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The purpose of this paper is to map and describe the activities taking place in the academic workplace. It considers whether academic work is something completely different from traditional knowledge work and identifies differences and similarities between the two.

The data was collected through in-depth interviews with thirteen academics from different disciplines at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology within a case study approach. A document analysis of the university’s disciplines was carried out in advance of the interviews.

Four important similarities between knowledge work and academic work and three distinctive features of academic work were identified. Balancing the need for interaction and concentration is most important for both knowledge work and academic work, and the most prominent differences are the academics’ constant alternation between supervision, teaching, concentration work and administrative tasks, as well as some academics’ close links to practice. Academic work is not completely different from knowledge work, and learning from experiences from other sectors can be valuable when designing workplaces for academic staff. It is necessary to understand the activities taking place in the academic workplace and at the same time plan for future flexibility.

This study contributes to the research on workplace design for academic staff to better understand the characteristics and variations of academic work and differences in academic cultures and traditions. This will contribute to a better understanding of how workplace design, work processes, technology and how the institution is organised can support the university’s visions and goals.

This paper aims to provide a snapshot of workers’ experience while working from home (WFH) during the Australian lockdown in the middle of the Covid-19 pandemic. It focuses on lessons to inform organizations, employees and the design of the workspaces post-2020, human, organizational and environmental considerations may affect satisfaction, productivity and health.

Two separate surveys were designed for this study to target Australian organizations and knowledge workers. Participants included 28 organizations and 301 employees, and descriptive and correlational analyses were conducted.

Organizations stated productivity losses, maintaining culture and workplace health and safety concerns with WFH setup while employees were more concerned about their social interactions, internet connectivity and increased workload. Employees also found the social aspects of WFH challenging and disclosed that face-to-face interactions with their colleagues was the most important reason they wanted to return to the office. High level of trust and value was reported amongst the organizations and workers.

In the scarcity of academic literature around negative and positives of the WFH experiment during the COVID-19 pandemic, the main sources of information have been industry-focused reports. This study aims to contribute to this knowledge gap by identifying positives and negative aspects of WFH during the first wave of lockdowns in Australia in 2020 from the organization and workers’ perspective, including human, organizational and environmental considerations.

The purpose of this study is to examine the attitude of faculty members towards knowledge-sharing in the University of Education, Lahore. The impact of personal and organizational factors that may contribute to effective knowledge-sharing among the university’s teaching staff is also analyzed. The factors affecting the willingness of the faculty members to share knowledge are broadly classified as “organizational” and “personal” factors.

A questionnaire-based survey was conducted on permanent teaching staff working at different campuses of the University of Education all over the province of Punjab, Pakistan. The survey instrument for this study was adapted from four studies. The questionnaires were distributed among 246 faculty members personally.

The findings of the study showed that the faculty members were familiar with the importance of knowledge-sharing and were also interested in sharing their knowledge and expertise with others. The results showed that organizational factors (trust, reward system and organizational culture) played a vital role in enhancing the knowledge-sharing attitude of faculty members. The impact of these factors on knowledge-sharing attitude was significant.

This is the very first study which explored the personal and organizational factors of knowledge-sharing in a specific academic institution from Pakistan. The findings of the research provided useful insights to the management of the University of Education particularly and other universities in general to design strategies for enhancing knowledge-sharing culture in the higher education institution. These findings may also be helpful for other developing countries.

As the chapters in this book thus far have outlined, profound changes have occurred to the higher education landscape that have impacted significantly on what academics do and how they position themselves and their intellectual work. As this chapter will illustrate, these changes are acutely visible in the intensified scrutiny of research outputs, performance and publishing, the rating of universities through ranking exercises, and the flows of knowledge through a mobile academic labour market. These are the rapid and relentless calculative technologies (Douglas, 1987; Shore & Wright, 2000) that frame the research environment. Significantly, ways in which individuals and universities have responded to these demands and the pursuit of status have ritualised academic work and the academy.

The aim of this paper is to examine an early articulation of some of the key factors in building capacity and the potential for knowledge exchange (KE) within a small, learning and teaching‐oriented organization.

An action research study is planned as a practical enquiry. In common with other action research, this study is being carried out in a single organization and is aiming to devise and plan changes in practice.

A reorganization of the institution in line with policy is critical to ensure that the university insulates itself from the significant risk of knowledge isolation, The context, a relatively static workforce, a learning and teaching focus and the size of an organization may effect its ability to be responsive and knowledge productive in KE.

Early insights relate to a reorganization of systems to support KE and the context in which that change will take place. The paper seeks to propose a way to research organizational change in a university in the face of new policy and strategic drivers.

A critical understanding of policy promoting KE is a sound underpinning to practice and strategic improvement in the area. The purpose and values underpinning enterprise initiatives can legitimate a university to reclaiming a pivotal social and commercial role in regional regeneration.

KE supported by a small university requires “strategic capability”, as proposed by Harrison and Kessells. A workforce competent to deliver on three critical factors within the organization; economic performance, knowledge productivity and learning capability.

This paper seeks to explore notions of enterprise as an instance of organizational change within university business schools, using a theoretical approach drawn from the discourse theory of Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe. Their concept of articulatory practice is useful for examining the management of knowledge workers across multiple levels of discourse, including policy, practice and processes of identification. Specifically, the paper aims to investigate the articulation of enterprise within government policy on higher education, management practices of directing, funding, measuring and regulating the activities of faculty in ways that seek to promote enterprise, as well as demonstrating how agents can resist attempts at top‐down managerial control through processes of self‐identification.

An empirical study consisting of an analysis of government reports on higher education along with 65 interviews conducted at six UK research‐led business schools.

At the level of government policy, the university is recast as an enterprise within a competitive marketplace where the “entrepreneurial academic” who commercializes research becomes the role model. However, management practices and identity processes amongst faculty reveal inconsistencies within the articulation of the university enterprise, to the extent that this idealised identity is marginalised within research‐led business schools in the UK.

The theoretical approach captures the dynamism of hegemonic projects across multiple levels, from policymaking to management practice and the constitution of identity. Laclau and Mouffe's conception of hegemony highlights mechanisms of control, while their assumption of radical contingency illuminates dynamics of resistance.

The success of socialization and orientation of new academic librarians has a considerable effect on outcomes critical to both the newcomer and institution, including job performance, job satisfaction, and staff turnover. These factors correspondingly impinge upon the institution's bottom line, due to the high costs associated with activities ranging from recruitment to retention. The paper asserts that if a new librarian leaves the institution within the first six to 18 months, the costs expended on hiring are practically wasted. To avoid this, and engage new professionals that stay long enough to justify the cost of hiring, and gain a return on its investment, the academic library needs to engage in rapid on-boarding. The article therefore aims to demonstrate how socialization and orientation can be effective.

This paper is informed by opinion and draws on relevant literature to provide an understanding of the phenomenon.

Rapid on-boarding is central to getting new hires up-to-speed quickly; yet, anecdotal evidence suggests that it is not as widespread as it should be in academic libraries.

An on-boarding plan immanent in the strategic plan provides a unique channel of influence for familiarizing newcomers with the institution and advancing its policies and practices.

A formal on-boarding program can be a great source of support for all library staff and can increase the retention of professionals by inculcating the values and behaviors required to succeed.

The article underscores how human resource development (HRD) activities, which subsume orientation, affect the library's bottom line. The author advances the significance of “chi” to the success of rapid on-boarding: communication, human interaction and individualization.

The purpose of this research is to investigate individual perceptions of time and time management strategies that professionals utilize to achieve their productivity in the execution of their daily tasks, projects and routines. Projects have specific time durations from the beginning to the end, which often need to be broken down into smaller temporal elements (e.g. milestones), and require learning and knowledge capture throughout different project phases. It aims to observe how knowledge management processes tie to personal time management, and how this observation could contribute to project management practices in organizations. The understanding of individual time management strategies, especially when they are connected to the capture, storage, transfer and application of knowledge, can create operational efficiencies in projects.

Two sets of in‐depth semi‐structured interviews and field observations were designed and conducted with 20 busy professionals at an academic institution in the USA. All interviews were audio‐taped and transcribed generating over 350 pages of individual time management strategy statements. An extensive content analysis was performed to categorize the types of knowledge being used by professionals when engaged in daily organizational tasks and projects based on their roles and job hierarchy. Alavi and Leidner's knowledge taxonomies were used as the main coding scheme in order to classify types of individual temporal behaviours uncovered in this study.

This study shows that both explicit and tacit practices of individual time management are an important component of how professionals complete project tasks within their daily routines. Project managers play an important role in leading a successful project, and their time orientations directly affect all project phases.

Although good time management strategies may be one of the key determinants of organizational productivity (driving increased output per unit of time), limited knowledge management research has been conducted within the context of professionals' time management practices. The findings reveal that individual time management is shaped by organizational temporal structures and norms, which organizations use to govern their employees and resources around clock time.

The purpose of this paper is to explore how individuals can leverage interpersonal relationships and critical network position to acquire knowledge and information for generate research productivity. Specifically, this paper argues that the relationship between tie strength and scholar productivity will be an inverted U-shape, and critical position as moderating role in research productivity generation process. The robustness tests were also provided.

Using panel data from scholars in tourism academic fields, this paper investigated the conditions under which maintenance of social relations affects knowledge creation. In total, two different regression models and robustness tests were used to test the hypotheses in a sample of 201 tourism scholars from Taiwan and an analysis of 1,198 publications.

The results showed that the relationship between tie strength and scholar productivity will be an inverted U-shape. Moreover, the moderating role of critical position of structural holes and betweennesss are recognized: it positively moderates with tie strengths and research productivity.

The empirical results are derived from a sample of scholars in Taiwanese business management departments, thus raising concern about the external generalizability to other departments and countries. Future research is, therefore, suggested to empirically test the validity of the framework and hypothesis in other departments or countries.

The practical implications of the results are that individuals need to know that there are two underlying governing forces on the choice of their knowledge exchange partners and occupying critical network position. A diversified social relation is beneficial to the knowledge creation performance because of more information knowledge sharing while a specialized knowledge would avoid the detrimental effects of coordination and conflict problems on research productivity. Therefore, individuals should understand and careful choice their cooperation partners and network position in order to achieve better knowledge creation outcome.

This research extends developments in social capital theory and the relational view into interpersonal relationships between tourism scholars and their cooperation partners. Furthermore, the paper also examines how critical position has effects on scholar’s research productivity creation process. Finally, studies that examine the relationship between tourism academic networks and different measures of research productivity are few in number, and those that use such longitudinal empirical work are particularly lacking. This study addresses these issues.