Competencies management: integrating semantic web and technology enhanced learning approaches for effective knowledge management

Citation

Lytras, M.D. (2008), "Competencies management: integrating semantic web and technology enhanced learning approaches for effective knowledge management", Journal of Knowledge Management, Vol. 12 No. 6. https://doi.org/10.1108/jkm.2008.23012faa.001

Competencies management: integrating semantic web and technology enhanced learning approaches for effective knowledge management

Article Type: Guest editorial From: Journal of Knowledge Management, Volume 12, Issue 6

The semantic web vision has evolved in the last years as a blueprint for a knowledge-based framework aimed at crossing the chasm from the current web of unstructured information resources to a web equipped with metadata and oriented to the delegation of tasks to software agents.

In the business context, knowledge and learning management are perceived as the new critical managerial battlefields aiming towards sustainable performance. Technology-enhanced learning approaches and new generation knowledge management systems reveal a new context for the promotion of business strategy. The concepts of competencies and competency management are the new blueprints for merging leading-edge technology approaches to business objectives. The vision for a knowledge and learning ecosystem within every knowledge-intensive organization is crafted around the management of competencies that brings together business processes, training needs, learning and market demands.

Ontologies are the key piece to this approach in that they provide shared semantics to metadata, thus enabling a degree of semantic interoperability.

This Special Issue aims at helping in communicating and disseminating relevant recent research in competencies management as applied to the business context of the knowledge society. The scope of the Special Issue includes competencies management for organizational applications, semantic web approaches to competencies systems and ontology-based competencies systems research, as well as the diverse underlying knowledge representation aspects.

After a double blind peer review process we selected ten out of 32 papers for publication. These articles summarize the state of the art in the competencies management domain from a semantic web, technology-enhanced learning and business perspective. The topics discussed in this Special Issue include, but are not limited to, the following:

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  competency models and tools;

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  constituents of competencies and competency concepts;

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  ontologies of competencies and competency description standards and schemas;

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  competency-driven e-learning;

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  competency and knowledge gap analysis;

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  competency management systems and technologies;

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  assessment tools for competencies;

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  competencies as descriptions for learning objects and learning designs;

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  engineering of ontologies for knowledge management systems and their associated data management requirements;

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  algorithms and representations for semantic web approaches to competencies management;

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  knowledge integration through ontologies, semantic metadata and databases of annotations;

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  design and modelling of semantic web repositories and distributed knowledge-based systems;

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  business modelling for competencies management integration to daily business practices; and

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  benchmarking of competencies approaches;

Below is provided the list of articles in this Special Issue:

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  “Learning processes and processing learning: from organizational needs to learning designs”, by Ambjörn Naeve, Miguel-Angel Sicilia and Miltiadis D. Lytras;

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  “Competencies management and learning organizational memory”, by Marie-Hélène Abel;

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  “Modelling competencies for supporting work-integrated learning in knowledge work”, by Tobias Ley, Armin Ulbrich, Peter Scheir, Stefanie N. Lindstaedt, Barbara Kump and Dietrich Albert;

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  “Competencies and human resource management: implications for organizational competitive advantage”, by Miltiadis D. Lytras and Patricia Ordóñez de Pablos;

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  “How to integrate technology enhanced learning with business process management”, by Nicola Capuano, Matteo Gaeta, Pierluigi Ritrovato and Saverio Salerno;

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  “An ontology-based competency model for workflow activity assignment policies”, by A. Macris, E. Papadimitriou and G. Vassilacopoulos;

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  “Development of personalized learning objects for training adults’ educators of special groups”, by Maria Pavlis Korres and Elena García-Barriocanal;

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  “Visual ontology alignment for knowledge sharing and reuse”, by Monika Lanzenberger, Jennifer Sampson, Markus Rester, Yannick Naudet and Thibaud Latour;

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  “A semantic web architecture for integrating competence management and learning paths”, by Fotis Draganidis, Paraskevi Chamopoulou, Gregoris Mentzas; and

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  “Predicting web services performance from internet performance: an empirical study of resources and capabilities in e-business SMEs“, by Brian R Webb, and Frank Schlemmer.

We wish to express our deepest appreciation and respect to the 30 contributors and 50 reviewers of this Special Issue. Their knowledge, expertise and skills are evident in every line of this Special Issue. This sentence may sound a cliché, but it is the truth. Every edition is an outlet where a world of ideas is seeking fertile ground. And this ground is not self-admiring. It requires the interest and insight of people. Hence, our second deepest thanks goes to the readers of the Journal of Knowledge Management in academia, industry, government, and in society in general.

It is also common to acknowledge the Editor-in-Chief and all the staff that give support in all the stages of production of a Special Issue. But beyond typicalities we want to thank, from our hearts, Rory Chase, EIC of JKM for his service to our community and to wish him health, well-being and prosperity, as well as to thank Emerald for the excellent publication outlets they provide to our world.

Miltiadis D. LytrasComputer Engineering and Informatics Department, University of Patras, Gerakas, Greece.

Miguel-Angel SiciliaHead of the Information Engineering Research Group at the University of Alcalá, Alcalá de Henares, Spain.

Ambjörn NaeveHead of the Knowledge Management Research Group at the Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm, Sweden.