The purpose of this paper is to provide a practical framework for employing knowledge management (KM) principles to improve organizational performance.
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to provide a practical framework for employing knowledge management (KM) principles to improve organizational performance.
Design/methodology/approach
To combine the disciplines of soft systems analysis and organizational development and provide tailored KM solutions to performance deficiencies.
Findings
Most of the literature on KM focuses on what it is but not on how to do it. It is almost as if KM just happens. In practice, the installation of a viable KM capability must be integrated into an organization's management structure and business strategy
Research limitations/implications
Use of this framework and its related diagnostic techniques have been successfully used by KM practitioners in more than 70 government and commercial organizations. However, more rigorous business case techniques are needed to fully validate the methodology.
Originality/value
There is little written on how to build and implement an organizational KM system. This paper describes how the three fundamental organizational system components can be balanced to achieve good organizational health and effect organization‐wide change.
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The paper aims to offer a contribution to the development of conservation scheme management by examining some of the ethical dilemmas that are commonly encountered in conservation…
Abstract
Purpose
The paper aims to offer a contribution to the development of conservation scheme management by examining some of the ethical dilemmas that are commonly encountered in conservation projects.
Design/methodology/approach
The approach is a detailed and critical review of existing literature and recent policy direction.
Findings
A practitioner's response to the various dilemmas will not only need to be conditioned by the codes of conduct of the various professional institutions but also through the explicit recognition of the very different set of ethical dilemmas that are encountered in conservation projects.
Originality/value
The paper contributes to the broader appreciation of the ethical dilemmas that may be encountered in contemporary conservation practice. The paper can inform conservation consultants, administrators, specialist trades, educators and the non‐specialist reader.
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What is it about academia anyway? We profess to hate it, spend endless amounts of time complaining about it, and yet we in academia will do practically anything to stay. The pay…
Abstract
What is it about academia anyway? We profess to hate it, spend endless amounts of time complaining about it, and yet we in academia will do practically anything to stay. The pay may be low, job security elusive, and in the end, it's not the glamorous work we envisioned it would be. Yet, it still holds fascination and interest for us. This is an article about American academic fiction. By academic fiction, I mean novels whosemain characters are professors, college students, and those individuals associated with academia. These works reveal many truths about the higher education experience not readily available elsewhere. We learn about ourselves and the university community in which we work.
In this paper, I apply the discourse of transitional justice to the case study of survivor docents at the Japanese American National Museum, a site that has come to represent and…
Abstract
In this paper, I apply the discourse of transitional justice to the case study of survivor docents at the Japanese American National Museum, a site that has come to represent and serve as a form of reparation for the traumatic memory of Japanese American internment during World War II. As a longer term supplement to trials or Truth and Reconciliation Commissions or an alternative in cases where no such structures exist, I illustrate how the museum tour becomes an empowering platform for survivors of the American Internment camps to work through and instrumentalize traumatic memories within the dialogic museum sphere, even as this alternative space forms its own new silences. Thus, by applying the very theories and criticisms through which scholars of memory politics evaluate official platforms of transitional justice, I aim to complicate and evaluate this alternative form of testimony, and in so doing explore areas of growth in the fields of both transitional justice and museum practice. Bridging the gap between testimony, oral history, and museum interpretation, survivor docents represent a sustained dialogic approach to history that perpetuates, preserves, and activates – rather than resolves – discourse around contentious memories.
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Muhammad Kashif Imran, Muhammad Ilyas, Usman Aslam and Tehreem Fatima
In current era, firms are facing difficulties in aligning their capabilities with the hallmarks of the knowledge-intensive economy. Notwithstanding the fact that employees’…
Abstract
Purpose
In current era, firms are facing difficulties in aligning their capabilities with the hallmarks of the knowledge-intensive economy. Notwithstanding the fact that employees’ creativity ensures competitive advantage through innovation, firms are unable to reap the required level of performance. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the linkage among knowledge processes, employee creativity and firm performance. Moreover, the current quantitative study measures the moderating effect of a knowledge-intensive culture on knowledge processes and employee creativity.
Design/methodology/approach
Surveys were conducted in eight services sector organizations operating in southern Punjab, Pakistan, and responses were obtained from 197 employees selected at random. To test the exposition using an empirical data analysis approach, three core hypotheses are drawn, and to test these hypotheses, multiple regression analyses, Preacher and Hayes (2004) mediation analysis and Aguinis (2004) guidelines were applied on 197 responses.
Findings
The results explain that knowledge processes have a positive impact on firm performance and employee creativity partially mediates their stated relationship. Moreover, a knowledge-intensive culture has a strengthening effect on the relationship between knowledge processes and employee creativity. In-depth investigation outlines that knowledge acquisition, sharing and application are more influencing processes to enhance firm performance. Furthermore, knowledge conversion and protection do not hold significant relevance with firm performance but are supportive elements for other processes.
Research limitations/implications
In order to have a sustained performance, firms have to initiate steps to promote employees’ creativity by deploying an optimal mix of knowledge processes and flourish a knowledge-intensive culture in routine organizational life. Moreover, knowledge processes are important to promote creative behavior in employees that will lead to incessant innovation and firm performance.
Originality/value
This study gives meaningful thoughts to unexplored areas in the field of knowledge management. First, the indirect effect of knowledge processes on firm performance through employees’ creativity. Second, the importance of knowledge processes to enhance employees’ creativity in the presence of a knowledge-intensive culture. This study gets together the dynamic constructs in the field of knowledge management, such as knowledge-intensive culture and employee creativity, and describes the linkage between knowledge processes and firm performance.
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Erin King, Karen Davies and Michele Abendstern
The purpose of this paper is to present the case for examining the concept of positive risk taking (PRT) in the context of adult protection. The paper argues there is a need for…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to present the case for examining the concept of positive risk taking (PRT) in the context of adult protection. The paper argues there is a need for empirical research to understand the application of and attitudes to PRT to explore whether the concept has moved beyond a principle to make an identifiable difference to service users.
Design/methodology/approach
By investigating evidence from policy, literature and professional opinion, this paper presents the ethical tensions for professional practice in adult protection between respecting a service user’s freedom to make choices to enhance their independence while preserving safety for service users and society. This is considered in the context of risk in health and social care and the recent changes in society resulting from COVID-19.
Findings
Inherent tensions are apparent in the evidence in health and social care between attitudes propounding safety first and those arguing for the benefits of risk taking. This indicates not only a need for a paradigm shift in attitudes but also a research agenda that promotes empirical studies of the implications of PRT from service user and professional perspectives.
Originality/value
This paper draws attention to the relatively limited research into both professionals’ and service user’s perspectives and experiences of PRT in practice.
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Bie Plevoets and Koenraad Van Cleempoel
The purpose of this paper is to explore the conservation and contemporary management of three nineteenth‐century shopping passages: the Galleries Saint‐Hubert in Brussels, the…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to explore the conservation and contemporary management of three nineteenth‐century shopping passages: the Galleries Saint‐Hubert in Brussels, the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II in Milan and the Passage in The Hague. The submission of the Galleries Saint‐Hubert to the World Heritage Tentative List in 2008, presents a unique opportunity for studying this typology in its contemporary environment.
Design/methodology/approach
The authors’ research questions are: what are the characteristics of passages? what are their authentic values? and how can the authenticity of these buildings be conserved by their contemporary management? The applied methodology is a cross‐case‐comparison, based on the definition of authenticity as presented in the Nara Document on Authenticity. The analysis is presented in the form of a matrix.
Findings
The findings show that the significant value of passages does not only include the architecture of the building but also the versatility of its program and its present urban role. It is only by conserving this combination that these buildings can be conserved in their full richness of authenticity.
Practical implications
Criteria for transnational inclusion in the World Heritage List of several nineteenth‐century passages are suggested as the matrix used for cross‐case‐comparison may be applied to analyse other case studies of passages, as well as for other types of heritage where authenticity of the site is threatened by uncontrolled retail development.
Originality/value
Although passages have been studied extensively within the field of architectural history, retail history and socio‐cultural studies, hardly any previous research had focused on the preservation and contemporary management of this building type.
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Erik Cateriano-Arévalo, Jorge Soria Gonzáles (Pene Beso), Richard Soria Gonzales (Xawan Nita), Néstor Paiva Pinedo (Sanken Bea), Ross Gordon, Maria Amalia Pesantes and Lisa Schuster
Respectful co-production is one of the principles of ethical Indigenous research. However, this participatory approach has yet to be thoroughly discussed in social marketing. This…
Abstract
Purpose
Respectful co-production is one of the principles of ethical Indigenous research. However, this participatory approach has yet to be thoroughly discussed in social marketing. This study aims to provide reflections and recommendations for respectful co-production of research with Indigenous people in social marketing.
Design/methodology/approach
This study draws upon case study reflections and lessons learned from a research program respectfully co-produced with members of the Shipibo-Konibo Indigenous group of the Peruvian Amazon called the Comando Matico. The authors focus on the challenges and strategies for respectful co-production during different stages of the research process, including consultation, fieldwork and co-authoring articles. The authors foreground how their Comando Matico co researchers infused the research process with Shipibo knowledge.
Findings
The authors reflect on three recommendations concerning 1) respectful co-production, 2) power dynamics and 3) facilitating co-authorship. Social marketers interested in respectful co production of research with Indigenous people may need to adopt a flexible and practical approach that considers the characteristics of the context and Indigenous co-researchers.
Originality/value
This study contributes to the discussion about the importance of respectful co-production of research with Indigenous people to ensure it accounts for their needs and wants.
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William P. Hall, Susu Nousala and Bill Kilpatrick
To learn to avoid pitfalls there is need to accept and understand failures. This anonymous case study aims to report a major organisational failure due to the absence of effective…
Abstract
Purpose
To learn to avoid pitfalls there is need to accept and understand failures. This anonymous case study aims to report a major organisational failure due to the absence of effective knowledge management, where both the reasons for, and organisational consequences of, the failure are fairly clear.
Design/methodology/approach
Within a theoretical framework of organisational autopoiesis, the case study compares knowledge management styles from two eras in the history of one engineering project management company: as it grew from an acquired site with a single project to a multi‐divisional leader in its regional market, and then as it failed in its original line of business to the point where it divested most of its assets.
Findings
In the first era, the executive and line managers were permissive, allowing project teams to work out local solutions for business problems as they arose producing successful and profitable solutions. The decline began and accelerated when management strengthened hierarchical command and control that stifled knowledge sharing and solution development at the work face and exceeded line managers' limits of rationality.
Research limitations/implications
This study has the limitations of any historical study of a single case, exacerbated by a need to maintain the anonymity of the surviving company.
Originality/value
Few studies so clearly highlight the critical importance of personal knowledge and its sharing in knowledge intensive organisations for maintaining successful operations. Success may have many parents, but in this case the internal comparisons identify specific factors that caused a successful organisation to disintegrate.