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The purpose of this paper is to provide an approach to viewing the “wicked” problem of electronic records management (ERM), using the Cynefin framework, a sense‐making tool. It re‐conceptualises the ERM challenge by understanding the nature of the people issues. This supports decision making about the most appropriate tactics to adopt to effect positive change.

Cynefin was used to synthesise qualitative data from an empirical research project that investigated strategies and tactics for improving ERM.

ERM may be thought of as a dynamic, complex challenge but, viewed through the Cynefin framework, many issues are not complex; they are simple or complicated and can be addressed using best or good practice. The truly complex issues need a different approach, described as emergent practice. Cynefin provides a different lens through which to view, make sense of and re‐perceive the ERM challenge and offers a strategic approach to accelerating change.

Since Cynefin has been applied to one data set, the findings are transferrable not generalisable. They, and/or the approach, can be used to further test the propositions.

The resultant ERM framework provides a practical example for information and records managers to exploit or use as a starting point to explore the situation in particular organisational contexts. It could also be used in other practical, teaching and/or research‐related records contexts.

This paper provides a new strategic approach to addressing the wicked problem of ERM, which is applicable for any organisational context.

The purpose of this paper is to complement a previous article on using the Cynefin framework to make sense of the electronic records management challenge. Its focus is on how to use Cynefin, and the ERM framework developed using it, as an approach to addressing this wicked problem. The aim is to provide examples of how they could be used in practice in different organisational contexts.

Four examples are provided. Empirical research data are used to underpin three of the examples and a thought experiment using published literature informs the fourth.

The examples illustrate the potential value and power of the Cynefin framework as both a practical and conceptual tool in the ERM context. It can be used to address the ERM challenge in different ways: as a strategic approach taking a holistic view and/or as a tactical approach at a more specific granular level. It can be used to inform practice by helping practitioners choose the most appropriate approach dependent on the level of complexity of the issue they are addressing, whether that is for a specific issue, a project or initiative, for planning or for exploratory, sense-making purposes.

The examples draw on one qualitative, empirical set of research data and one published use. Further experimentation and practical use are required; others are encouraged to use Cynefin to test the propositions and provide further examples.

The examples provided can be adopted and/or adapted by records professionals, both practitioners and/or academics, at strategic and tactical levels in different records contexts.

This paper provides examples of adopting a different approach to tackling the wicked problem of managing electronic records using the Cynefin framework as a new lens.

This study aims to explore the role of planned, sudden shifts in lived experiences, in influencing learner capabilities towards improved problem-solving for sustainable development outcomes. The authors responded to employers of engineering and built environment graduates observing limited “real-life” problem-solving skills, beyond using established formulae and methods, in spite of attempts over more than two decades, to train engineers and other built environment disciplines in areas such as whole system design and sustainable design.

A grounded theory approach was used to guide the analysis of data collected through ethnographic methods. The process involved reflecting on authors’ efforts to develop context appreciation within a course called “International Engineering Practice”, using two years of collected data (archived course information, including course profile; completed assessment; lecture and field visit evaluations; and focus groups). The study is built on the authors’ working knowledge of Bloom’s Taxonomy and Threshold Learning Theory, and the well-established role of “context appreciation” in complex problem-solving. After the first iteration of the course, the authors looked for additional theoretical support to help explain findings. The Cynefin framework was subsequently used to augment the authors’ appreciation of “context” – beyond physical context to include relational context, and to evaluate students’ competency development across the four domains of “clear”, “complicated”, “complex” and “chaotic”.

This study helped the authors to understand that there was increased capacity of the students to distinguish between three important contexts for problem-solving, including an increased awareness about the importance of factual and relevant information, increased acknowledgement of the varying roles of professional practitioners in problem-solving depending on the type of problem and increased appreciation of the importance of interdisciplinary teams in tackling complex and complicated problems. There were several opportunities for such courses to be more effective in preparing students for dealing with “chaotic” situations that are prevalent in addressing the United Nations’ 17 sustainable development goals (UNSDGs). Drawing on the course-based learnings, the authors present a “context integration model” for developing problem-solving knowledge and skills.

The research findings are important because context appreciation – including both physical context and relational context – is critical to problem-solving for the UNSDGs, including its 169 targets and 232 indicators. The research findings highlight the opportunity for the Cynefin framework to inform holistic curriculum renewal processes, enhancing an educator’s ability to design, implement and evaluate coursework that develops physical and relational context appreciation.

The study’s findings and context integration model can help educators develop the full range of necessary problem-solving graduate competencies, including for chaotic situations involving high degrees of uncertainty. Looking ahead, acknowledging the significant carbon footprint of global travel, the authors are interested in applying the model to a domestic and/or online format of the same course, to attempt similar learning outcomes.

Connecting Bloom’s taxonomy deep learning and threshold learning theory critical path learning insights with the Cynefin framework context domains, provides a novel model to evaluate competency development for problem-solving towards improved holistic physical and relational “context appreciation” outcomes.

This systematic literature review (SLR) paper presents the overview and analysis of the existing ontologies application in the SE domain. It discusses the main challenges in terms of its ontologies development and highlights the key knowledge areas for subdomains in the SE domain that provides a direction to develop ontologies application for SE systematically. The SE is not as straightforward as the traditional economy. It transforms the existing economy ecosystem through peer-to-peer collaborations mediated by the technology. Hence, the complexity of the SE domain accentuates the need to make the SE domain knowledge more explicit.

For the review, the authors only focus on the journal articles published from 2010 to 2020 and mentioned ontology as a solution to overcome the issues specific for the SE domain. The initial identification process produced 3,326 papers from 10 different databases.

After applying the inclusion and exclusion criteria, a final set of 11 articles were then analyzed and classified. In SE, good ontology design and development is essential to manage digital platforms, deal with data heterogeneity and govern the interoperability of the SE systems. Yet the preference to build an application ontology, lack of perdurant design and minimal use of the existing standard for building SE common knowledge are deterring the ontology development in this domain. From this review, an anatomy of the SE key subdomain areas is visualized as a reference to further develop the domain ontology for the SE domain systematically.

With the arrival of the Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR), the sharing economy (SE) has become one of the important domains whose impact has been explosive, and its domain knowledge is complex. Yet, a comprehensive overview and analysis of the ontology applications in the SE domain is not available or well presented to the research community.

The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate how the capabilities of Enterprise 2.0 tools align to the tasks knowledge workers perform. The objective is to provide knowledge workers and information architects with a framework that enables the development of a suite of Enterprise 2.0 tools in support of knowledge management across the full knowledge lifecycle.

The capabilities of Enterprise 2.0 tools were mapped against the requirements associated with each of the four main domains (chaotic, complex, knowable and known) of the Cynefin framework.

The Cynefin model provides a useful framework for illustrating how the various tools within an Enterprise 2.0 suite support the different activities/tasks knowledge workers perform. Aligning Enterprise 2.0 tools based on the domain requirements of the Cynefin model allows the classification of these capabilities based on a task‐based framework rather than the traditional feature/function‐based ones.

Application of this framework will help knowledge workers and information architects understand the relationship between technical capabilities and business tasks. This understanding will help both in tool selection with respect to business problem (architects) and also provide clarity of purpose in support of change management/adoption (knowledge workers).

Much of the literature around understanding Enterprise 2.0 tools has focused on a classical feature/function classification. The analysis presented here provides a classification based on the Cynefin model of knowledge creation. This classification model provides a valuable tool to those interested in developing environments that enable collaboration and knowledge generation/capture using these capabilities.

The purpose of this paper is to provide a conceptual foundation and empirical basis for exploring issues related to the design framework for modeling coordination in complex and dynamic enqvironments.

Previous research suggests that interactions among actors in a complex and dynamic environment tend to be more elastic, offering a higher degree of adaptability. Actions of actors in such an environment need to be coordinated to achieve the desired goal. With that purpose, the authors suggest a social network‐based (SN‐based) framework to model coordination in complex and dynamic environments.

The authors successfully applied the proposed SN‐based framework to model coordination in the context of soft‐target organization and emergency response preparedness.

It is apparent that much work has been done in existing studies on modeling coordination considering the specific domain situation in a complex and dynamic environment. In this paper, the authors propose a unique framework to model coordination in a complex and dynamic environment.

To obtain error estimates for 3D consistent boundary‐flux approximations.

Isoparametric approach is used for constructing finite‐element approximations.

This research study presents a convergence analysis of 3D boundary‐flux approximations. Error estimates are proved for the approximate solutions of the problem under consideration.

General results for a consistent boundary‐flux problem are obtained for all 3D domains with Lipschitz‐continuous boundary. This investigation will be continued studying combined effect of curved boundaries and isoparametric numerical integration. An optimal refined strategy with respect to algorithmic aspects for solving 3D boundary‐flux problem also will be considered.

The obtained results enable engineers to calculate the flux across the curved boundaries using finite element method (FEM).

The paper presents an isoparametric finite‐element method for a 3D consistent boundary‐flux problem in domains with complex geometry. The work is addressed to the possible‐related fields of interest of postgraduate students and specialists in fluid mechanics and numerical analysis.

This study aims to aid theory building, the use of decision theory (DT) concepts in sustainable supply chain management (SSCM) research is examined.

An abductive approach considers two DT concepts, Snowden’s Cynefin framework for sense-making and Keeney’s value-focussed decision analysis, in a systematic literature review of 160 peer-reviewed papers in English.

Around 60 per cent of the papers on decision-making in SSCM come from operational research (OR), which makes explicit use of DT. These are almost all normative and rationalist and focussed on structured decision contexts. Some exceptions seek to address unstructured decision contexts via Complex Adaptive Systems or Soft Systems Methodology. Meanwhile, a second set, around 16 per cent, comes from business ethics and are empirical, behavioural decision research. Although this set does not explicitly refer to DT, the empirical evidence here supports Keeney’s value-focussed analysis.

There is potential for theory building in SSCM using DT, but the research only addresses SSCM research (including corporate responsibility and ethics) and not DT in SCM or wider sustainable development research.

Use of particular decision analysis methods for SSCM may be improved by better understanding different decision contexts.

The research shows potential synthesis with ethical DT absent from DT and SCM research.

Empirical behavioural decision analysis for SSCM is considered alongside normative, rational analysis for the first time. Value-focussed DT appears useful for unstructured decision contexts found in SSCM.

Empirical, behavioural decision analysis for SSCM is considered alongside normative rational analysis for the first time. Value-focussed DT appears useful for unstructured decision contexts found in SSCM.

The generic design environment for a flexible printed‐circuit board assemblies (PCBA) remanufacturing cell contains four interrelated complex design domains. Mechanical design domains are really complex and the use of well‐proven mechanical product design methodologies does not help the designer. Hence, this paper aims to develop a generic systematic design methodology for a flexible PCBA remanufacturing cell.

The study investigates the use of conventional mechanical product design techniques for the design of a flexible PCBA rework (remanufacturing) cell. It indicates problems and the weaknesses when conventional product design techniques are used for the development of flexible manufacturing systems (FMS). It then provides a new systematic mechanical design methodology for designing a flexible PCBA rework (remanufacturing) cell. The design methodology is intended to be generic in order to apply successfully to any FMS design.

Conventional product design methodology cannot be used directly for the design of a flexible PCBA remanufacturing cell. Hence, two design methodologies were developed: the generic FMS mechanical design methodology and a specific FMS design methodology for a PCBA rework cell. The first one was developed based on the tasks of the conventional product design process integrated with new design tools. The generic design methodology was then extended to obtain the second methodology for a PCBA rework cell design. Both of the methodologies were applied to a flexible PCBA rework cell design problem. Both design methodologies eliminated unusable design solutions at the early design stages of the conceptual design process and made the design process easier.

The generic and specific design methodologies provide a better design environment, even for less specialized FMS designers.

The design methodologies may help for the commercialization of a flexible PCBA remanufacturing cell that may be used for SM rework and assembly.