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Lack of knowledge and performance information sharing between actors is one manifestation of fragmentation in public performance management. This study aims to understand what managerial means are used for connecting performance dialogues and how these means affect fragmentation in performance management.

In this cross-sectional research design, the authors reviewed documents, interviewed public managers, observed workshops and held thematic discussions with public managers in one Finnish municipality. To analyze the empirical data, the authors used thematic analysis and both inductive and deductive research approaches.

The analysis revealed nine managerial means that public managers use for connecting performance dialogues to decrease fragmentation. These were (1) defining the division of labor between different dialogues, (2) assigning resources for performance dialogues, (3) generating convincing narratives for promoting collaboration, (4) providing the same performance information to collaborators, (5) building joint information systems, (6) establishing integrative performance dialogue hubs, (7) naming the gatekeepers, (8) offering training for dialogues and (9) synchronizing performance dialogues. Based on our findings, most of these means can preserve, increase or decrease fragmentation depending on their design.

The results of the study are valuable because the performance management literature has not investigated what managerial means are used to connect performance dialogues and how these means can preserve, increase or decrease fragmentation.

Personal projects are any kind of projects whose management is left to an individual untrained in project management and is greatly influenced by this individual’s personal touch. This includes the majority of knowledge workers who daily manage information relating to several personal projects. The authors have conducted an in-depth qualitative investigation on information management of such projects and the tacit knowledge behind its processes that cannot be found in the organisational structures of current personal information management (PIM) tools (file managers, e-mail clients, web browsers). The purpose of this paper is to reveal and understand project information management practices in details and provide guidelines for personal project management tools.

Semi-structured interviews similar to that in several other PIM exploratory studies were carried out focusing on project fragmentation, information overlap and project context recreation. In addition, the authors enhanced interviews with sketching approach not yet used to study PIM. Sketches were used for articulating things that were not easily expressed through words, they represented a time stamp of a project context in the projects’ lifetime, uncovered additional tacit knowledge behind project information management not mentioned during the interviews, and were also used to find what they have in common which might be used in prototype designing.

The paper presents first personal project definition based on the conceptualisations derived from the study. The study revealed that the extensive information fragmentation in the file hierarchy (due to different organisational needs and ease of information access) poses a significant challenge to context recreation besides cross-tool fragmentation so far described in the literature. The study also reveals the division of project information into core and support and emphasises the importance of support information in relation to project goals. Other findings uncover the division of input/output information, project overlaps through information reuse, storytelling and visualising information relations, which could help with user modelling and enhancing project context recreation.

On of the limitations is the group of participants that cannot represent the ideally generalised knowledge worker as there are many different kinds of knowledge workers and they all have different information needs besides different management practices. However, participants of variety of different backgrounds were observed and the authors converged observations into points of project information management similarities across the spectrum of different professions. Nevertheless, its observations and conceptualisations should be repeatable. For one, some of the issues that emerged during this work have been to different extents discussed in other studies.

The empirical findings are used to create guidelines for designing personal project information management tools: support the selective focus on information with the division into core and supportive information; visualise changes in project information space to support narratives for context recreation; overcome fragmentation in the file system with selective unification; visualising project’s information relationship to better understand the complexity of project information space; and support navigating in project information space on two axes: time and between projects (overlaps through information).

The study presents a longitudinal insight into personal project information management. As such it provides a first formal definition of personal project from the information point of view. The method used in the study presented uses a new approach – sketching in which participants externalised and visualised personal information and projects they discussed. The insights derived from the study form design implications for personal project management tools for knowledge workers.

This article aims to describe how people manage to integrate their use of paper and electronic documents in modern office work environments.

An observational interview type study of 14 participants from 11 offices in eight organizations was conducted. Recorded data were analysed using a thematic analysis method. This involved reading and annotation of interview transcripts, categorizing, linking and connecting, corroborating, and producing an account of the study.

The findings of the study can be categorized into four groups: the roles paper and electronic documents serve in today's offices, the ways in which these documents are managed, the problems associated with their management, and the types of fragmentation that exist in terms of their management and how these are dealt with.

The study has identified the need for better integrated management of paper and electronic documents in present-day offices. The findings of the study have then been used to propose a set of guidelines for the development of integrated paper and electronic document management systems.

Although similar studies of offices have been conducted in the past, almost all of these studies are prior to the widespread use of mobile and network-based shared technologies in office environments. Furthermore, previous studies have generally failed to identify and propose guidelines for integration of paper and electronic document management systems.

To take full advantage of the unprecedented availability of information on networks and digital systems, professionals need to be comfortable finding information relevant to the tasks at hand. This study was conducted at the Kuwait Institute for Scientific Research to investigate scientists’ personal information management (PIM) practices.

A qualitative research approach was used. Critical incidents were collected to probe information about PIM activities. The PIM-related critical incidents were gathered through extended conversations in the form of semi-structured interviews.

Extended conversations revealed that scientists were aware of the importance of information organization and management. They collected and received information from various sources regarding their tasks and saved part of the information for future use. Scientists organized saved information into named folders using the categories of projects, clients and planning. The files were updated by regular deletion and cleaning. Different strategies were used to retrieve the information. These included searching by keywords and file names, and browsing using the folder structure. Scientists have used various PIM tools. They reported that time pressure, information overload and anxiety due to information fragmentation were major challenges in PIM.

This study recommends a compilation of guidelines to assist scientists in the efficient management of personal information. As there are only a few studies currently available in the literature on scientists’ PIM, this study makes a valuable contribution to the relevant professional literature.

This paper aims to conduct a qualitative assessment of synergies between information flows of a multifamily product platform used for industrialized housing and materials passports that can promote a circular economy in the construction industry.

Using a single case study method, the research assesses the availability and accessibility of materials passport-relevant information generated by a leading Swedish industrialized housing construction firm. Data is collected using semistructured interviews, document analysis and an extended research visit.

The research findings identify the functional layers of the product platform, map the information flow using a process diagram, assess the availability and accessibility of material passport relevant information by lifecycle stage and actor, and summarize the key points using a SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats) analysis.

The three main implications are: the technical and process platforms used in industrialized construction allow for generating standardized, digital and reusable information; the vertical integration of trades and long-term relationships with suppliers improve transparency and reduce fragmentation in information flows; and the design-build-operate business model strategy incentivizes actors to manage information flows in the use phase.

Industrialized construction firms can use this paper as an approach to understand and map their information flows to identify suitable approaches to generate and manage materials passports.

The specific characteristics of product platforms and industrialized construction provide a unique opportunity for circular information flow across the building lifecycle, which can support material passport adoption to a degree not often found in the traditional construction industry.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate how government affairs micro-blog (also referred to as GAM) are applied to the disclosure of government emergency information in China, to identify its existing problems and to provide solutions.

In this paper, online research, case analysis and other methods were used to analyze the application status of China’s Government micro-blog in emergency information disclosure in recent years. Based on the relevant data and cases, a systematic theoretical research is conducted according to the established research framework.

There are some problems in the application of GAM to crisis management, such as insufficient information dissemination, incomplete information disclosure, fragmentation of information and lack of dynamic updating and communication. So, it is necessary to strengthen the organization and management of GAM, establish a perfect emergency management mechanism of GAM, increase the positive influence of GAM on public opinions and establish an evaluation accountability system of administrative micro-blog management.

The analysis of the application of GAM to the disclosure of government emergency information and the proposed strategies for improving its performance are all original, and they are both meaningful to more effective usage of GAM and facilitation of government emergency information disclosure.

To establish that, in the opinion of the author, there is a need for an information literacy skill set for citizens of the modern information society, and that the role of library and information professionals may have to evolve, from intermediaries to facilitators and trainers.

An opinion piece based on the author's experiences in digital library research, as a citizen of an information society and as a worker in the knowledge economy.

That citizens of information societies have direct access to a bewildering range of digital information resources. Librarians and information professionals face less demand for their traditional role as intermediaries. Information literacy is defined and described as a vital skill set for citizens of information societies. It is suggested that librarians and information professionals are needed to pass on these skills to citizens at all levels of society for economic, social and personal empowerment.

The paper reflects the perspective of the author – it is not supported by quantitative data (notoriously difficult to collect on information literacy).

Provides suggestions on how the library and information profession can retain their relevance to society in the networked age.

This is the particular viewpoint of the author, with a diverse range of examples cited to back up the thrust of the paper. It describes how information literacy is required to interact effectively with the digital environment on an emotional as well as an intellectual level.

This paper explores the enablers of modular healthcare services.

A survey-based approach was adopted with specialised hospitals as the unit of analysis. A structural model was developed based on a literature review and assessed using a cross-sectional research design. A 23-indicator questionnaire was circulated among service providers in the healthcare system across India, and 286 valid responses were received. The data were analysed using partial least squares-structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM).

The results reveal that professional competence, technological versatility, clear division of tasks, channelised flow of information and professional autonomy act as enablers that may drive modular service delivery.

By examining service providers' perspectives, this paper highlights the influence of the identified enablers on modular service delivery in healthcare organisations.

For practitioners, the study provides suggestions for designing patient-centric healthcare services via modular healthcare delivery. The identified structural relationships can facilitate immediate corrective actions and the formulation of future policies. The findings will help practitioners foresee opportunities for patient participation in value co-creation, meet patients' varying needs, decompose service offerings, mix and match components develop sets of rules as interfaces between service modules and design service packages on an ongoing basis.

This study underscores the emergence of patient-centric care and may aid the design of processes that deliver health to the patient as a person.

This paper identifies and empirically validates relationships between healthcare service delivery processes and modular service delivery.

The purpose of this paper is to examine how individuals' personal information organization reflects their social environments in order to understand social aspects of personal information organization.

By using a cognitive sociological approach and based on the personal information organization process (PIOP) model (Oh, 2019), this study investigates the social aspects of personal information organization by analyzing the pre-diary interview, a diary, and two post-diary interviews conducted with each of the 18 information users in social science academic environments.

Social dimensions of personal information organization were found in differences between organizing academic and non-academic files, the way participants identified and made distinctions among files, common folders they created, and with the impact of participants' professional age on personal information organization. This study shows that information organization is a process of construction and that the participants' social foundations are reflected in the way they view and organize their files.

This study makes a unique contribution to the field by explaining the social aspects of personal information organization. The findings of this study deepen our knowledge of personal information organization by providing different ways to understand how and why people organize their files in certain ways, and by showing that this is not just individual behavior. In practice, this study provides insight into the design of applications and tools that support personal information management of people in specific social environments.

The challenges confronting the Nigerian construction industry which led to the adoption of supply chain management (SCM) practice were evaluated in this chapter. It was discovered that the Nigerian construction industry is confronted with fragmentation and poor information management. The stakeholders within the Nigerian construction industry proposed the adoption of SCM to overcome the fragmentation and other shenanigans facing the industry. This chapter revealed that construction supply chain (CSC) practices within the Nigerian construction industry focus on waste elimination by adopting the lean concept. The focus on the lean concept could be attributed to the numerous research related to lean or the enormous waste emanating from the Nigerian construction industry. Regardless of the emphasis on lean, the Nigerian CSC is still confronted with fragmentation and heavy waste generation. Thus, this chapter proposed the adoption of principles and technologies driven by the fourth industrial revolution (4IR) is a paradigm shift for the management of CSC in the country. It was discovered in this chapter that Nigerian construction supply stakeholders had not embraced the technologies and principles of the 4IR. The failure to adopt the technologies driven by the 4IR is attributed to the absence of a CSC model that depicts the management of CSC in alignment with the 4IR. This chapter called for developing a SCM model for the Nigerian construction industry in tandem with the principles and technologies of the 4IR.