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1 – 10 of over 157000Mohammad Hossein Jarrahi, Rebecca Reynolds and Ali Eshraghi
Personal knowledge management (KM) lends new emphasis to ways through which individual knowledge workers engage with knowledge in organizational contexts. This paper aims to go…
Abstract
Purpose
Personal knowledge management (KM) lends new emphasis to ways through which individual knowledge workers engage with knowledge in organizational contexts. This paper aims to go beyond an organizational approach to KM to examine key personal KM and knowledge building (KB) practices among adult professionals.
Design/methodology/approach
This paper presents a summary of the findings from interviews with 58 consultants from 17 managing consulting firms. Participants were selected based on their knowledge-intensive roles and their willingness to share information about their knowledge practices. Data analysis was inductive and revealed multiple personal KM activities common among research participants, and the way these are supported by informal ties and various technologies.
Findings
This work highlights ways in which “shadow information technology” undergirds personal knowledge infrastructures and supports KM and KB practices in the context of management consulting firms. The results uncover how personal knowledge infrastructures emerge from personal KM and KB practices, and the role of informal social networks as well as social media in supporting personal KM and KB.
Research limitations/implications
This study contributes an overall conceptual model of factors that help knowledge workers build a personal knowledge infrastructure. By affording an understanding of socially embedded personal KM activities, this work helps organizations create a balance between KM strategies at the organizational level and personal knowledge goals of individual workers.
Originality/value
Much of the previous research on KM adopts organizational approaches to KM, accentuating how organizations can effectively capture, organize and distribute organizational knowledge (primarily through KM systems).
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Muhammad Shujahat, Minhong Wang, Murad Ali, Anum Bibi, Shahid Razzaq and Susanne Durst
The high turnover rate of knowledge workers presents a challenge to both organizational and personal knowledge management. Although personal knowledge management plays an…
Abstract
Purpose
The high turnover rate of knowledge workers presents a challenge to both organizational and personal knowledge management. Although personal knowledge management plays an important role in organizational knowledge management, empirical research on the practices for its application is underdeveloped. This study aims to examine the role of idiosyncratic job-design practices (i.e. job definition, job autonomy, innovation as a job requirement and lifelong learning orientation) in cultivating personal knowledge management among knowledge workers in organizations, to increase their productivity and safeguard the organization against knowledge loss arising from knowledge workers’ interfirm mobility.
Design/methodology/approach
Data were collected from 221 knowledge workers pursuing various knowledge-intensive jobs through a questionnaire survey and were analysed using partial least squares modelling.
Findings
The results demonstrated that three job-design practices (job definition, innovation as a job requirement and lifelong learning orientation) have a positive impact on personal knowledge management among knowledge workers and thus improve their productivity. However, job autonomy can affect personal knowledge management negatively.
Research limitations/implications
The findings are confined to a specific context and should be replicated across different contexts for better generalizability in future research.
Practical implications
Organizational managers should pay attention to (re)designing knowledge-intensive jobs to cultivate personal knowledge management by clearly outlining job responsibilities, offering opportunities to add relevant job activities and drop irrelevant ones, and making innovation and lifelong learning a formal job requirement. In addition, job autonomy should be judiciously provided along with sufficient social and network support to avoid lost opportunities in knowledge creation and sharing, and should be linked to job responsibilities and performance appraisals to avoid negative effects.
Originality/value
The high turnover rate of knowledge workers presents a challenge to both organizational and personal knowledge management. This study contributes to the literature by addressing the research gap in two aspects. Firstly, based on Drucker’s theory, this study identifies four idiosyncratic job-design practices (job definition, job autonomy, innovation as a job requirement and lifelong learning orientation) that reflect the distinctive characteristics of knowledge-intensive work. Secondly, this study examines whether and how these practices can cultivate personal knowledge management among knowledge workers, which can support their productivity.
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Teachers develop and use a special kind of knowledge. This knowledge is neither theoretical, in the sense of theories of learning, teaching, and curriculum, nor merely practical…
Abstract
Teachers develop and use a special kind of knowledge. This knowledge is neither theoretical, in the sense of theories of learning, teaching, and curriculum, nor merely practical, in the sense of knowing children. If either of these were the essential ingredient of what teachers know, then it would be easy to see that others have a better knowledge of both; academics with better knowledge of the theoretical and parents and others with better knowledge of the practical. A teacher’s special knowledge is composed of both kinds of knowledge, blended by the personal background and characteristics of the teacher, and expressed by her in particular situations. The idea of “image” is one form of personal practical knowledge, the name given to this special practical knowledge of teachers (Clandinin, 1985; Connelly & Dienes, 1982). In this chapter I show how one teacher’s image of the “classroom as home” embodies her personal and professional experience and how, in turn, the image is expressed in her classroom practices and in her practices in her personal life. Using a variety of classroom episodes gathered over two years with two teachers, I offer a theoretical outline of the experiential dimensions of an image and, in so doing, present image as a knowledge term which resides at the nexus of the theoretical, the practical, the objective, and the subjective.
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Aare Värk and Anne Reino
This paper aims to explore the coexistence of formal, informal and personal knowledge management (KM) practices as they support employees' everyday work in organizations.
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to explore the coexistence of formal, informal and personal knowledge management (KM) practices as they support employees' everyday work in organizations.
Design/methodology/approach
Qualitative study involving 12 in-depth interviews and 30 hours of observations in a small, quickly growing, knowledge-intensive company.
Findings
Formal, informal and personal KM practices were all found to be relevant and interconnected in supporting everyday work in the organization. This suggests a shift from understanding KM as an organizational approach to ecology, shaped by multiple actors and concerns and extending over the formal/informal as well as organizational/personal divides. Interrelationships between formal, informal and personal KM practices took various forms. Among each of these KM categories were practices that contributed in a unique way, without having a functional parallel in other categories. Some KM practices had a strong functional overlap and were competing. Moreover, some formal, informal and personal KM practices formed complementary relationships.
Research limitations/implications
Findings are based on fieldwork in only one organization.
Practical implications
Organizations would benefit from the formal, informal and personal KM practices being complementarily connected. As these connections are sustained by employees in everyday work, effective management of KM ecology needs a collective and distributed effort.
Originality/value
This paper is one of the very few empirical accounts that problematizes the coexistence of formal, informal and personal KM practices and suggests a practice-ecology perspective through which their interrelationships could be studied.
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Chunxiu Qin, Pengwei Zhao, Jian Mou and Jin Zhang
Browsing knowledge documents in a peer-to-peer (P2P) environment is difficult because knowledge documents in such an environment are large in quantity and distributed over…
Abstract
Purpose
Browsing knowledge documents in a peer-to-peer (P2P) environment is difficult because knowledge documents in such an environment are large in quantity and distributed over different peers who organize the documents according to their own views. This paper aims to propose a method for constructing a personal knowledge map for a peer to facilitate knowledge browsing and alleviate information overload in P2P environments.
Design/methodology/approach
The research presents a method for constructing a personal knowledge map. The method adopts an ontology-concept-tree-based classification algorithm to recognize a peer’s personal knowledge structure and construct a personal knowledge map, and uses a self-organizing map algorithm to cluster and visualize the knowledge documents. The correctness of the created knowledge map is evaluated with a collection of abstracts of academic papers.
Findings
The method for constructing a personal knowledge map is the main finding of this research. The evaluation shows that the created knowledge map is good in quality.
Research limitations/implications
The proposed method provides a way for P2P platforms to understand their users’ knowledge background, as well as to improve the P2P platform environment. However, the proposed method will not help a peer when he has nothing in his individual knowledge document repository (i.e. the “cold start” problem). The method also requires a relatively good ontology base for a P2P document sharing system to use the method effectively.
Originality/value
It is novel that the proposed method organizes the knowledge documents related to a peer’s knowledge background into a personal knowledge map. Moreover, the created knowledge map combines the advantages of a hierarchical display and a map display. It has values for a distributed P2P environment to facilitate users’ knowledge browsing and to alleviate information overload.
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Nosheen Sarwat and Muhammad Abbas
The purpose of this study was to understand the effects of creative self-efficacy and affective personal commitment on individuals' knowledge creation and innovative work…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this study was to understand the effects of creative self-efficacy and affective personal commitment on individuals' knowledge creation and innovative work behaviors.
Design/methodology/approach
This study used a time-lagged field survey to collect data from a diverse sample across various organizations in Pakistan (N = 249 paired responses). Main and mediating effects were tested using bootstrapping technique.
Findings
The results revealed that affective personal commitment and creative self-efficacy significantly predicted supervisory-rated innovative performance directly and indirectly through knowledge creation ability (KCA).
Originality/value
The study uniquely contributed to the body of knowledge by developing and validating scales for KCA and affective personal commitment. In addition, the study contributed to the body of knowledge by examining the antecedents and outcomes of KCA.
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Liana Razmerita, Kathrin Kirchner and Frantisek Sudzina
The purpose of this paper is to discuss new approaches for managing personal knowledge in the Web 2.0 era. The paper questions whether Web 2.0 technologies (social software) are a…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to discuss new approaches for managing personal knowledge in the Web 2.0 era. The paper questions whether Web 2.0 technologies (social software) are a real panacea for the challenges associated with the management of knowledge. Can Web 2.0 reconcile the conflicting interests of managing organisational knowledge with personal objectives? Does Web 2.0 enable a more effective way of sharing and managing knowledge at the personal level?
Design/methodology/approach
Theoretically deductive with illustrative examples.
Findings
Web 2.0 plays a multifaceted role for communicating, collaborating, sharing and managing knowledge. Web 2.0 enables a new model of personal knowledge management (PKM) that includes formal and informal communication, collaboration and social networking tools. This new PKM model facilitates interaction, collaboration and knowledge exchanges on the web and in organisations.
Practical implications
Based on these findings, professionals and scholars will gain a better understanding of the potential role of Web 2.0 technologies for harnessing and managing personal knowledge. The paper provides concrete examples of how Web 2.0 tools are currently used in organisations.
Originality/value
As Web 2.0 has become integrated in our day‐to‐day activities, there is a need to further understand the relationship between Web 2.0 and PKM.
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Ilona Toth, Sanna Heinänen and Anna-Maija Nisula
The purpose of this paper is to investigate the impact of personal resources on knowledge workers’ job engagement in the contemporary economy. Work itself and work environments…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to investigate the impact of personal resources on knowledge workers’ job engagement in the contemporary economy. Work itself and work environments are currently undergoing fundamental changes. As such, the focus of engagement research is shifting to an interest in personal resources and the psychological capital of knowledge workers.
Design/methodology/approach
This paper proposes a theoretical model based on a modern interpretation of the conservation of resources theory concerning the relationship between personal resources (self-efficacy, organization-based self-esteem and satisfaction with life) in relation to the three dimensions of job engagement (physical, emotional and cognitive). The proposed model is tested with structural equation modelling (LISREL).
Findings
The results from the analysis of data collected from Finnish university graduates (N = 103) show that the three dimensions of job engagement are strongly influenced by organization-based self-esteem and satisfaction with life but, surprisingly, not by self-efficacy.
Practical implications
Through understanding the impact of personal resources on knowledge workers’ job engagement, organizations can enhance their human relations management practices and develop better support mechanisms for their knowledge workers.
Originality/value
This paper provides empirical evidence for the influence of personal resources on knowledge workers’ job engagement. There is a lack of empirical studies on knowledge workers’ job engagement in the contemporary economy. The changing nature of the way work is being carried out in the contemporary economy raises the importance of personal resources as a key resource for knowledge workers’ job engagement.
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