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This study focuses primarily on the business operating departments (hereinafter, DMUs) of a case telecom company (hereinafter, the Company) in the northern and eastern areas of Taiwan. In 2007, the Company finished the first stage of its reorganization by consolidating 14 DMUs into 12. In 2011, the Company completed the second stage of its reorganization by consolidating the 12 remaining DMUs into 8. This study intends to explore the effects of each stage of the Company’s reorganization on the efficiency and ranking of the various DMUs. The results show that the DMUs became more efficient after each stage of the Company’s reorganization. Moreover, the efficiency and ranking of the new DMUs, A6, A7, and B7 increased post-consolidation. This suggests that both the first and second stages of the reorganization were necessary. The findings of this study could help the Company and other telecom companies to design strategies for the future consolidation of other units, and thereby maintain their competitiveness and continued growth.

Semantic technologies are a potential approach to enhancing the use of the web of knowledge. An experiment was conducted to investigate the roles of two semantic techniques, namely concept recommendation and mind maps, for females and males This paper aims to document this research.

The study compared the searching behaviours and perceptions of searching strategies in the search environment with techniques to reveal the gender difference in the use of semantic technologies. The study further investigated how the techniques influenced female and male students' searching experiences by comparing their searching behaviours and strategies in two different environments, one developed with the semantic technologies and one without.

Although the techniques were helpful for both female and male students in improving their perceptions of searching strategies, there were gender differences in sense of disorientation, problem solving and searching patterns. In particular, the techniques facilitated females to search for information beyond similarity holes, but did not demonstrate such an effect on males. However, they supported males to organize information for better use.

The study is only a small‐scale investigation. Further studies need to be conducted with a larger sample to obtain robust evidence.

In this paper, the effects of semantic technologies are evaluated from the perspectives of education and the human factor, rather than only in terms of technical performance.