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Despite the fact that schools should be places where learning occurs, most schools have overlooked the importance of knowledge. In contrast, commercial firms have recognized knowledge as a strategic intangible asset and a key resource of the enterprises. Therefore, enterprises have already harnessed knowledge to a great extent with wide practice of knowledge management (KM). The purpose of this paper is to show that KM could be applied to the education sector similar to the practice in the business world for leveraging intellectual assets. This paper examines how schools can kick off the process of KM implementation. This paper also reports what have been done and what should be done in KM implementation better in a school. This can give insights for schools which will try KM in near future.

The paper uses a case study in a secondary school to explore how KM can be kicked off and sustained in a school setting. A KM system called knowledge base and a document management system called Digital Archive were developed to serve as the infrastructure for knowledge sharing. Lesson study and communities of practice (CoPs) were adopted to be the platforms for knowledge sharing among teachers in the school. A case study of the processes and lesson learned was done in this paper. Multiple sources of data, including observations, questionnaires and interviews, have been collected for evaluation.

In this paper, KM implementation was found to be effective through dual approaches: information-based and people-/interaction-based approaches. A knowledge base and a Digital Archive as knowledge repositories and lesson study and CoPs as platforms for knowledge sharing have been successfully established to facilitate sharing information/knowledge and nurturing a sharing culture and trust. Challenges faced and the related coping strategies during the process of implementation were shared and reflected. It was also found that building sharing culture is the critical turning point of the process of KM implementation. Breaking through the barrier of sharing was found to be very essential to KM implementation.

This paper adopts case study methodology to report the process of KM implementation in a school. Although these results of the study conducted in one school may not be generalized to other school contexts, the lessons learned in the study will be a strong empirical evidence of research of KM implementation, especially in schools. Because of the limited number of prior studies and the importance of the pioneering work of launching KM implementation, this paper tries to address the research gap by using theory building from cases as a research strategy rather than theory testing research, especially in “how”and“why” in the steps of kicking off KM implementation in an unexplored research area.

This paper shows a case of KM implementation in a school with thoughtful procedures of implementing information-based and people-/interaction-based approaches. The paper is a showcase that will shed light on the processes and lessons learned and also helps to provide a model for schools who are interested in applying KM in their schools.

Most people might think that KM can be applied only in commercial sector. This paper shows that KM can also be adopted in schools as well as other sectors.

This paper represents one of the pioneering work of implementing KM in a school. It hopes to make contributions for KM implementation also in the public sector within which are non-profit-making organizations.

This paper aims to explore the influence of a principal’s leadership in kicking off knowledge management (KM) implementation and the following KM processes in the school. The author tries to propose a model of knowledge leadership for principals to adopt at the beginning of KM journey and during the process of KM implementation. The paper shares the lessons learned during the process of implementation: what he has done and what should be improved. Thus, this paper can provide a model for school principals to implement KM in their schools. This paper also sheds light for KM researchers about the issue of leadership during KM implementation.

The study uses an action research (AR) to explore how the principal’s leadership can enhance KM implementation in a school environment and evaluates the effectiveness of the knowledge leadership framework for KM implementation in a school setting. An insider AR methodology was adopted to study and reflect on the processes of KM implementation and lessons learned. Multiple data sources, including observations, questionnaires and interviews, have been collected for evaluation.

In this study, the principal kicked off KM in the school. It was found that KM “cannot” be implemented without the principal’s effective knowledge leadership. If there was only little KM leadership, such as the leadership in Stage 1, the launching of KM was found to be difficult. After awareness of the need of strengthening leadership in Stage 2, the principal exercised stronger leadership in pushing the KM process further, and the school had more obvious KM outcomes. Therefore, this study proves that leadership is essential for KM implementation, especially at the beginning of the KM processes. The principal acted as the knowledge leader with the roles of the knowledge vision builder, knowledge enabler builder and knowledge role model. The roles of knowledge leadership are found to be potent and critical for the process of KM implementation to facilitate sharing information/knowledge and nurturing a sharing culture and trust. In this study, the principal kicked off KM in the school. It was found that KM “cannot” be implemented without the principal’s effective knowledge leadership. If there was only little KM leadership, such as the leadership in Stage 1, launching KM was found to be difficult. After awareness of the need of strengthening leadership in Stage 2, the principal exercised stronger leadership in pushing the KM process further, and the school had more obvious KM outcomes. Therefore, this study proves that leadership is essential for KM implementation, especially at the beginning of the KM processes. The principal acted as the knowledge leader with the roles of knowledge vision builder, knowledge enabler builder and knowledge role model. The roles of knowledge leadership are found to be potent and critical for the process of KM implementation to facilitate sharing information/knowledge and nurturing a sharing culture and trust.

Although the results of the study conducted in one school may not be generalized to other school contexts, the lessons learned in the study might be a reference to other schools for their future development. Because of his unique position as the principal in the researched school, the researcher adopted an insider approach generating value for investigation of KM implementation in this study, as there were multiple mediating processes through which leaders could influence school functioning, and, hence, knowledge sharing or other issues in KM implementation.

This study could contribute toward KM implementation in the public sector, especially in schools. Moreover, the approaches, the strategies, the processes and the challenges the principal and the school faced can shed light on practice and research for further KM implementation. In addition, although leadership has been commonly regarded as an important factor in KM implementation, few studies have explored the impact of leadership during the KM process. With the principal’s leadership as the main component, this study is important for an analysis of the role of leadership during the process. The framework of knowledge leadership adopted in this study has been tried and evaluated to be applicable and necessary for KM implementation in a school environment.

Most people might think that KM can be applied only in the commercial sector. This study shows that KM can also be adopted in schools and in other sectors. Moreover, it shows that the principal’s leadership was the key driver for KM implementation. The principal’s leadership with clear direction and thoughtful procedures of implementing may be a showcase for the leaders in other sectors.

Fullan (2002) mentions the essence of KM in schools, the importance of principals’ leadership in the promotion of KM in schools, the moral purpose and knowledge sharing and leadership and sustainability, but he does not provide any practical suggestion for how principals can become knowledge leaders. Therefore, this paper hopes to further propose a model to show how to help a principal transform into a knowledge leader to overcome barriers and difficulties in kicking off KM at the beginning of their KM journey and during the process of KM implementation.

This research aims to grasp hotel guests' motives and potential benefits sought when interacting with other guests, service personnel and residents and examines how these benefits can contribute to the total guest experience.

Mixed methods are adopted for the purpose of this study comprising individual interviews and a questionnaire survey.

Five groups of advantages emerge from individual interviews, including friendliness in interaction, social benefits, information acquisition, curiosity gratification and hospitality services. In the survey, which gathers 326 questionnaires, this study reveals that the five types of benefits derived from hotel guests' interactions could be further categorized into two dimensions: civility (e.g. friendliness and social) and utility (e.g. information, curiosity and service). The study confirms that four out of five potential or expected benefits from this personal interaction is significantly associated with the total hotel experience.

Respondents of this study are culturally homogenous; as a result, multi-cultural settings should be considered for future research.

Tourism and hospitality literature on people's interaction is mostly center around social aspects of interaction. The current study comprehensively explores all expected utilities of interaction, occurring in all sorts of interactions (e.g. customer-to-resident and customer-to-service personnel). Specifically, the findings of this study uncover the underlying factors which prompt the tourists to interact with other people in a lodging setting and examine the relative importance of those underlying factors to the total lodging experiences.

The purpose of this paper is to examine trust relationships in managing construction projects to determine the trust situations, the psychological perception of trust relationship, and the underlying value of trust. Association is made to project management, project team and strategy implementation for managing construction projects.

A case study approach is adopted to collect qualitative data from ten projects. The collected data are analysed with content analysis and discussed with a flow model and interactive model approach.

Using the real‐life evidence, the findings revealed a diversified meaning of trust, which subsequently confirm the multi‐faceted nature of trust with qualitative data analysis.

Further research is necessary for multi‐party working as this working style dominates the construction industry and greatly affects the overall project performance, and the effect of such is particularly obvious when managing differences among people. For a better understanding of trust, the moral and social dimensions of trust need to be studied separately.

The study offers a direction for implementation of relational contracting in project management, project teamwork and strategy implementation. Implications in practice include: project management – time, cost and quality are greatly affected by people implementation and therefore a balance of control and trust is required; project team – trust needs to be cultivated with rules and norms in a multi‐party working team because trust is not self‐generated; and strategy implementation – both interpersonal and inter‐firm trust have to be considered, particularly at the middle management level.

The paper is of value to both practitioners and academics/researchers in the management development of construction projects by providing a different perspective from the human side.

This study aims to evaluate casino-hotel visitors’ tourism experiences which consist of multiple dimensions, and test their joint effects on visitors’ positive emotions and satisfaction. The findings are expected to reveal how multi-dimensional tourism experiences could shape visitors’ positive emotions, and empirically support positive emotions as the mediator between tourism experiences and satisfaction in the context of casino hotels.

A quantitative survey was conducted for this study. In all, 500 valid questionnaires were collected at four major casino hotels in Macao. Respondents were Chinese tourists who visited casino hotels in June. A structural model was developed and tested to understand the relationships between multi-dimensional tourism experiences, positive emotions and satisfaction.

Positive emotions were identified as “light pleasure” and “intense fun” emotions based on the context-specific measurement of casino hotels. The “light pleasure” emotions were found to be more effective in influencing respondents’ satisfaction than “intense fun” emotions. Different dimensions of tourism experiences were found to have different levels of impact on respondents’ positive emotions. The findings revealed how multi-dimensional tourism experiences influenced respondents’ positive emotions which in turn determined their satisfaction.

The findings advanced the understanding of the relationships between tourism experiences, positive emotions and satisfaction in the context of casino hotels. The two types of positive emotions identified in the study add values to the literature of casino-hotel visitors and emotional experiences. This study suggests a further investigation into the scope and measurement of each dimension of tourism experiences in different tourism settings in future research. The findings provided some practical suggestions for the management of positive emotions and tourism experiences in casino hotels.