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The transformation from an industrial to a knowledge economy and society are underway. In the knowledge economy, the knowledge of people and organizations—their intellectual capital assets—are the primary factors of production and the source of wealth. This is in contrast to other kinds of capital that fueled the industrial and the agricultural economies. Librarians have understood the knowledge society as one characterized by an increased focus on digital resources and an expanded use of virtual channels to deliver those resources. However, the nature of the knowledge society and economy is far more expansive than a digital environment. A knowledge society is one in which all members of a society engage in knowledge transactions—in the business environment, in the social sphere, in civic activities, and in everyday environmental actions. This view of the knowledge society presents new opportunities for librarians to leverage their intellectual capital. This chapter profiles the intellectual capital assets of librarians, considers how they align with professional competencies, and presents use cases that illustrate the value of these assets. Future scenarios illustrate how traditional functional competencies might shift in the knowledge economy. These also suggest contexts which highlight undervalued or new competencies. Seven observations describe how librarians might prepare for expanded roles in the knowledge society.

Today's battlespace is a very complex system of humans and technology. It could be thought of as a system of layers – where there might be a layer of ground operations and a layer of air operations. Within the air operations layer exists two additional layers of manned air operations and unmanned air operations. If you peel back all layers of today's battlespace and just view the “unmanned air operations” layer, you will find another complex system of humans and technology working as just one element of the overall system. This system of uninhabited air operations might consist of different types of uninhabited air vehicles (e.g., Predator, Hunter, etc.) performing different types of missions (e.g., Intelligence, Reconnaissance, Surveillance-IRS; IRS-strike; search and rescue, etc.).

In many security domains, the ‘human in the system’ is often a critical line of defence in identifying, preventing and responding to any threats (Saikayasit, Stedmon, & Lawson, 2015). Traditionally, such security domains are often focussed on mainstream public safety within crowded spaces and border controls, through to identifying suspicious behaviours, hostile reconnaissance and implementing counter-terrorism initiatives. More recently, with growing insecurity around the world, organisations have looked to improve their security risk management frameworks, developing concepts which originated in the health and safety field to deal with more pressing risks such as terrorist acts, abduction and piracy (Paul, 2018). In these instances, security is usually the specific responsibility of frontline personnel with defined roles and responsibilities operating in accordance with organisational protocols (Saikayasit, Stedmon, Lawson, & Fussey, 2012; Stedmon, Saikayasit, Lawson, & Fussey, 2013). However, understanding the knowledge that frontline security workers might possess and use requires sensitive investigation in equally sensitive security domains.

This chapter considers how to investigate knowledge elicitation in these sensitive security domains and underlying ethics in research design that supports and protects the nature of investigation and end-users alike. This chapter also discusses the criteria used for ensuring trustworthiness as well as assessing the relative merits of the range of methods adopted.

Developments in the social neurosciences over the past two decades have rendered problematic the main knowledge elicitation techniques currently in use by strategy researchers, as a basis for revealing actors’ mental representations of strategic knowledge. Extant elicitation techniques were advanced during an era when cognitive scientists and organizational researchers alike were preoccupied with the basic information of processing limitations of decision makers and means of addressing them, predicated on an outmoded conception of strategists as affect-free, cognitive misers. The need to adapt these techniques to enable the investigation of the emotional content and structure of actors’ mental representations is now a pressing priority for the advancement of theory, research, and practice pertaining to several interrelated areas of strategic management, from dynamic capabilities development, to upper echelons theory, to strategic consensus formation. Accordingly, in this chapter, we report the findings of two studies that investigated the feasibility of adapting the repertory grid, a robust method, widely known and well used in strategic management, for this purpose. Study 1 elicited a series of commonly mentioned strategic issues (the elements) from a sample of senior managers similar in composition to the sample recruited to the second study. Study 2 participants evaluated the elements elicited in Study 1 in relation to a series of researcher-supplied bipolar attributes (the constructs), based on the well-known affective circumplex model of human emotions. In line with expectations, a series of vector-based multivariate analyses revealed a number of interesting similarities and variations among participants in terms of the basic structure and emotional salience of the issues under consideration.

This chapter’s focus is comparative causal mapping (CCM) methods in MOC research. For a background, the chapter discusses first the conceptual (cognitive theoretic) basis in typical CCM studies and its implications for understanding the target phenomena and for CCM methods. Next, it presents the CMAP3 software and describes its operating logic and main functions. Third, the chapter describes how to use CMAP3 in three prototypical cases of CCM, each characterized by different research objectives, kinds of data, and methods of data acquisition but also by potential dilemmas. The chapter concludes by speculating about the future directions of causal mapping and suggesting some ideas for developing in particular large-N CCM methods.

Only recently has physical space design become more widely recognized as playing a critical role in delivery of care, with an emerging body of literature on the application of human factors approaches to design and evaluation. This chapter describes the use of human factors approaches to develop and conduct an evaluation of a proposed Neonatal Intensive Care Unit redesign in a Midwestern children’s hospital. Methods included observations and knowledge elicitation from stakeholders to characterize their goals, challenges, and needs. This characterization is integral to informing the design of user-centered solutions, including physical space design. We also describe an approach to evaluating the proposed design that yielded actionable recommendations specific to hospital-driven design goals.

Fostered by technological developments and globalization, culturally diverse teams are becoming a mainstay of organizational strategy. As the use of multi-cultural teams continues to increase, it becomes paramount to understand the mechanism(s) by which leaders can promote effectiveness within these teams. Despite this need, there are numerous challenges facing those who seek to understand these phenomena and move science and practice forward. The purpose of this chapter is to present a few of these challenges and approaches which can assist in mitigating these challenges. Finally, we identify what we see as key research needs within this area.