditional probability distribution is dominantly bimodal.par The wind retrieval results improve on previous work at Aston, but do not match other neural network techniques that use spatial information in the inputs, which is to be expected given the ambiguity of the inverse problem. Current work uses the local inverse model for autonomous ambiguity removal in a principled Bayesian framework. Future directions in which these models may be improved are given.

From postgraduate student to published writer:discourse variation and development in TESOL

This thesis is part of a project whose overall aim is to assist participants on an MSc TESOL course who wish to begin to publish articles in the field to do so. The project, which is undertaken within a naturalistic paradigm, has two intimately related and mutually constitutive strands: one descriptive, one interventionist. The descriptive strand consists of an analytical model of the TESOL article genre, and it is instantiated in this thesis. The interventionist strand consists of a series of pedagogic interactions and materials intended to assist project participants formulate a text suitable for publication within the target genre, and it is reported on in this thesis. I begin the thesis by looking in detail at the research approach which characterises the project. I then attempt to explain the situational context of the work and to position it within the context of other research in the areas of discourse community membership, academic genres, genre learning and academic enculturation. Having thus contextualised the work, I next attempt a detailed exploration of the problems of postgraduate students in TESOL when first attempting to write in the TESOL article genre: this exploration is undertaken from both a linguistic and a pedagogic perspective. Then in subsequent chapters, both a linguistic and a pedagogic response to these problems are proposed: the first consisting of an analytical model of the target genre, the second consisting of a series of pedagogic interactions and materials. The relationships between the two lines of response are also examined in some detail. Then in the final part of the thesis, I report feedback from the interventionist strand and attempt to conduct an evaluation of the whole project to date. Criteria for evaluation are proposed and examined in some detail in the context of the research approach of the project. The concluding chapter is a brief discussion of future directions for this work.

Optical fibre-based detection of DNA hybridization

A dual-peak LPFG (long-period fibre grating), inscribed in an optical fibre, has been employed to sense DNA hybridization in real time, over a 1 h period. One strand of the DNA was immobilized on the fibre, while the other was free in solution. After hybridization, the fibre was stripped and repeated detection of hybridization was achieved, so demonstrating reusability of the device. Neither strand of DNA was fluorescently or otherwise labelled. The present paper will provide an overview of our early-stage experimental data and methodology, examine the potential of fibre gratings for use as biosensors to monitor both nucleic acid and other biomolecular interactions and then give a summary of the theory and fabrication of fibre gratings from a biological standpoint. Finally, the potential of improving signal strength and possible future directions of fibre grating biosensors will be addressed.

Supply chain knowledge management:a literature review

This paper aims to contribute to the debate on the role of knowledge management in supply chain management by reviewing the published literature. A total of 58 selected referred journal articles were systematically analyzed. This review identifies various theoretical and methodological characteristics of the way in which knowledge management applications are proposed in the supply chain context. The review shows that little evidence exists of the positive relation between the use of IT solutions and firms’ performance. Some issues remain unexplored such as the problem of knowledge obsolescence in supply chain management. A deeper understanding of the knowledge accumulation process could give new insights. The paper concludes with some future directions for theory construction and empirical research.

Efforts towards adaptability enhancement:how manufacturing and service industries can learn from each other

This paper discusses the recent emerging efforts for adaptability enhancement of Japanese industries to cope with a volatile demand environment. It is based on an analysis of data obtained from respondent companies. The analysis is focused on both manufacturing and manufacturing- related service industries such as construction/maintenance, software supply, manufacturing consultation and logistics industries to highlight their current situation, the sense of crisis in Japanese companies and possible future directions in relation to the two industry sectors. The principal conclusion is that for most companies consideration of a revision or modification to its cost structure is an essential requirement for survival in the global competitive environment.