Evaluation of knowledge management performance: An organic approach

Knowledge management (KM) strategy is the planned or actual coordination of a firm's major goals and learning in time; this coordination continually co-aligns the firm's knowledge-based resources with the environment. Based on the organic perspective of strategy, a KM performance evaluation approach should be able to 1) review the knowledge governance mechanisms and learning routines that underpin the KM strategy, as well as the performance outcomes driven by the strategy, and 2) predict the evolution of performance drivers and outcomes into the future to facilitate strategic planning. This study combined a survey study and a system dynamics (SD) simulation to demonstrate the transformation from a mechanistic to an organic perspective on KM strategy and performance evaluation. The survey study was conducted based on a sample of 143 construction contractors and used structural equation modeling (SEM) techniques to develop a KM performance index for reviewing the key elements that underpin KM strategy. The SD simulation predicted the development of KM strategy configurations and the evolution of KM performance over time. The organic KM performance evaluation approach demonstrated by this study has significant potential to improve the alignment of KM strategy within an increasingly dynamic business environment.

Data as an asset: what the oil and gas sector can learn from other industries about “Big Data”

The upstream oil and gas industry has been contending with massive data sets and monolithic files for many years, but “Big Data” is a relatively new concept that has the potential to significantly re-shape the industry. Despite the impressive amount of value that is being realized by Big Data technologies in other parts of the marketplace, however, much of the data collected within the oil and gas sector tends to be discarded, ignored, or analyzed in a very cursory way. This viewpoint examines existing data management practices in the upstream oil and gas industry, and compares them to practices and philosophies that have emerged in organizations that are leading the way in Big Data. The comparison shows that, in companies that are widely considered to be leaders in Big Data analytics, data is regarded as a valuable asset—but this is usually not true within the oil and gas industry insofar as data is frequently regarded there as descriptive information about a physical asset rather than something that is valuable in and of itself. The paper then discusses how the industry could potentially extract more value from data, and concludes with a series of policy-related questions to this end.

Understanding the behavior of workshop facilitators in systems analysis and design projects: Developing theory from process modeling projects

Organizational and technological systems analysis and design practices such as process modeling have received much attention in recent years. However, while knowledge about related artifacts such as models, tools, or grammars has substantially matured, little is known about the actual tasks and interaction activities that are conducted as part of analysis and design acts. In particular, key role of the facilitator has not been researched extensively to date. In this paper, we propose a new conceptual framework that can be used to examine facilitation behaviors in process modeling projects. The framework distinguishes four behavioral styles in facilitation (the driving engineer, the driving artist, the catalyzing engineer, and the catalyzing artist) that a facilitator can adopt. To distinguish between the four styles, we provide a set of ten behavioral anchors that underpin facilitation behaviors. We also report on a preliminary empirical exploration of our framework through interviews with experienced analysts in six modeling cases. Our research provides a conceptual foundation for an emerging theory for describing and explaining different behaviors associated with process modeling facilitation, provides first preliminary empirical results about facilitation in modeling projects, and provides a fertile basis for examining facilitation in other conceptual modeling activities.

Towards making informed decisions on selecting promising work zone safety treatments

Lack of detailed and accurate safety records on incidents in Australian work zones prevents a thorough understanding of the relevant risks and hazards. Consequently it is difficult to select appropriate treatments for improving the safety of roadworkers and motorists alike. This paper outlines development of a conceptual framework for making informed decisions about safety treatments by: 1) identifying safety issues and hazards in work zones; 2) understanding the attitudes and perceptions of both roadworkers and motorists; 3) reviewing the effectiveness of work zone safety treatments according to existing research, and; 4) incorporating local expert opinion on the feasibility and usefulness of the safety treatments. Using data collected through semi-structured interviews with roadwork personnel and online surveys of Queensland drivers, critical safety issues were identified. The effectiveness of treatments for addressing the issues was understood through rigorous literature review and consultations with local road authorities. Promising work zone safety treatments include enforcement, portable rumble strips, perceptual measures to imply reduced lane width, automated or remotely-operated traffic lights, end of queue measures, and more visible and meaningful signage.

Process visualization techniques for multi-perspective process comparisons

Organizations executing similar business processes need to understand the differences and similarities in activities performed across work environments. Presently, research interest is directed towards the potential of visualization for the display of process models, to support users in their analysis tasks. Although recent literature in process mining and comparison provide several methods and algorithms to perform process and log comparison, few contributions explore novel visualization approaches. This paper analyses process comparison from a design perspective, providing some practical visualization techniques as anal- ysis solutions (/to support process analysis). The design of the visual comparison has been tackled through three different points of view: the general model, the projected model and the side-by-side comparison in order to support the needs of business analysts. A case study is presented showing the application of process mining and visualization techniques to patient treatment across two Australian hospitals.

Use of modal flexibility method to detect damage in suspended cables and the effects of cable parameters

Modal flexibility is a widely accepted technique to detect structural damage using vibration characteristics. Its application to detect damage in long span large diameter cables such as those used in suspension bridge main cables has not received much attention. This paper uses the modal flexibility method incorporating two damage indices (DIs) based on lateral and vertical modes to localize damage in such cables. The competency of those DIs in damage detection is tested by the numerically obtained vibration characteristics of a suspended cable in both intact and damaged states. Three single damage cases and one multiple damage case are considered. The impact of random measurement noise in the modal data on the damage localization capability of these two DIs is next examined. Long span large diameter cables are characterized by the two critical cable parameters named bending stiffness and sag-extensibility. The influence of these parameters in the damage localization capability of the two DIs is evaluated by a parametric study with two single damage cases. Results confirm that the damage index based on lateral vibration modes has the ability to successfully detect and locate damage in suspended cables with 5% noise in modal data for a range of cable parameters. This simple approach therefore can be extended for timely damage detection in cables of suspension bridges and thereby enhance their service during their life spans.

Utility of web content blocks in content extraction

Currently we are facing an overburdening growth of the number of reliable information sources on the Internet. The quantity of information available to everyone via Internet is dramatically growing each year [15]. At the same time, temporal and cognitive resources of human users are not changing, therefore causing a phenomenon of information overload. World Wide Web is one of the main sources of information for decision makers (reference to my research). However our studies show that, at least in Poland, the decision makers see some important problems when turning to Internet as a source of decision information. One of the most common obstacles raised is distribution of relevant information among many sources, and therefore need to visit different Web sources in order to collect all important content and analyze it. A few research groups have recently turned to the problem of information extraction from the Web [13]. The most effort so far has been directed toward collecting data from dispersed databases accessible via web pages (related to as data extraction or information extraction from the Web) and towards understanding natural language texts by means of fact, entity, and association recognition (related to as information extraction). Data extraction efforts show some interesting results, however proper integration of web databases is still beyond us. Information extraction field has been recently very successful in retrieving information from natural language texts, however it is still lacking abilities to understand more complex information, requiring use of common sense knowledge, discourse analysis and disambiguation techniques.

IdeaWall: Mixed mode distributed collaboration in enterprise environments

In early stages of design and modeling, computers and computer applications are often considered an obstacle, rather than a facilitator of the process. Most notably, brainstorms, process modeling with business experts, or development planning, are often performed by a team in front of a whiteboard. While "whiteboarding" is recognized as an effective tool, low-tech solutions that allow remote participants to contribute are still not generally available. This is a striking observation, considering that vast majority of teams in large organizations are distributed teams. And this has also been one of the key triggers behind the project described in this article, where a team of corporate researchers decided to identify state of the art technologies that could facilitate the scenario mentioned above. This paper is an account of a research project in the area of enterprise collaboration, with a strong focus on the aspects of human computer interaction in mixed mode environments, especially in areas of collaboration where computers still play a secondary role. It is describing a currently running corporate research project. © 2012 Springer-Verlag.

Client learning and the performance of collaborative infrastructure projects

Australia is a leading user of collaborative procurement methods, which are used to deliver large and complex infrastructure projects. Project alliances, Early Contractor Involvement (ECI), and partnering are typical examples of collaborative procurement models. In order to increase procurement effectiveness and value for money (VfM), clients have adopted various learning strategies for new contract development. However client learning strategies and behaviours have not been systematically analysed before. Therefore, the current paper undertakes a literature review addressing the research question “How can client learning capabilities be effectively understood?”. From the resource-based and dynamic capability perspectives, this paper proposes that the collaborative learning capability (CLC) of clients drives procurement model evolution. Learning routines underpinning CLC carry out exploratory, transformative and exploitative learning phases associated with collaborative project delivery. This learning improves operating routines, and ultimately performance. The conceptualization of CLC and the three sequential learning phases is used to analyse the evidence in the construction management literature. The main contribution of this study is the presentation of a theoretical foundation for future empirical studies to unveil effective learning strategies, which help clients to improve the performance of collaborative projects in the dynamic infrastructure market.

Submission to Inquiry into School Libraries and Teacher Librarians

We welcome the opportunity to contribute to the Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations (DEEWR) Inquiry into School Libraries and Teacher Librarians. We thank the Federal Government for the recognition that the Building the Education Revolution (BER) is not just about physical infrastructure. We are pleased that the Government has responded to calls from the library and information sector for a review focusing on school libraries and teacher librarians. The Australian Library and Information Association (ALIA) is the peak body representing the library and information services sector. It represents 6000 members, the library and information profession, Australian library and information services, and the interests of over 12 million library users. ALIA is committed to promoting the free flow of information and ideas in the interest of all Australians and a thriving culture, economy and democracy. We support the development of a 21st century information infrastructure with libraries as the conduit for a sustainable knowledge economy. This submission strongly supports the separate submission from the Australian School Library Association (ASLA) with whom ALIA works in partnership on issues concerning school libraries and teacher librarians. Other contributors to this submission include the ALIA Schools Group, the joint ALIA/ASLA Policy Advisory Group, and current practitioners. ALIA and ASLA are looking forward to working with the Federal Government on implementing the Inquiry recommendations.

Impacts of wind power integration on small signal stability and low frequency oscillation characteristics of interconnected power systems

为研究风电并网对互联系统低频振荡的影响,基于完整的双馈风电机组模型,定性分析了两区域互联系统在风电机组并网前后阻尼特性的变化情况.从双馈风电机组并网输送距离、并网容量、互联系统联络线传送功率、是否加装电力系统稳定器等多个方面,多角度分析了风电场并网对互联系统小干扰稳定及低频振荡特性的影响.之后,以两个包括两个区域的电力系统为例,进行了系统的计算分析和比较.结果表明,有双馈风电机组接入的互联电力系统,在不同运行模式下,双馈风电机组的并网输送距离、出力水平、联络线传送功率对低频振荡模式的影响在趋势和程度上均有显著差异,这样在对风电场进行入网规划、设计和运行时就需要综合考虑这些因素的影响.