A micro perspective analysis of capability renewal through knowledge integration within product innovation projects

The aim of this paper is examine how firms renew their organisational capabilities based on micro organisational processes. Organisational capability development literature points to firms’ failure in capability renewal process. To overcome this inefficiency, it is proposed to integrate dynamic capability and ambidexterity perspectives by studying knowledge integration within product innovation. In this relation, applying micro perspective in studying technology diffusion within Iranian Auto industry revealed micro co-evolutionary relationships between knowledge integration within product innovation and capability development. Furthermore, based on near decomposability principals, the analysis suggested relationships among modularity of product architecture, modularity of organisational modularity and modularity of industry architecture in downstream and upstream value chain. Based on these micro-macro co evolutionary effects, capability development process underlying successful corporate entrepreneurship may be verified.

Storytelling beyond the anthropocene : a quest through the crises of ecocide toward new ecological paradigms

This project is a passionate and sometimes enraged thrust toward a biodiverse future. Weaving stories with deep thinking beyond the limits of the anthropocene, I am trying to recall myself in a more-than-human world. Our planet is suffering human induced ecocide which is a global crisis threatening the existence of multiple life forms. The alchemical mix of storytelling and ecological thinking could be part remedy for humanity's adaptation: a transformational mix to re-pattern the crisis into an opportunity and shift anthropocentric structures toward networks of dynamic relationships. The purpose of this project is to explore this cultural remedy. This is a quest, a search for tools that can germinate the hypothesis: storytelling in relation to ecological thinking manifests human potential in a more-than-human world. The practice-led research is guided by the philosophy and practice of Mythology, Deep ecology and Transdisciplinarity. Further navigation is sourced from Systems Thinking, Indigenous Methodologies, Biomimicry, and Quantum Physics. The journey unfolds by reawakening the Artist's function as caretaker of Mythology and pattern inciter for the collective. The resounding discovery of this adventure is Quantum Narratives: a storytelling tool for today's world, a method to connect multiple ways of knowing and diverse languages with the purpose of engaging, relating and working with living knowledge. Quantum Narratives are used to test the field study research into the Future of Water in context of Coal Seam Gas Mining in the Murray-Darling Basin and to materialise the collaborative results as the Water Stories. This thesis is a Living Script, full of imagination and complexity. Within its folds are strategies for systemic change ready to be adapted by policy and planning brokers and those who hold power for widespread remedial action.

Taking culture seriously : the case of Indigenous knowledge and food security

Mainstream discourse on the revolving around food security is often portrayed by macro level indicators on nutrition, consumption and food production. While these indicators may prove significant in addressing food security in the national and regional levels, it falls short in addressing it among the indigenous peoples’ (IP) communities in the Philippines. Reflecting through the experiences in agricultural production, indigenous knowledge and socio-political institutions are relevant factors that must be seriously considered when food security among IPs are concerned. It is argued that disregarding micro level interactions over macro development policies will not address the issue of food security among marginalized sectors. The paper presents policy recommendations in taking cultural systems seriously in addressing food security among indigenous peoples.

Project management office a knowledge broker in project-based organisations

Current research into project management offices (PMOs) has stressed the PMOs' potential to act as knowledge brokers between projects, and between project and top management. Nonetheless, the literature does not provide sufficient evidence of the brokering role of PMOs. The research reported here aims to examine PMO's functions from a knowledge sharing perspective and explore whether or not these functions reflect the knowledge sharing needs of project managers (PMs). These issues are investigated through a cross-case analysis of seven organisations. The main contribution is insight into how PMs share knowledge and awareness of the need to structure PMOs to align with PMs' nature, needs and expectations in order to improve knowledge sharing in PBOs. Finally, some practical steps for helping PMOs to better adapt their functions to the needs of PMs and their learning and knowledge sharing style are proposed.

Building project competence : developing dynamic capabilities with knowledge governance mechanisms

This research investigates the development of project competence, and particularly, three related dynamic capabilities (shifting, adapting, leveraging) that contribute to project competence development. In doing so, we make use of the emerging literature on knowledge governance and theorize how knowledge governance mechanisms can move the organization towards desired knowledge-based goals. A multiple-case study comprising 23 cases advances our understanding of the elements that trigger, enable, hamper, and drive shifting, leveraging and adapting. Finally, the paper offers a tentative framework of dynamic capability building promoting project competence development.

Knowledge governance in project-based organizations : theoretical and empirical approaches

This paper conceptualizes knowledge governance (KG) in project-based organizations (PBOs) and its methodological approaches for empirical investigation. Three key contributions towards a multi-faceted view of KG and an understanding of KG in PBOs are advanced. These contributions include a definition of KG in PBOs, a conceptual framework to investigate KG and a methodological framework for empirical inquiry into KG in PBO settings. Our definition highlights the contingent nature of KG processes in relation to their organizational context. The conceptual framework addresses macro- and micro-level elements of KG and their interaction. The methodological framework proposes five different research approaches, structured by differentiation and integration of various ontological and epistemological stances. Together these contributions provide a novel platform for understanding KG in PBOs and developing new insights into the design and execution of research on KG within PBOs.

Personalized ontology learning for enhancing text mining effectiveness

Over the last decade, the majority of existing search techniques is either keyword- based or category-based, resulting in unsatisfactory effectiveness. Meanwhile, studies have illustrated that more than 80% of users preferred personalized search results. As a result, many studies paid a great deal of efforts (referred to as col- laborative filtering) investigating on personalized notions for enhancing retrieval performance. One of the fundamental yet most challenging steps is to capture precise user information needs. Most Web users are inexperienced or lack the capability to express their needs properly, whereas the existent retrieval systems are highly sensitive to vocabulary. Researchers have increasingly proposed the utilization of ontology-based tech- niques to improve current mining approaches. The related techniques are not only able to refine search intentions among specific generic domains, but also to access new knowledge by tracking semantic relations. In recent years, some researchers have attempted to build ontological user profiles according to discovered user background knowledge. The knowledge is considered to be both global and lo- cal analyses, which aim to produce tailored ontologies by a group of concepts. However, a key problem here that has not been addressed is: how to accurately match diverse local information to universal global knowledge. This research conducts a theoretical study on the use of personalized ontolo- gies to enhance text mining performance. The objective is to understand user information needs by a \bag-of-concepts" rather than \words". The concepts are gathered from a general world knowledge base named the Library of Congress Subject Headings. To return desirable search results, a novel ontology-based mining approach is introduced to discover accurate search intentions and learn personalized ontologies as user profiles. The approach can not only pinpoint users' individual intentions in a rough hierarchical structure, but can also in- terpret their needs by a set of acknowledged concepts. Along with global and local analyses, another solid concept matching approach is carried out to address about the mismatch between local information and world knowledge. Relevance features produced by the Relevance Feature Discovery model, are determined as representatives of local information. These features have been proven as the best alternative for user queries to avoid ambiguity and consistently outperform the features extracted by other filtering models. The two attempt-to-proposed ap- proaches are both evaluated by a scientific evaluation with the standard Reuters Corpus Volume 1 testing set. A comprehensive comparison is made with a num- ber of the state-of-the art baseline models, including TF-IDF, Rocchio, Okapi BM25, the deploying Pattern Taxonomy Model, and an ontology-based model. The gathered results indicate that the top precision can be improved remarkably with the proposed ontology mining approach, where the matching approach is successful and achieves significant improvements in most information filtering measurements. This research contributes to the fields of ontological filtering, user profiling, and knowledge representation. The related outputs are critical when systems are expected to return proper mining results and provide personalized services. The scientific findings have the potential to facilitate the design of advanced preference mining models, where impact on people's daily lives.

Adapting an argumentation framework for online discourse analysis : a knowledge building approach

The use of online tools to support teaching and learning is now commonplace within educational institutions, with many of these institutions mandating or strongly encouraging the use of a blended learning approach to teaching and learning. Consequently, these institutions generally adopt a learning management system (LMS), with a fixed set of collaborative tools, in the belief that effective teaching and learning approaches will be used, to allow students to build knowledge. While some studies into the use of an LMS’s still identify continued didactic approaches to teaching and learning, the focus of this paper is on the ability of collaborative tools such as discussion forums, to build knowledge. In the context of science education, argumentation is touted as playing an important role in this process of knowledge building. However, there is limited research into argumentation in other domains using online discussion and a blended learning approach. This paper describes a study, using design research, which adapts a framework for argumentation that can be applied to other domains. In particular it will focus on an adapted social argumentation schema to identify argument in a discussion forum of N=16 participants in a secondary High School.

An observational study of nutrition and physical activity behaviours, knowledge, and advice in pregnancy

Maternal obesity, excess weight gain and lifestyle behaviours during pregnancy have been associated with future overweight and other adverse health outcomes for mothers and babies. This study compared the nutrition and physical activity behaviours of Australian healthy (BMI ≤ 25 k/m2) and overweight (BMI ≥ 25 kg/m2) pregnant women and described their knowledge and receipt of health professional advice early in pregnancy. Methods Pregnant women (n=58) aged 29±5 (mean±s.d.) years were recruited at 16±2 weeks gestation from an Australian metropolitan hospital. Height and weight were measured using standard procedures and women completed a self administered semi-quantitative survey. Results Healthy and overweight women had very similar levels of knowledge, behaviour and levels of advice provided except where specifically mentioned. Only 8% and 36% of participants knew the correct recommended daily number of fruit and vegetable serves respectively. Four percent of participants ate the recommended 5 serves/day of vegetables. Overweight women were less likely than healthy weight women to achieve the recommended fruit intake (4% vs. 8%, p=0.05), and more likely to consume soft drinks or cordial (55% vs 43%, p=0.005) and take away foods (37% vs. 25%, p=0.002) once a week or more. Less than half of all women achieved sufficient physical activity. Despite 80% of women saying they would have liked education about nutrition, physical activity and weight gain, particularly at the beginning of pregnancy, less than 50% were given appropriate advice regarding healthy eating and physical activity. Conclusion Healthy pregnancy behaviour recommendations were not being met, with overweight women less likely to meet some of the recommendations. Knowledge of dietary recommendations was poor and health care professional advice was limited. There are opportunities to improve the health care practices and education pregnant women received to improve knowledge and behaviours. Pregnant women appear to want this.

A business engineering approach to client relationship management in a knowledge based firm

This thesis examines Customer Relationship Management and how the capabilities of an organisation to innovate can be enhanced via its implementation in a Knowledge Based Firm. The research identifies current customer knowledge components within an organisation and identifies for future use, CRM components for implementation within a Knowledge Based Firm. Opinions from a panel of experts' are identified for best practice customer relationship strategy, the most important CRM processes and identification of customer knowledge components that will form the basis of implementing a successful CRM to gain a competitive advantage through enhancing the innovative capability for a Knowledge Based Firm.

Understanding and measuring information security culture in developing countries : case of Saudi Arabia

The purpose of the current study was to develop a measurement of information security culture in developing countries such as Saudi Arabia. In order to achieve this goal, the study commenced with a comprehensive review of the literature, the outcome being the development of a conceptual model as a reference base. The literature review revealed a lack of academic and professional research into information security culture in developing countries and more specifically in Saudi Arabia. Given the increasing importance and significant investment developing countries are making in information technology, there is a clear need to investigate information security culture from developing countries perspective such as Saudi Arabia. Furthermore, our analysis indicated a lack of clear conceptualization and distinction between factors that constitute information security culture and factors that influence information security culture. Our research aims to fill this gap by developing and validating a measurement model of information security culture, as well as developing initial understanding of factors that influence security culture. A sequential mixed method consisting of a qualitative phase to explore the conceptualisation of information security culture, and a quantitative phase to validate the model is adopted for this research. In the qualitative phase, eight interviews with information security experts in eight different Saudi organisations were conducted, revealing that security culture can be constituted as reflection of security awareness, security compliance and security ownership. Additionally, the qualitative interviews have revealed that factors that influence security culture are top management involvement, policy enforcement, policy maintenance, training and ethical conduct policies. These factors were confirmed by the literature review as being critical and important for the creation of security culture and formed the basis for our initial information security culture model, which was operationalised and tested in different Saudi Arabian organisations. Using data from two hundred and fifty-four valid responses, we demonstrated the validity and reliability of the information security culture model through Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA), followed by Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA.) In addition, using Structural Equation Modelling (SEM) we were further able to demonstrate the validity of the model in a nomological net, as well as provide some preliminary findings on the factors that influence information security culture. The current study contributes to the existing body of knowledge in two major ways: firstly, it develops an information security culture measurement model; secondly, it presents empirical evidence for the nomological validity for the security culture measurement model and discovery of factors that influence information security culture. The current study also indicates possible future related research needs.

Knowledge management in criminal investigation : empirical examination and re-conceptualisation of dean's investigative thinking styles

This thesis explored the current state of knowledge management in policing. A psychometric instrument was created and validated for use within police agencies as a means of facilitating the capture and transferral of critical investigative knowledge. The aim is to ensure that investigative expertise is not lost when detectives retire or leave the service. Improved knowledge management strategies that rely on this psychometric instrument can lead to greater efficiency and effectiveness in criminal investigation.

Knowledge inquiry in the construction management domain through structured research process and methodology

Construction works are project-based and interdisciplinary. Many construction management (CM) problems are ill defined. The knowledge required to address such problems is not readily available and mostly tacit in nature. Moreover, the researchers, especially the students in the higher education, often face difficulty in defining the research problem, adopting an appropriate research process and methodology for designing and validating their research. This paper describes a ‘Horseshoe’ research process approach and its application to address a research problem of extracting construction-relevant information from a building information model (BIM). It describes the different steps of the process for understanding a problem, formulating appropriate research question/s, defining different research tasks, including a methodology for developing, implementing and validating the research. It is argued that a structure research approach and the use of mixed research methods would provide a sound basis for research design and validation in order to make contribution to existing knowledge.

BIM : enabling sustainability and asset management through knowledge management

Building Information Modeling (BIM) is the use of virtual building information models to develop building design solutions and design documentation and to analyse construction processes. Recent advances in IT have enabled advanced knowledge management, which in turn facilitates sustainability and improves asset management in the civil construction industry. There are several important qualifiers and some disadvantages of the current suite of technologies. This paper outlines the benefits, enablers, and barriers associated with BIM and makes suggestions about how these issues may be addressed. The paper highlights the advantages of BIM, particularly the increased utility and speed, enhanced fault finding in all construction phases, and enhanced collaborations and visualisation of data. The paper additionally identifies a range of issues concerning the implementation of BIM as follows: IP, liability, risks, and contracts and the authenticity of users. Implementing BIM requires investment in new technology, skills training, and development of new ways of collaboration and Trade Practices concerns. However, when these challenges are overcome, BIM as a new information technology promises a new level of collaborative engineering knowledge management, designed to facilitate sustainability and asset management issues in design, construction, asset management practices, and eventually decommissioning for the civil engineering industry.