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The dynamics of the physician knowledge system in the Southern California Region of Kaiser Permanente are explored. The framing and analysis use concepts from the knowledge management literature and network theory. The criticality of this issue to the establishment of sustainable healthcare relates to the lynchpin nature of embedding evidence-based knowledge in healthcare practice and the simultaneous challenge of combining this with clinical knowledge that derives from practice.

The case study is compiled from longitudinal interviews with over 40 physicians and other stakeholders and an examination of archival information including published articles generated by the learning system.

The socio-technical approach to building this learning system was critical given the expectations of physicians for autonomy in making clinical decisions with respect to their patients. This robust learning system builds on rich professional and organizational networks, is led by physicians, and builds on and extends the foundation of evidence relating to quality and value. The goals of the physician practice and a robust measurement and feedback system provide focus for the learning system.

Accelerating the incorporation of evidence-based practice and increasing the scope and reach of the learning system entails building physician networks, having a robust system for critically examining and extending evidence, and a clear linkage to valued outcomes.

This detailed examination of the dynamics of knowledge absorption extends understanding of the capacity of medical care systems to absorb evidence-based knowledge.

The role of knowledge, organizational learning and innovation as levers of competitive advantage is now a commonly acknowledged insight in research in international management, specifically in the emerging ‘knowledge-based view’. However, this view has not yet developed into a unifying framework and there are significant holes in the understanding of how knowledge may be turned into a source of competitive advantage for MNCs. In order to advance the knowledge-based view of the MNC – and particularly of the metanational company – we develop the notion of the MNC as a global knowledge system that links local knowledge structures and combines local knowledge elements that are complementary in order to achieve strategic advantage. These ideas are used to frame the changing environments, strategic intents and learning stances that characterize MNCs, and to derive a set of research challenges for MNC research.

Building on the resource-based view of the firm and complex systems theory, we argue that the effective utilization of knowledge-intensive teamwork (KITwork) can be a source of sustained competitive advantage for firms that pursue a variety of strategies and compete in a variety of industries. KITwork is a multi-dimensional, multi-level social process that promotes knowledge flows within and between organizations. Through KITwork, the knowledge resources of individual employees are transformed into a capability that contributes to the effectiveness of knowledge-based organizations. After introducing and explaining the concept of KITwork, we explore the challenges that organizations must address in order to design HRM systems that support and facilitate KITwork.

The strategic management literature emphasizes the concept of business intelligence (BI) as an essential competitive tool. Yet the sustainability of the firms’ competitive advantage provided by BI capability is not well researched. To fill this gap, this study attempts to develop a model for successful BI deployment and empirically examines the association between BI deployment and sustainable competitive advantage. Taking the telecommunications industry in Malaysia as a case example, the research particularly focuses on the influencing perceptions held by telecommunications decision makers and executives on factors that impact successful BI deployment. The research further investigates the relationship between successful BI deployment and sustainable competitive advantage of the telecommunications organizations. Another important aim of this study is to determine the effect of moderating factors such as organization culture, business strategy, and use of BI tools on BI deployment and the sustainability of firm’s competitive advantage.

This research uses combination of resource-based theory and diffusion of innovation (DOI) theory to examine BI success and its relationship with firm’s sustainability. The research adopts the positivist paradigm and a two-phase sequential mixed method consisting of qualitative and quantitative approaches are employed. A tentative research model is developed first based on extensive literature review. The chapter presents a qualitative field study to fine tune the initial research model. Findings from the qualitative method are also used to develop measures and instruments for the next phase of quantitative method. The study includes a survey study with sample of business analysts and decision makers in telecommunications firms and is analyzed by partial least square-based structural equation modeling.

The findings reveal that some internal resources of the organizations such as BI governance and the perceptions of BI’s characteristics influence the successful deployment of BI. Organizations that practice good BI governance with strong moral and financial support from upper management have an opportunity to realize the dream of having successful BI initiatives in place. The scope of BI governance includes providing sufficient support and commitment in BI funding and implementation, laying out proper BI infrastructure and staffing and establishing a corporate-wide policy and procedures regarding BI. The perceptions about the characteristics of BI such as its relative advantage, complexity, compatibility, and observability are also significant in ensuring BI success. The most important results of this study indicated that with BI successfully deployed, executives would use the knowledge provided for their necessary actions in sustaining the organizations’ competitive advantage in terms of economics, social, and environmental issues.

This study contributes significantly to the existing literature that will assist future BI researchers especially in achieving sustainable competitive advantage. In particular, the model will help practitioners to consider the resources that they are likely to consider when deploying BI. Finally, the applications of this study can be extended through further adaptation in other industries and various geographic contexts.

Purpose – First, to look closely and critically at Hayek's treatment of science in The Sensory Order. This provides hints as to the difficulties in maintaining a theory of scientific knowledge as a selective sum of the identifiable contributions of individual scientists. Second, to generalize from Hayek's theory of how the brain generates an individual's knowledge to a theory of how science generates scientific knowledge, knowledge that is not a simple sum of individual contributions. Third, to apply this picture of science to understanding developments in postpositivist philosophy and post-Mertonian sociology of science.

Approach – We provide a short survey of the conventional understanding of science and scientific knowledge, including that of Hayek in The Sensory Order. We examine in more depth the ways in which developments in postpositivist philosophy and sociology have transformed our understanding of science. We describe how, by analogy with Hayek's theory of the brain, science can be seen as an adaptive system that adjusts to its environment by classifying the phenomena in that environment to which it is sensitive, and we apply this systemic picture of science with a view to integrating much of the more moderate content of recent philosophy and sociology of science.

The underpinnings of knowledge management theories is that finding, keeping and leveraging an organization’s information assets are critical to productivity, efficiency of operation and successful competition. Following a brief introduction of the knowledge management systems, this essay examines the corollary relationship between knowledge management and appreciative inquiry, and subsequently points to critical areas in which knowledge management practices can benefit from adopting the appreciative inquiry perspective. More particularly, we submit that appreciative inquiry can motivate organizational-wide adoption and it can provide language-based mechanisms that facilitate effective knowledge exchange. The development of an appreciative inquiry based mode of knowledge management as an alternative to the prevailing approaches opens new horizons and uncovers previously overlooked possibilities, which eventually can contribute to the overall organizational well-being.

This chapter offers a re-description of knowledge organization in light of genre and activity theory. Knowledge organization needs a new description in order to account for those activities and practices constituting and causing concrete knowledge organization activity. Genre and activity theory is put forward as a framework for situating such a re-description.

By means of genre and activity theory, the chapters argues that understanding the genre and activity systems, in which every form of knowledge organization is embedded, makes us capable of seeing how knowledge organization, as a genre, both can be a tool and an object in genred human activities.

In contrast to much research into knowledge organization, this chapter does not emphasize techniques, standards, or rules to be the sole object of study. Instead, an emphasis is put on the genre and activity systems informing and shaping concrete forms of knowledge organization activity. With this, we are able to understand how knowledge organization activity also contributes to construct genre and activity systems and not only aid them.