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This paper aims to explore the requirements of organizational knowledge management initiatives using requirements engineering techniques, identifying the optimal techniques configuration and serving as a management tool for knowledge engineers.

The method is selection attributes. Knowledge management enablers are characterized and mapped with the coverage capabilities of requirements engineering techniques, using the attributes of the elicited object and a box-plot analysis. The information is gathered from 280 references, 32 companies and 16 experts in requirements engineering.

Requirements of organizational knowledge management initiatives are got optimally by combining interviews, use cases, scenarios, laddering and focus group techniques. The requirements of structure and processes are more complex to identify, while culture requirements are the best covered.

Knowledge management enablers are analyzed according to the current studies and comprehension of engineering techniques.

Knowledge engineers need to consider the coverage capabilities of engineering techniques to design an optimal requirement identification and meet the objectives of organizational knowledge acquisition initiatives. Requirement engineers can improve the requirements identification by a staged selection process.

The requirements of knowledge management initiatives that impact the community can be identified and traced to ensure the knowledge objectives. Requirements related to culture and people, like shared values, beliefs, and behaviors, are also considered.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study about formal requirement identification of knowledge management initiatives in the organizational context, providing the optimal configuration. A novel staged process is proposed for requirements engineering techniques selection, analyzing the enablers at component level and identifying the attributes associated with the elicited object.

This paper aims to explore the information needs and information-seeking behaviours of the new generation of engineering designers. A survey study is used to approach what their information needs are, how these needs change during an engineering design project and how their information-seeking behaviours have been influenced by the newly developed information technologies (ITs). Through an in-depth analysis of the survey results, the key functions have been identified for the next-generation management systems.

The paper first proposed four hypotheses on the information needs and information-seeking behaviours of young engineers. Then, a survey study was undertaken to understand their information usage in terms of the information needs and information-seeking behaviours during a complete engineering design process. Through analysing the survey results, several findings were obtained and on this basis, further comparisons were made to discuss and evaluate the hypotheses.

The paper has revealed that the engineering designers' information needs will evolve throughout the engineering design project; thus, they should be assisted at several different levels. Although they intend to search information and knowledge on know-what and know-how, what they really require is the know-why knowledge in order to help them complete design tasks. Also, the paper has shown how the newly developed ITs and web-based applications have influenced the engineers' information-seeking practices.

The research subjects chosen in this study are engineering students in universities who, although not as experienced as engineers in companies, do go through a complete design process with the tasks similar to industrial scenarios. In addition, the focus of this study is to understand the information-seeking behaviours of a new generation of design engineers, so that the development of next-generation information and knowledge management systems can be well informed. In this sense, the results obtained do reveal some new knowledge about the information-seeking behaviours during a general design process.

This paper first identifies the information needs and information-seeking behaviours of the new generation of engineering designers. On this basis, the varied ways to meet these needs and behaviours are discussed and elaborated. This intends to provide the key characteristics for the development of the next-generation knowledge management system for engineering design projects.

This paper proposes a novel means of exploring the future engineers' information needs and information-seeking behaviours in a collaborative working environment. It also characterises the key features and functions for the next generation of knowledge management systems for engineering design.

The aim of this paper is to make an attempt to find good values of onsite–offshore team strength; number of hours of communication between business users and onsite team and between onsite and offshore team to reduce cost and improve schedule for re-engineering projects in global software development environment.

The system dynamics technique is used for simulation model construction and policy run experimentation. The experts from Indian software outsourcing industry were consulted for model construction, validation and analysis of policy run results in both co-located and distributed software development environment.

The study results show that there is a drop in the overall team productivity in outsourcing environment by considering the offshore options. But the project cost can be reduced by employing the offshore team for coding and testing work only with minimal training for imparting business knowledge. The research results show that there is a potential to save project cost by being flexible in project schedule.

The study found that there could be substantial cost saving for re-engineering projects with a loss of project schedule when an appropriate onsite–offshore combination is used. The quality and productivity drop, however, were rather small for such combinations. The cost savings are high when re-engineering work is sent to offshore location entirely after completion of requirement analysis work at onsite location and providing training to offshore team in business knowledge The research findings show that there is potential to make large cost savings by being flexible in project schedule for re-engineering projects.

The software project manager can use the model results to divide the software team between onsite and offshore location during various phases of software development in distributed environment.

The study is novel as there is little attempt at finding the team distribution between onsite and offshore location in global software development environment.

The purpose of this paper is to provide empirical evidence of engineering knowledge creation in the context of product failure management, thereby extending knowledge about organizational learning and mindfulness to a largely unexplored context. The study addresses a gap in the literature by illustrating “engineering epistemology” as a critical knowledge asset that gives rise to superior problem solving – and potentially – superior business performance.

The authors conducted qualitative research based on phenomenological interviews with product engineers to generate a grounded theory about organizational knowledge creation. Rigorous analysis of narratives detailing the “lived lives” of problem solvers relied on a research protocol recommended by Corbin and Strauss.

The findings show that engineers' real‐world problem‐solving practices mirror Nonaka and Takeuchi's five phases of knowledge creation and the three stages of sensemaking in enactment theory, the genesis of Weick's notion of mindfulness. A synthesized model illustrates how a five‐step problem‐solving process facilitated by environmental conditions resulting in organizational learning is influenced by an “engineering epistemology”.

The sample was limited to engineers based primarily in the US Midwest. While the authors' methodology (grounded theory) was appropriate for theory generation, the results invite quantitative testing involving a larger and more diversified sample of engineers.

The paper highlights the social aspects of engineering problem solving that firms can optimize for effective problem investigation and higher organizational learning.

The paper conceptualizes problem‐solving teamwork as epistemic collaboration, with the often un‐optimized potential of generating organizational learning. It is, to the authors' knowledge, the first research to concentrate on modeling the dynamics of knowledge creation in an engineering problem‐solving context.

This study aims to identify and compare the knowledge and information retrieval needs from past projects and for future work among Italian and Japanese engineers. Engineering work, which is knowledge-intensive, is all the more critical as it both uses and generates knowledge for product and process innovation.

This research uses data collected from engineers in Italy and Japan from an online survey using open-ended questions in their native language. Answers were then translated into English and coded into pre-determined categories; statistical analyses including factor analysis were conducted.

For knowledge to be retrieved from past work, both Italian and Japanese engineers identified mainly experiential and systemic knowledge assets. For knowledge to be captured for future work, both groups picked experiential as well as conceptual knowledge related to the competitive environment of the firm absent from knowledge needs from past work. Finally, this research uncovered almost twice as fewer meta-categories for knowledge needs to be captured for future work compared to knowledge to be retrieved from past projects, as the former are by nature speculative and, therefore, difficult to foresee.

The study is limited to the engineering domain and to two countries. Further research should extend the scope beyond these two countries.

The study identified information and knowledge needs that could help inform the design of procedures to capture and document engineering work and the development of supporting information systems.

This research contributes to an increased understanding of the substance of information and knowledge needs in a knowledge-intensive environment such as engineering work and product/service development.

The purpose of this paper is to figure out the paths about transformation of tacit knowledge into explicit knowledge, i.e. tacit knowledge explicating (TKE) in real estate companies, and determine the influencing factors of TKE in Chinese real estate companies to enable enterprises make better use of their knowledge resources.

The study adopted an exploratory design method using thematic analysis and grounded theory, and semi-structured interviews were conducted to collect data. The interviewees consisted of employees in different positions, who come from Chinese real estate companies with different ranking ranges and different knowledge management levels. Data collection was divided into two rounds for the identification of transformation paths and influencing factors.

This study has shown that 11 paths about TKE divided into solidified organization process and construction of organizational infrastructure go into effect within the real estate companies. Factors influencing TKE in real estate companies concern three main categories: organizational distal factors, contextual proximal factors and individual factors, including 21 subordinates in total. Furthermore, correlation between TKE paths and influencing factors is established.

Research results may lack generalizability due to the method adopted. Therefore, researchers are encouraged to verify the outcomes of this research.

This research provides a new idea and solutions for the tacit knowledge management in real estate companies.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is the first to systematically identify paths and the influencing factors of TKE in real estate companies, contribute to the incipient but growing understanding of achievement of “tacit to explicit” and enrich the corporate tacit knowledge management literature.

Education for sustainable development (ESD) is one of the challenges engineering education currently faces. Engineering education needs to revise and change its curriculum to integrate ESD principles and knowledge. Problem based learning (PBL) has been one of the main learning pedagogies used to integrate sustainability in engineering education. However, there is a lack of understanding of the relation between ESD and PBL principles and the ways in which they can be integrated and practised in the engineering curricula. This paper aims to investigate the relation between PBL and ESD and the ways in which they are integrated and practised in the engineering curricula.

The study starts with a review of the literature concerning ESD and PBL theories where relations between both are defined. The literature review is followed by an empirical work in which the PBL and ESD relations are investigated in relation to the PBL engineering curricula. The empirical work involves two engineering master programmes from Aalborg University, Denmark, while documentary analysis and interviews are used as methods for data collection.

The results show that even though PBL and ESD share common learning principles, their practice presents limitations that challenge the full integration of sustainability, namely, the crowded, strict and academic-centred curriculum, the struggle to balance different contexts with professional, interdisciplinary and collaborative knowledge and the tacit presence of sustainability.

The existence of a PBL curriculum at institutional level, such as at Aalborg University, enables investigation of how the PBL and ESD principles are practised, highlighting the limitations and potentials of integrating sustainability in the engineering curriculum.

The current study attempts to bridge the existing gap related to the role of knowledge acquisition from international alliance partners to improve competitiveness by examining the distinct processes of knowledge acquisition and the challenges confronted in this learning process in order to enhance local and international market performance.

Following case-study approach based on systematic combining, the study presents a case of knowledge acquisition and learning in the context of an international consultancy alliance between leading Pakistani and Chinese engineering firms using six in-depth interviews of key engineers to explore the dynamic mechanisms for knowledge acquisition and learning from the Chinese firm. Grounded analysis drawn upon the Straussian version of grounded theory (GT) {{Strauss, 1990 #136} Strauss, 1998 #139} is used for data analysis in this research.

It was found that the processes of explicit and implicit knowledge acquisition from Chinese firms are integrated consultancy working, social and technical adaptability and seeking confirmation about the work done and knowledge/theories and models used in work. However, these processes are quite complex, posing serious challenges for National Engineering Services, Pakistan to acquire the required knowledge, which can be addressed through partners' motivation to share and acquire knowledge, cultural intelligence and friendship and informal association. The study also found that the knowledge acquired from technologically advanced international organizations by the host partner in the international strategic alliance not only provides a competitive edge to the local host in its local market but also builds its capacity to undertake similar projects in other parts of the world, substantially enhancing its market success.

Adding up to the current literature that focuses on knowledge acquisition in a parent-subsidiary relationship, the current research proposes a framework for knowledge acquisition in the unique context of international strategic alliances. The research provides managerial guidelines to manage knowledge acquisition for gaining a competitive edge that would be helpful for the managers in the era of growing interdependence among the organizations across the borders.

Knowledge contribution loafing as one of the major obstacles to knowledge sharing among designers in engineering design firms impedes better achievement of engineering design. The purpose of this paper is to examine different types of ethical climate impacts on knowledge contribution loafing among designers through the mediating effect of knowledge leadership.

By adopting a quantitative research design, data were collected using a survey questionnaire from 352 designers in engineering design firms. The data were analyzed using the partial-least squares structural equation modeling approach to test hypotheses.

Ethical climate is an important factor to affect knowledge contribution loafing among designers, and three types of ethical climate (self-interest, social responsibility and law/professional codes) have different degrees of influence on knowledge contribution loafing. In addition, knowledge leadership can alleviate knowledge contribution loafing, and it is a mediator between ethical climate and knowledge contribution loafing.

Engineering design firms should cultivate and strengthen the role of social responsibility, law/professional codes and knowledge leadership and reduce the influence of self-interest to mitigate the negative of knowledge contribution loafing among designers.

By identifying ethical climate as a novel influence factor for knowledge contribution loafing, this research further highlights the role of different types of ethical climate in an engineering design context. Moreover, it delves deeply into the issue around different types of ethical climate affect knowledge contribution loafing among designers through the role of knowledge leadership. This broadens the understanding of how ethical climate affects knowledge contribution loafing among designers in the engineering design organizations and enriches knowledge management literatures in engineering design industry.