Search results

The aim of this paper is to examine empirically the relevance of the theory of deferred action for knowledge management systems (KMS) design in practice.

The study adopts a case study approach to examine knowledge work and knowledge management in virtual teamwork in a large UK telecommunications company to understand the occurrence of emergent knowledge and how it is managed by virtual team leaders. The section in the company studied is described as a “knowledge intensive organization” dealing with the company's e‐commerce activities.

The analysis confirms the complex adaptive system hypothesis – a complex system adapts to its environment through self‐organization. The data reveal the behaviour of the virtual team to be self‐organizing and adaptive to its environment. It confirms the knowledge tacitness hypothesis and social embeddedness of knowledge hypothesis as important determinants of knowledge sharing. Specifically, the data reveal the main issues concerning knowledge sharing practices of virtual team workers and the crucial team leader's role in the effectiveness of the teams' capability to develop social links to externalise and share tacit knowledge to accomplish tasks.

In this paper, the authors contribute “emergent knowledge” as a third category of organizational knowledge in addition to the existing tacit and explicit knowledge that needs to be considered when designing KMS. It also derives socio‐technical systems design principles based on the theory of deferred action, and a tentative development process with metrics is then proposed for KMS design that caters for emergent, tacit, and explicit knowledge.

Existing models such as the SECI model do not acknowledge emergent knowledge or its conversion into explicit knowledge. The theory of deferred action is invoked to derive design principles, termed deferred systems design principles, to depict how explicit knowledge, tacit knowledge, and emergent knowledge can be represented to design knowledge management systems for “emergent organizations”.

The study contributes to the limited research and lack of consideration of emergent knowledge as an integral part of organizational knowledge, especially in an era of emergent organizations.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the knowledge management (KM) approach followed by small companies. In particular, after introducing the notion of emergent approach, the paper aims to examine if that notion is useful to properly describe the way small businesses approach their KM activities.

The study is based on the results of a qualitative survey involving 12 owners and managers of small companies belonging to the knowledge-intensive business services (KIBS) sector. The survey uses the case-study method.

The findings confirm that the approach to KM adopted by small companies can be defined as emergent: in the analysed cases, there were no formal KM plans, despite the fact that the examined companies have all introduced various KM practices. This shows that there can be the need to define KM approaches that better fit smaller companies.

Although an emergent approach may be seen as unplanned, companies should learn how to be aware of their KM practices and, once they are, how to develop them properly. For executives to be able to recognize emergent KM practices, notions and elements of KM need to be introduced in their business background and professional education (e.g. how KM fits into a small organization, what KM processes are, what KM tools and practices exist, etc.).

The study contributes to the understanding of KM in really small entities, still a much under-explored topic.

The aim of this paper is threefold: to provide a framework for a better understanding of the relationship between creativity, knowledge creation/sharing, and organizational change; to define the key elements at individual and collective level that may contribute to the development of organizational spaces that favour a climate for creativity and knowledge creation as precondition of “emergent change”; and to contribute to the development of a multi-perspective approach to creativity and knowledge creation in twenty-first century organizations.

The paper begins with a review of the emergent non-linear change theories and the change-related processes of knowledge creation. It uses the metaphor of dance to explore the relationship between emergent change and knowledge creation and sharing, and identifies the main factors that may impact this relationship.

The authors' framework suggests that the identified factors act as precondition to emergent change. These factors are critical for change management in organizations operating in today's chaotic environment.

The authors' framework suggests that the identified factors act as precondition to emergent change. These factors are critical for change management in modern organizations. The authors propose guidelines and provide examples how to manage work spaces and facilitate the organizational dance.

Even though the academic literature already offers some evidence about the role and the centrality of spontaneous change, this paper provides a systematic, multi-perspective approach to the understanding and management of social, cultural and individual characteristics of bottom-up organizational change, focusing on its fundamental aspects of creativity and knowledge creation.

The main objective of this paper is to investigate information system (IS) supported coordination in knowledge‐intensive business processes. These are business processes that cannot be pre‐defined as their models evolve during process execution from the accumulated experience. Consequently, these processes require a high level of knowledge‐sharing, collection and reuse among all participants in the process.

The paper offers a critical analysis of the main limitations of workflow technology that is widely considered to be the leading process‐oriented, coordination technology. It illustrates why this technology cannot be used to support coordination in knowledge‐intensive business processes. The paper then identifies a number of requirements for possible IS support.

The main conclusion of this paper is that coordination in knowledge‐intensive processes is, in fact, a knowledge‐intensive process itself, and as such it cannot be fully pre‐defined. Therefore, automation of this process is neither desirable nor possible.

Each IS requirement, proposed in this paper, identifies a number of further research and implementation challenges related to support of knowledge‐intensive business process. They will be of interest to researchers and practitioners both in the fields of business process management as well as knowledge management.

In essence, this paper argues that knowledge‐intensive business processes require fundamentally different coordination support from what is currently available in the area of business process support. This paper shifts the main emphasis from process automation to IS support for situated decision‐making.

Complex crises affect tightly coupled systems making them highly unpredictable. This paper aims to determine how organizations learn from their crisis experience shaping their knowledge and transformation trajectory toward and beyond survival. A theoretical framework integrating organizational learning (OL) and knowledge management in organizational transformation (OT) in complex crises is presented.

This conceptual paper presents a systematic literature review on OT in crisis from 2000 to 2021. To achieve integration, the authors searched for studies on OT, knowledge management and OL, each paired with a crisis.

Crises highlight the emergent and decentered nature of knowing and organizing. This study suggests that OT is achieved through various changes in organizational knowledge. Different learning modes enable the transformation of knowledge in a crisis: contextual or situated learning, strategic and collective integration.

The authors' pandemic experience may have influenced the analysis. This paper does not account for new types of learning emerging due to the influence of digital technologies.

Organizations may hasten renewal through distributed crisis management facilitated by contextual and strategic learning and collective integration.

This study categorizes learning, based on its function in crisis management, into three types: contextual learning for creative problem-solving, strategic learning for leadership and direction and collective integration to evaluate their crisis journey. Through this classification, this study sheds light on the types of knowledge needed to manage crises effectively, showing that organizations can leverage their crises by transforming and innovating themselves in this turbulent period.

To explore the funds of knowledge that six emergent bilingual students build upon as they produce multimodal texts, how the practices surrounding these events are mediated, and the role of student agency within an ethnographic social semiotics framework. Ethnographic methods were used to document this yearlong study that included videotaping small group interactions, writing field notes, conducting interviews, and collecting multimodal work samples. The researcher served as a participant observer in a third-grade classroom where she met with students two days per week to interact with mulitmodal poetry. The findings reveal the media-rich popular culture and home digital practices students bring with them to school and the ways in which these resources were utilized for designing multimodal poetry. Several essential factors are discussed including funds of knowledge, role of play and creativity, nonlinear writing structures, and agentive design decisions. Multimodal text making requires a revamping of classroom literacy instruction that embraces multiple modes especially noting the importance of images, central role of experiential learning, and space for student choice thus empowering them as learners.

The purpose of this paper is to extend the learning boundaries of traditional project capability, which follows the linear planning paradigm, in order to include non-linear complex projects that cannot be completely specified and planned in advance, and so require continuous learning over their life cycles.

Based on an earlier empirical investigation, where complex-project capability (CPC) is developed through dynamic organizational learning based on non-linear problem solving, the paper examines some of the conceptual and practical implications of this process insight. The focus here is on incomplete pre-given knowledge and emergent knowledge creation during CPC development.

Using the three interrelated dimensions of project type, knowledge creation method, and organizational learning approach, the paper reinterprets Karl Popper’s linear problem solving model for learning in traditional projects by introducing the concept of knowledge entropy (disorder) for learning in non-linear complex projects. The latter follows a path from “order to disorder to order” rather than from “order to order” under traditional assumptions.

By identifying a common learning process at individual, group, and organizational levels, developing CPC can be viewed as a “learning organization”. This multi-level approach facilitates research into distributed organizing for emergent knowledge creation during CPC development.

In contrast to traditional planned projects with up-front prior knowledge, complex projects are characterized by incomplete knowledge. The challenge of dealing with knowledge uncertainty in complex projects through continuous learning has practical implications for project learning, planning, knowledge management, and leadership.

The concept of knowledge entropy (disorder) extends the learning boundaries of traditional projects, where little learning is anticipated, by including complex projects with knowledge uncertainty requiring continuous learning.

The purpose of this paper is to address the emerging way in which qualitative research is now carried out within the commercial world, the influences of shifting paradigms and the importance of theoretical understanding for current practice.

The “method” underpinning this paper is qualitative observation drawn from research across a wide range of client companies during more than 30 years of commercial qualitative practice, as well as from recent, ongoing conversations with other commercial practitioners and academics, and from the academic and literature.

Commercial qualitative research has, largely, moved away from a classic scientific paradigm towards a social constructionist perspective. The paper explores how the concept of emergence derived from complexity sciences and the contribution of neuroscience to understanding the role of emotion in judgement and decision making, can help make sense of current commercial practice.

The implications for commercial practitioners are highlighted. Training in analytical skills and emotional awareness as reflection‐in‐action is needed in order that analysis and interpretation are embedded within the ongoing research process, i.e. training needs to include qualitative thinking as much as practice.

The paper highlights the creative potential of “emergent inquiry”, improvisation “in the moment” and the particular skills required.

Purpose – Overview of Hayek's cognitive theory and the contributions of chapters.

Methodology/approach – Perspective on significance of Hayek's cognitive theory for the social sciences.

Findings – Hayek's cognitive theory provides insight into his oeuvre; more importantly, it is relevant for social theory in its own right.

Research limitations/implications – Hayek's cognitive theory warrants further attention by economists and social theorists interested in evolutionary social processes.

Originality/value of paper – To counter a widespread view that the contribution to economics and social science of Hayek's cognitive theory is largely confined to methodology. Hayek's cognitive theory also provides a useful framework for furthering the understanding of evolution within the social realm.

The main purpose of this paper is to consider knowledge production as a social self‐organization process, to clarify ethical implications of such an approach, and to relate it to the thinking of Heinz von Foerster.

The method employed is the one of dialectical constructions, i.e. existing contradicting approaches on knowledge research are identified and classified and a constructive synthesis of these approaches is made.

Since Heinz von Foerster's pioneering work, information‐generating systems are considered to be self‐organizing systems. We see knowledge as only a particular kind of information: it is the manifestation of information in the social realm. Thus, the creation of social information is due to the self‐organization of social systems. Heinz von Foerster has given us some indications of how knowledge and self‐organization could be applied to society. In this paper, we try to sketch a position of our own while taking into consideration Heinz von Foerster's relevant ideas.

The research results in this paper imply that a knowledge‐based society can only survive if it is designed in a participatory and socially and ecologically sustainable way. Hence a practical implication is that participation and co‐operation need to be advanced in order to guarantee human development.

The innovative aspect of the paper is that it suggests that all social self‐organizing systems are knowledge‐producing systems and that considering knowledge as a co‐operative process implies responsibility for solving the global social problems. It combines knowledge research and systems thinking based on ideas on self‐organization by Heinz von Foerster in order to describe social systems.