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The purpose of this paper is to provide a model for a process‐oriented view on learning in organizations, and to link this model with IMS Learning Design (LD), a language for the description of pedagogical arrangement of multi‐role activities.

This article exploits conceptual modeling techniques and a literature review.

A tentative mapping of the GOAP model to LD constructs is sketched, and some tentative aspects that suggest the need for an extended specification embedding LD are discussed.

This paper describes a model for a process‐oriented view on learning in organizations, and sketches how that framework could be integrated with IMS Learning Design, a language for the description of pedagogical arrangement of multi‐role activities.

The paper promotes the role of conceptual modeling as a key process for learning design.

The paper presents an exploitation of learning processes modeling towards effective learning designs.

The paper seeks to analyze in depth the organizational requirements for the exploitation of human resource management towards increased organizational performance, and to provide a conceptual framework for the analysis of human resource management in learning organizations.

The paper takes the form of an extensive literature review on human resource management (HRM), organizational learning and human capital.

The major contribution is the Requirements Framework for the Adoption of Technology Enhanced Learning and Semantic Web Technologies, which can guide strategies of effective competencies management in modern organizations. This framework initiates an interesting discussion of technological issues that go beyond the scope of this paper.

The Requirements Framework provides the basis for an extensive specification of knowledge management strategies. A follow‐up publication will present the practical implications of the “theoretical” abstraction of framework and empirical evidence.

The paper is a very useful source of information and impartial advice for strategists, HRM managers, knowledge management officers and people interesting in exploiting human resource management systems in a knowledge‐intensive organization.

This paper fulfills an identified need to outline methods and technologies for integrated knowledge and learning and competencies management support in organizations.

The purpose of this paper is to propose an innovative approach for providing an answer to the emerging trends on how to integrate e‐learning efficiently in the business value chain in medium and large enterprises.

The proposed approach defines methodologies and technologies for integrating technology‐enhanced learning with knowledge and human resources management based on a synergistic use of knowledge models, methods, technologies and approaches covering different steps of the knowledge life‐cycle.

The proposed approach makes explicit and supports, from the methodological, technological and organizational points of view, mutual dependencies between the enterprise's organizational learning and the business processes, considering also their integration in order to allow the optimization of employees' learning plans with respect to business processes and taking into account competencies, skills, performances and knowledge available inside the organization.

This mutual dependency, bridging individual and organizational learning, enables an improvement loop to become a key aspect for successful business process improvement (BPI) and business process reengineering (BPR), enabling closure of, at the same time, the learning and knowledge loops at individual, group and organization levels.

The proposed improvements are relevant with respect to the state of the art and respond to a real need felt by enterprises and further commercial solutions and research projects on the theme.

By providing interoperability users can be supported in sharing and reusing vocabularies and knowledge. Ontology alignment plays an important role in the context of semantic interoperability. Usually ontology alignment tools generate results that are difficult to understand or assess. In order to enable users to check and improve alignment results and to understand their consequences information visualization techniques are used. The purpose of this paper is to discuss the relevant quality aspects in ontology alignment as well as current activities and available tools.

Based on a literature study quality measures for ontology alignment identified and requirements for visual ontology alignment are defined. As a proof of concepts a prototype called AlViz was developed.

Information visualization offers appropriate methods for the assessment of ontology alignment results. Different levels of detail and overview help users to navigate and understand the alignments. The assessment of semi‐structured resources by users involves learning activities. The neighborhood of the entity under investigation bears relevant semantic information. Therefore, assessment may include crisscrossing acquisition of knowledge representations and their semantics.

Along a comprehensive framework alignment assessment tasks are identified and visualization tool is introduced and applied which aims at making ontology alignment results manageable and comprehensible.

The purpose of this paper is to present the MEMORAe project, the goal of which is to offer an alternative to the loss of competencies and knowledge in an organization.

Within the project MEMORAe, interest was focused on the capitalization of knowledge and competencies in the context of an organization. The E‐MEMORAe environment was developed based on the concept of learning organizational memory. This environment is dedicated to be used by a semantic learning organization as support for competency‐based training. It is evaluated in this context.

In the E‐MEMORAe environment, learning content is indexed by knowledge and competencies organized by means of ontologies. Learners can acquire thise knowledge and these competencies by doing different tasks, accessing different contents. In the memory, competencies are defined via the knowledge they enable to be put into practice.

It is known that some industrial communities of practice are interested in the use of E‐MEMORAe.

Within the MEMORAe project, an ontology‐based learning organizational memory is proposed as support for learning object retrieval by competency for competency based learning. Using such a memory enables and goes beyond organizational knowledge management. Knowledge and competencies are defined and structured to facilitate their access and their learning. This latter is also made possible thanks to the resources that they index.

Web services promise a step change in business‐to‐business application models and practices. But how do we measure web services' performance? Because web services are so new, and implementations so few, the purpose of this paper is to take internet performance as a proxy for web services performance.

The authors surveyed 106 e‐business SMEs to identify key drivers for internet performance, and then predicted web services performance.

Surprisingly, it was found that while business resources and IT resources positively impact internet performance, dynamic capabilities do not. Also, there appear to be significant firm size effects.

The implications of these findings for the strategic management of web services are discussed, and in particular, managers' need to balance resources and capabilities in volatile business environments.

The paper seeks to provide personalized learning objects to adults' educators of special groups (AESG) in a technology‐enhanced learning environment.

The paper presents a definition of specific criteria by which personalization of learning objects is effected. An analysis under the scope of adult education and multicultural education is performed, resulting in the development of tools and a clear path leading to more efficient personalization of learning objects of AESG within an e‐learning environment.

Personalization of learning objects for AESG can be achieved to a much greater extent when the element of compatibility between educator and learner defines content, preceding and mapping with presentation factors.

As the research is focused on AESG, the key notion of compatibility may not be applicable to adult educators of the general public.

The paper offers a path through which learning management systems can provide improved personalization of learning objects addressed to AESG.

The introduction of compatibility between educator and learner as the key element of the educator's profile in order to provide personalized learning objects addressed to AESG opens up new territory. The paper is also useful to the developers of learning management systems addressed to any group with special attributes which strongly affect the learner's profile.

Assigning business process activities to agents (human or automated) for their performance or supervision is a critical issue in business process management. Role‐based approaches are commonly used to specify work assignment policies, with roles defined as collections of capabilities and privileges required to perform job functions. The purpose of this paper is to address the activity assignment problem through a competency‐based approach. In this context, an ontology‐based competency model is developed to assist in identifying the competencies that exist in an organization and the competencies required, by workflow activities and in performing a competency gap analysis as a prerequisite for domain‐specific user development through competency‐based training.

An approach for developing a business process activity assignment policy based on an ontology‐based competency model is presented. This model is also used to define domain‐specific training courses that enable users meet the competency requirements of process activities. In broad terms, the approach consists of the following steps: identification of the competencies required in order to perform the various activities involved in each business process and definition of roles based on these competencies; identification of the competencies acquired in the organization and assignment of users to roles; performance of competency gap analysis to identify the missing user competencies for role playing and identification of user development needs; and development of competency‐based training scenarios intended to fill the user competency gaps.

An experimental implementation of the ontology‐based competency model proposed in the banking domain provided a fine‐grained role structure that was based on the competencies required by business process activities, and a user‐to‐role assignment that closely matched the competencies required for role playing, and brought forward missing user competencies that pointed to required user training needs.

The proposed ontology‐based competency model fulfils the need for a sustained work assignment approach based on user roles. To this end, roles and users are defined as collections of required and acquired competencies, respectively. A novel approach based on ontology‐based competency ontologies was also developed to fill required but missing user competencies.

The purpose of this paper is to present a prototype ontology‐based application that has been developed for competency management and learning paths.

The paper provides an overview of competency management and related work in this area, a description of the competency ontology, and a functional and architectural analysis.

The paper provides information on work related to ontology‐based competency management systems, indicating an enhanced approach with a detailed analysis of system architecture and functional analysis.

The proposed application will be implemented through a .NET deployment, in Microsoft Hellas, the Greek subsidiary of the multinational IT company.

Ontologies have already been created in different scientific areas, including knowledge and competency management. However, only a few ontology‐based applications are available today within the domain of competency management. In this paper an ontology‐based application is presented has been developed for competency management and learning paths. Specifically, the paper provides an overview of competency management and related work in this area, a description of the competency ontology, and a functional and architectural analysis.

The purpose of this paper is to suggest a way to support work‐integrated learning for knowledge work, which poses a great challenge for current research and practice.

The authors first suggest a workplace learning context model, which has been derived by analyzing knowledge work and the knowledge sources used by knowledge workers. The authors then focus on the part of the context that specifies competencies by applying the competence performance approach, a formal framework developed in cognitive psychology. From the formal framework, a methodology is then derived of how to model competence and performance in the workplace. The methodology is tested in a case study for the learning domain of requirements engineering.

The Workplace Learning Context Model specifies an integrative view on knowledge workers' work environment by connecting learning, work and knowledge spaces. The competence performance approach suggests that human competencies be formalized with a strong connection to workplace performance (i.e. the tasks performed by the knowledge worker). As a result, competency diagnosis and competency gap analysis can be embedded into the normal working tasks and learning interventions can be offered accordingly. The results of the case study indicate that experts were generally in moderate to high agreement when assigning competencies to tasks.

The model needs to be evaluated with regard to the learning outcomes in order to test whether the learning interventions offered benefit the user. Also, the validity and efficiency of competency diagnosis need to be compared to other standard practices in competency management.

Use of competence performance structures within organizational settings has the potential to more closely relate the diagnosis of competency needs to actual work tasks, and to embed it into work processes.

The paper connects the latest research in cognitive psychology and in the behavioural sciences with a formal approach that makes it appropriate for integration into technology‐enhanced learning environments.