bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
On Complex Artificial Higher Order Neural Networks
Authors: Wang Zidong , Liu Yurong , Liu Xiaohui
Published: May 2011

This chapter deals with the analysis problem of the global exponential stability for a general class of stochastic artificial higher order neural networks with multiple mixed time delays and Markovian jumping parameters. The mixed time delays under consideration comprise both the discrete time-varying delays and the distributed time-delays. The main purpose of this chapter is to establish easily verifiable conditions under which the delayed high-order stochastic jumping neural network is exponentially stable in the mean square in the presence of both the mixed time delays and Markovian switching. By employing a new Lyapunov-Krasovskii functional and conducting stochastic analysis, a linear matrix inequality (LMI) approach is developed to derive the criteria ensuring the exponential stability. Furthermore, the criteria are dependent on both the discrete time-delay and distributed time-delay, hence less conservative. The proposed criteria can be readily checked by using some standard numerical packages such as the Matlab LMI Toolbox. A simple example is provided to demonstrate the effectiveness and applicability of the proposed testing criteria.
Peer-to-Peer (P2P) Network Security
Authors: Yan Lu
Published: May 2011

A lot of networks today are behind firewalls. In peer-to-peer (P2P) networking, firewall-protected peers may have to communicate with peers outside the firewall. This chapter shows how to design P2P systems to work with different kinds of firewalls within the object-oriented action systems framework by combining formal and informal methods. We present our approach via a case study of extending a Gnutella-like P2P system (Yan & Sere, 2003) to provide connectivity through firewalls.
Key Distribution and Management for Mobile Applications
Authors: Kálmán György , Noll Josef
Published: May 2011

This chapter deals with challenges raised by securing transport, service access, user privacy, and accounting in wireless environments. Key generation, delivery, and revocation possibilities are discussed and recent solutions are shown. Special focus is on efficiency and adaptation to the mobile environment. Device domains in personal area networks and home networks are introduced to provide personal digital rights management (DRM) solutions. The value of smart cards and other security tokens are shown and a secure and convenient transmission method is recommended based on the mobile phone and near-field communication technology.
Security in 2.5G Mobile Systems
Authors: Xenakis Christos
Published: May 2011

The global system for mobile communications (GSM) is the most popular standard that implements second generation (2G) cellular systems. 2G systems combined with general packet radio services (GPRS) are often described as 2.5G, that is, a technology between the 2G and third generation (3G) of mobile systems. GPRS is a service that provides packet radio access for GSM users. This chapter presents the security architecture employed in 2.5G mobile systems focusing on GPRS. More specifically, the security measures applied to protect the mobile users, the radio access network, the fixed part of the network, and the related data of GPRS are presented and analyzed in detail. This analysis reveals the security weaknesses of the applied measures that may lead to the realization of security attacks by adversaries. These attacks threaten network operation and data transfer through it, compromising end users and network security. To defeat the identified risks, current research activities on the GPRS security propose a set of security improvements to the existing GPRS security architecture.
Authentication, Authorization, and Accounting (AAA) Framework in Network Mobility (NEMO) Environments
Authors: Pack Sangheon , Baek Sungmin , Kwon Taekyoung , Choi Yanghee
Published: May 2011

Network mobility (NEMO) enables seamless and ubiquitous Internet access while on-board vehicles. Even though the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) has standardized the NEMO basic support protocol as a network layer mobility solution, little studies have been conducted in the area of authentication, authorization, and accounting (AAA) framework that is a key technology for successful deployment. In this article, we first review the existing AAA protocols and analyze their suitability in NEMO environments. After that, we propose a localized AAA framework to retain the mobility transparency as the NEMO basic support protocol and to reduce the signaling cost incurred in the AAA procedures. The proposed AAA framework supports mutual authentication and prevents various threats such as replay attack, man-in-the-middle attack, and key exposure. Performance analysis on the AAA signaling cost is carried out. Numerical results demonstrate that the proposed AAA framework is efficient under different NEMO environments.
Security and Privacy in Wireless Sensor Networks
Authors: Hamdi Mohamed , Boudriga Noreddine
Published: May 2011

The applications of wireless sensor networks (WSNs) are continuously expanding. Recently, consistent research and development activities have been associated to this field. Security ranks at the top of the issues that should be discussed when deploying a WSN. This is basically due to the fact that WSNs are, by nature, mission-critical. Their applications mainly include battlefield control, emergency response (when a natural disaster occurs), and healthcare. This chapter reviews recent research results in the field of WSN security.
Resilience Against False Data Injection Attack in Wireless Sensor Networks
Authors: Ma Miao
Published: May 2011

One of the severe security threats in wireless sensor network is false data injection attack, that is, the compromised sensors forge the events that do not occur. To defend against false data injection attack, six en-route filtering schemes in a homogeneous sensor network are described. Furthermore, one sink filtering scheme in a heterogeneous sensor network is also presented. We find that deploying heterogeneous nodes in a sensor network is an attractive approach because of its potential to increase network lifetime, reliability, and resiliency.
Access Control in Wireless Local Area Networks
Authors: Hassan Jahan , Landfeldt Björn , Zomaya Albert Y.
Published: May 2011

Wireless local area networks (WLAN) are rapidly becoming a core part of network access. Supporting user mobility, more specifically session continuation in changing network access points, is becoming an integral part of wireless network services. This is because of the popularity of emerging real-time streaming applications that can be commonly used when the user is mobile, such as voice-over-IP and Internet radio. However, mobility introduces a new set of problems in wireless environments because of handoffs between network access points (APs). The IEEE 802.11i security standard imposes an authentication delay long enough to hamper real-time applications. This chapter will provide a comprehensive study on fast authentication solutions found in the literature as well as the industry that address this problem. These proposals focus on solving the mentioned problem for intradomain handoff scenarios where the access points belong to the same administrative domain or provider. Interdomain roaming is also becoming common-place for wireless access. We need fast authentication solutions for these environments that are managed by independent administrative authorities. We detail such a solution that explores the use of local trust relationships to foster fast authentication.
Interoperability Concept Supporting Network Innovation
Authors: Tammela Jari , Salminen Vesa
Published: May 2011

Innovation capability in creating new offering and new business models by distributed communities is becoming more important. Competitive advantage can be achieved by knowledge communities. Increasing share of the innovation process is taking place outside the company. This is due to increasing complexity of products and services containing multiple technologies that are not developed inside the company. Also shortened product life cycle and time to market force companies to focus on their key technologies and looking for partners to cover the supporting technologies. This interdependency organizes companies to the networks where innovation capability success is emerging property of the network. This chapter is focusing on interoperability and providing a concept in order to speed up common innovation of the products and services in open semantic infrastructure. This includes identification of solution boundaries and innovation partners. Operative challenge is how to decompose the requirements across the boundaries of different companies in different branches and in different role in the value and innovation network. There is also challenge on how to manage evolving technologies to satisfy customers’ existing and future expectations.
Effectiveness of Information Technology Governance
Authors: Zhao Fang , McMurray Adela J. , Toomey Mark
Published: May 2011

IT governance is viewed as a managerial innovation, which responds to the needs of strong leadership, strategic direction, and control from the highest level within an organization. In today’s business world, most organizations depend on information technology (IT) for their day-to-day activities and attainment towards their future business strategies. However, despite improved project management, according to KPMG the track record of IT initiatives in many organizations is not strong, and many fail—particularly when measured against the outcomes they were intended to produce. Recent studies have found “an IT attention deficit” at board level, despite calls for directors to consider a wide range of IT matters including governance. This chapter examines practices and frameworks for effective IT governance in industry and business settings. Utilizing a multi-method research approach comprised of survey and interview techniques, 20 board directors’ and senior mangers’ perceptions of IT governance and management were sought and analyzed. The findings show there is a need and opportunity for improvement in IT governance and that in most organizations, Australian Standard AS8015-2005—provides a sound foundation for such improvement.
The Role of Web Sites and E-Commerce in the Development of Global Start-Ups
Authors: Thomas Brychan , Miller Christopher , Packham Gary , Simmons Geoff
Published: May 2011

This chapter introduces the role of Web sites and e-commerce in the development and growth of global higher education start-ups. The extant concepts, research, and experiences the chapter builds on is the literature concerning e-commerce and small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) together with published research on global start-ups. It argues that the key results, evidence, and experience, from the empirical case study research, highlight clear and precise reasons for the development of Web sites and e-commerce by the global start-ups. The limitations of the results are that they report early stage development of Web sites and e-commerce by global start-ups. The authors plan to undertake “follow-up” interviews in future years to develop a longitudinal study. Furthermore, there are important implications of the study for entrepreneurs, policy makers, practitioners, researchers, and educators for the specific field of e-commerce developments for global start-ups.
E-Entrepreneurship
Authors: Kollmann Tobias
Published: May 2011

The fundamental advantages of information technology in regard to efficiency and effectiveness assure that its diffusion in society and in most industries will continue. The constant and rapid development of Internet-related technologies in the accompanying net economy has inevitably had a significant influence on various possibilities for developing innovative online business concepts and realizing these by establishing entrepreneurial ventures. The term “e-entrepreneurship” respectively describes the act of founding new companies that generate revenue and profits independent from a physical value chain. With this in mind, this article focuses on the process of creating electronic customer value within the net economy as well as the success factors and development phases of electronic ventures. Elaborating on these points should help to clearly define the area of e-entrepreneurship and provide evidence that the establishment of electronic ventures is worthy of special consideration in the context of research on information technology entrepreneurship.
Finding and Growing Innovators
Authors: Richards Debbie , Busch Peter
Published: May 2011

Innovation is seen by many organizations as the next frontier to be managed in order to gain a competitive advantage and remain sustainable. Innovation management shares much in common with knowledge management, both being recognized as involving a resource, which resides in individuals, can be valueadded and transferred via (teams of) people, is difficult to capture, is highly contextual, and continually evolving. We believe that innovation is even harder to define, represent, and transfer due to its intrinsic relationship with creativity and novelty generation. Nevertheless, we seek to determine if patterns of behavior do exist which can be used to predict likely future innovative behavior. Current psychometric tests used to test for innovation or creativity often do little more than identify various personality traits or characteristics which can be used to suggest an individual who might be suitable to fill a recognized gap in the organization. We offer an approach, building on our work along psychological lines with tacit knowledge measurement in the ICT domain that seeks to capture responses to real scenarios experienced by recognized innovators and entrepreneurs. These scenarios and responses are used to evaluate the degree to which the respondent can be considered an innovator so that areas of personal or professional development may be identified.
Cybercafé Physical and Electronic Security Issues
Authors: Oyelude Adetoun A. , Bolajoko Adewumi Cecilia O.
Published: May 2011

An overview of physical and electronic security issues in cybercafés in Ibadan city, Nigeria is presented in this chapter. The security measures taken by cybercafé managers for physical and electronic facilities and clients also, were observed in an in-depth study of sixty cybercafés purposively selected for location, popularity, and wide range of services offered, over a period of 2 months. Participatory observation, in-depth interview, and questionnaire methods were adopted, using trained research assistants. Results of the findings showed that cybercafé operators are having a hard time, some folding up due to activities of criminals, and the war against cyber crime can be better tackled if the operators have skilled staff to man the cafés; security measures like passwords that are hard to break, and especially monitor customers who do overnight browsing. Hackers and spammers caught should be handed over to law enforcement agents who will stick to the rule of law.
A Case Study on the Selection and Evaluation of Software for an Internet Organisation
Authors: van Staaden Pieter
Published: May 2011

The author conducted research to determine whether IT managers, IT auditors, users, management, etc. (all decision-makers) use a certain evaluation and selection process to acquire software to meet business objectives and the requirement of users. An argument was used that the more thorough the software evaluation and selection process, the more likely it would be that the organisation will chose software that meets these targets. The main objective of the research was therefore to determine whether Media24 uses evaluation methods and obtains the desired results. The results confirmed that Media24 uses suggested protocol as noted in the theory for software acquisition correctly during most stages.
Cyber Crime Control in Developing Countries' Cybercafés
Authors: Igun Stella E.
Published: May 2011

This chapter discusses the challenges and problems governments and other stakeholders are facing in fighting and controlling cyber crimes in developing countries cybercafés. The chapter’s main focus is on the developing countries vulnerability to cyber crimes; these countries lack major infrastructural devices for controlling cyber crimes at the moment. The nature of cyber crime and Internet in developing countries is pathetic, in that the cyber crime rate is high and transnational (affecting the developing countries all the same) and the developing countries are still very low in Internet connection. Furthermore, the chapter reveals reasons for the increase in the incidences of cyber crimes in developing countries; cyber crime laws that have been enacted to control and tackle the problem of cyber crimes are also highlighted.
Efficient Transport Bindings for Web Service Messages
Authors: Werner Christian , Buschmann Carsten , Jäcker Tobias , Fischer Stefan
Published: May 2011

Although Web service technology is being used in more and more distributed systems, its areas of application are inherently limited by high latencies and high amounts of protocol overhead. For messaging in environments with user interaction, like Web platforms for business or multimedia applications, the response time of the whole system needs to be kept in tight boundaries. In other scenarios comprising mobile communication and battery-powered devices, bandwidth-efficient communication is imperative. In this chapter we address both of these issues. First we conduct a detailed latency analysis of different transport mechanisms for SOAP and then we thoroughly investigate their protocol overhead. For both aspects we present a theoretical analysis as well as experimental measurement results. We then will introduce a new transport binding called PURE that significantly reduces the protocol overhead while featuring low latency. Furthermore it enables interesting additional features such as point-to-multipoint communication via IP multicast and broadcast.
The Impact of Software Testing In Small and Medium Settings
Authors: León-Carrillo Luis Vinicio
Published: May 2011

In the U.S. alone, the cost of faulty software ranges in the tens of billions of dollars per year; the costs of inadequate testing infrastructure are estimated between $22.2 and $59.5 billion, one half paid by the developers and the other half by the users. Albeit the criticality of a good testing process (the inadequacy of which would kill many small enterprises, in particular Latin American ones), many times the testing process is misapplied or not applied at all. We provide here some foundations of the discipline of software testing and present fragments of a variation of a test process used successfully by e-Quallity Corporation (a firm specialized in software testing) in commercial projects, defined formally using a small proprietary process definition language. We present also two case studies of projects with Mexican small and medium enterprises showing concrete economic impacts of the use (and misuse) of this testing process.
The Need for Knowledge Management
Authors: Jennex Murray E.
Published: May 2011

This short chapter explores other motivations for organizations to implement KM. These motivations include obsolescence/innovation (these two go together as innovation leads to obsolescence), work process evolution, and persistence of knowledge. The goal of this discussion is to provide a basis for all organizations to justify KM initiatives that are not just event-based.
Think Social Capital Before You Think Knowledge Transfer
Authors: Sherif Karma , Sherif Ahmed
Published: May 2011

Knowledge transfer has been promoted as a critical and necessary condition for organizations to sustain competitive advantage. In this paper, we argue that successful transfer of knowledge within organizations will depend on the accumulated social capital embedded within organizational social networks. We pose social capital as critical factor for knowledge transfer and hypothesize that the structural, relational and cognitive dimensions of social capital must be developed within an organization for knowledge transfer to impact organizational performance. The study uses data collected from Egypt to test the model. Hofstede’s Cultural Dimensions Model is used to explain how cultural attributes limit the accumulation of social capital and the effectiveness of knowledge transfer in developing countries.
Toward a Receiver-Based Theory of Knowledge Sharing
Authors: Lichtenstein Sharman , Hunter Alexia
Published: May 2011

Managers and researchers alike have sought new ways to address the challenges of sharing dispersed knowledge in modern business environments. Careful consideration by sharers of receivers’ knowledge needs and behaviours may improve the effectiveness of knowledge sharing. This research examines how sharers react to their perceptions of receivers’ knowledge needs and behaviours when making choices relating to sharing knowledge. The focus of this article is to propose and explore a theoretical framework for a study of the role of the receiver in knowledge sharing – receiver-based theory. Data collected from two case studies highlight a key role played by perceived receiver knowledge needs and behaviours in shaping sharer choices when explicit knowledge is shared. A set of receiver influences on knowledge sharing is provided that highlights key receiver and sharer issues. The paper concludes that companies should develop better ways to connect potential sharers with receivers’ real knowledge needs. Further, the findings suggest that sharing on a need-to-know basis hinders change in organisational power structures, and prevents the integration of isolated pockets of knowledge that may yield new value.
A Dialectic on the Cultural and Political Aspects of Information and Knowledge Sharing in Organizations
Authors: Hart Dennis , Warne Leoni
Published: May 2011

This chapter raises issues concerning information and knowledge sharing in organizations and why such sharing is often difficult to achieve. In particular, it compares an organizational cultural analysis with an organizational political one. The authors believe that the issues raised are not only important but are often insufficiently attended to by practitioners who are attempting to build technological information and knowledge management systems. The driver for the chapter is the fact that despite impressive advances in technology, and its now almost ubiquitous presence in organizations many of the benefits originally expected concerning improved information and knowledge sharing have not materialised as was once confidently expected. One of the authors argues a basic reason for this lies in the lack of attention to the cultural foundations of organizations, while the other contends it is more because matters relating to organizational power and political matters are often misunderstood, overlooked or ignored. These different perspectives are discussed and contrasted in order to tease out the important differences between them and assess the prospects for a synthesis. It is concluded that, while there are important commonalities between the two perspectives, there are also fundamental differences, including concerning what are causes and what are effects and, therefore, how to go about effecting change regarding information and knowledge sharing.
Integrating Knowledge Management with Programme Management
Authors: Owen Jill
Published: May 2011

Knowledge reuse has long been an issue for organizations. The management, reuse and transfer of knowledge can improve project management capabilities (i.e. learning, memory, cycle time) resulting in continuous learning. Although knowledge management has been recognized as a critical success factor in program management very little research has been conducted to date (Lycett, Rassau, and Danson 2004, Soderlund 2004). A framework is discussed that demonstrates how knowledge is created, transferred, captured and reused within project and program management, resulting in improved project management maturity. The framework utilises a task based approach to knowledge management and assumes that knowledge is created, transferred and reused as a result of an individual performing a specific task, which in this context is a project at the project level and a program at the program level.
Using Social Networking Analysis to Facilitate Knowledge Sharing Amongst Senior Managers in Multinational Organisations
Authors: Cheuk Bonnie Wai-yi
Published: May 2011

Prior to the establishment of the Knowledge Management (KM) strategy, the British Council defined knowledge as ‘objects’. Knowledge sharing was about sharing documents and information on the intranet or via global databases. Since December 2002, Dervin’s Sense-Making Methodology has been applied to manage ‘knowledge’. Knowledge is seen not as a product that can be transferred from one colleague to another, but as a communication practice. This means that shared knowledge has to be interpreted and made sense of by its recipients through genuine dialogue. During this phase of KM implementation, the focus shifted to linking up colleagues and providing space for dialogue through building global communities of practice and virtual teams. This paper presents an example of how we have used the theory of Social Networking Analysis as a diagnostic tool to promote knowledge sharing amongst our newly formed thirty-people global leadership team. The three steps we have taken to carry out the exercise and its limitations are also discussed. Towards the end of the paper, the author presents an alternative application of social networking analysis in a multinational consulting firm.
Seeds of Knowledge
Authors: Geisler Eliezer
Published: May 2011

What is the basic unit of knowledge? To answer this pesky query means to also reveal what is knowledge and perhaps even what is the structure of knowledge. In such a pursuit we should start with some definitions of types and forms of knowledge, so that we can possibly gain desired common ground. In the previous chapter I discussed the recent focus on propositions and language as descriptors of knowledge. These are active at the level of words, concepts, and even complex notions, such as “belief” and “justification.”
Epistemetrics
Authors: Geisler Eliezer
Published: May 2011

Every nugget of knowledge is relevant and useful. There is no knowledge that can be described as immaterial, irrelevant, unnecessary, or without potential use. Since knowledge advances and grows by means of cumulation, every nugget adds to the pool, like every brick which is an essential component of a wall. The only possible shortcoming of any nugget of knowledge is the extent to which the transactor or user of knowledge is able to cluster it with other nuggets in his possession. The fault in any knowledge not being considered relevant and useful is not in the knowledge itself, but in the transactor or the user (e.g., Card, 2000; Davenport & Volpel, 2001; Patriotta, 2003; Rajan, Lank, & Chapple, 1998).
Scio, Ergo, Omnis
Authors: Geisler Eliezer
Published: May 2011

In this book I brought forth notions and views about the structure and progress of knowledge that are different, perhaps even revolutionary. Such was not my original intention, just an unintended consequence or a resounding side effect of my framework of what constitutes knowledge and how it grows.
Leveraging COBIT 4.0 as IT Governance Framework
Authors: van Grembergen Wim , De Haes Steven
Published: May 2011

For each of the 34 processes the COBIT framework defines control objectives, management guidelines, and a maturity model. Within the COBIT 4.0 publication each process is typically described over four pages: two pages detailing the (high-level and detailed) control objectives, one page describing the management guidelines and one page for the maturity model. The following sections will further explore these different COBIT components.
MNE Knowledge Management Across Borders and ICT
Authors: Brock Ju¨rgen Kai-Uwe , Zhou Yu Josephine
Published: May 2011

Firms are consumers, producers, managers, and distributors of information (Egelhoff, 1991; Casson, 1996) and as such a repository of productive knowledge (Winter, 1988). Consequently the ability to generate, access, and utilize relevant knowledge is an essential organizational activity in order both to reduce uncertainty about the firm’s external environment and improve the efficiency of its internal operations.
Postmortem Reviews
Authors: Dingsoyr Torgeir
Published: May 2011

Postmortem reviews are collective learning activities which can be organized for projects either when they end a phase or are terminated. The main motivation is to reflect on what happened in the project in order to improve future practice—for the individuals that have participated in the project and for the organization as a whole. Projects are the typical way of working in most knowledge-intensive organizations, and postmortems provide a possibility to learn from the projects with little effort, which makes it ideal as an initial knowledge management activity in a company.
Practice-Based Knowledge Integration
Authors: Munkvold Glenn
Published: May 2011

For organisations, the tension between integration and specialisation has become a key issue as the knowledge of work is becoming increasingly fragmented through specialisation (Becker, 2002; Grant, 1996; Kogut & Zander, 1992). Specialisation, as knowing more about less, distributes the overall accomplishment of work on several entities (Aanestad, Mørk, Grisot, Hanseth, & Syvertsen, 2003; Becker; Berg, 1997; Hutchins, 1995) with the consequent need for the integration of different competencies and types of expertise. Becker (p. 3) provides the following definition of knowledge integration:
Work and Knowledge
Authors: Butler Tom , Murphy Ciaran
Published: May 2011

It is widely believed that knowledge work is a relatively new phenomenon and that it constitutes the main form of activity in post-industrial organizations. While the term remains undefined, knowledge work is taken to refer to the knowledge that individuals apply in performing role-related business activities in “knowledge-intensive” organizations. In this scheme of things, the conventional wisdom holds that the subjective knowledge of individual social actors is applied to “objectified” organizational knowledge (i.e., data held in various paper and electronic repositories) as the raw material of the production process. Thus, knowledge is considered to be both an input to, and an output of, business processes: It also is argued to underpin the process by which knowledge inputs are transformed to outputs.
Understanding Innovation Processes
Authors: Newell Sue
Published: May 2011

Knowledge integration is a process whereby several individuals share and combine their information to collectively create new knowledge (Okhuysen & Eisenhardt, 2002). Here we are interested in knowledge integration in the context of innovation project teams tasked with developing a new product or organizational practice. Knowledge integration is crucial in relation to innovation, since innovation depends on the generation of new ideas (new knowledge) that leads to the development of new products or organizational practices. Knowledge integration, rather than simply knowledge per se, is important for innovation because it is not simply the possession of new knowledge that will create success in terms of improved practice or new products, but rather, the ability to integrate knowledge across groups and organizations (Gibbons et al., 1994). This is especially the case in relation to radical innovation, which depends on involvement of an increasingly dispersed range of professional groups and organizations (Powell, Koput, & Smith-Doerr, 1996). For example, in the medical domain there are an increasing number of breakthroughs in scientific and technical knowledge that could drastically change medical practice. Achieving such breakthroughs, however, does not necessarily result in performance improvements in medical practice. Major pharmaceutical companies take, on average, 11 years and a minimum of one-third of $1 billion to bring a drug to market, and over 90% of development processes fail (CMR International, 2000). Similarly, in relation to major transformational IT innovation projects in organizations, many do not just fall short of meeting cost, functionality, and scheduling targets, but actually fail outright (Johnson, 1995).
Biological and Information Systems Approaches
Authors: Atkinson Barry E. , Burstein Frada
Published: May 2011

Knowledge of past activities, discoveries, and events is applied by businesses to support everyday operations in much the same manner that human beings use their personal memories. But the true nature of organizational memory (OM) remains obscure, and information-systems practitioners have no clear definitional model of what they are working toward and have been unable to build a convincing organizational memory system (Olfman, 1998).
Supporting Research and Development Processes Using Knowledge Management Methods
Authors: Hahn Thomas , Schmiedinger Bernhard , Stephan Elisabeth
Published: May 2011

This chapter shows the integration of formal and informal knowledge and information exchange methodologies for an integrative product development process. It describes in detail how to transfer knowledge between organizational-related units to allow a smooth transition of development projects. Based on communities and information technology support, the concept offers a substantial way to bridge communication gaps to increase efficiency. Furthermore the authors hope that this chapter increases understanding of existing problems in manufacturing companies and enables practitioners to find a basic idea of how to solve their own challenges.
E-mail and Knowledge Creation
Authors: Lichtenstein Sharman , Parker Craig M. , Cybulski Margaret
Published: May 2011

The real promise of organizational communication technologies may lie in their potential to facilitate participative discourse between knowledge workers at all levels in distributed locations and time zones. Such discourse enables the exchange of sometimes conflicting viewpoints through which resolution and symbiosis, organizational knowledge can be built. This chapter presents a case study of a Singerian inquiring organization which illustrates how a fluid dynamic community of employees can use email to build knowledge, learn, make decisions, and enhance wisdom through a cycle of knowledge combination (divergence) and knowledge qualification (convergence). The chapter offers new theoretical perspectives on the enhancement of wisdom in inquiring organizations and provides practical insights into the use of email for supporting effective knowledge creation in inquiring organizations.
Developing and Maintaining Knowledge Management Systems for Dynamic, Complex Domains
Authors: Burnell Lisa J. , Priest John W. , Durrett John R.
Published: May 2011

An effective knowledge-based organization is one that correctly captures, shares, applies and maintains its knowledge resources to achieve its goals. Knowledge Management Systems (KMS) enable such resources and business processes to be automated and are especially important for environments with dynamic and complex domains. This chapter discusses the appropriate tools, methods, architectural issues and development processes for KMS, including the application of Organizational Theory, knowledge-representation methods and agent architectures. Details for systems development of KMS are provided and illustrated with a case study from the domain of university advising.
User Modelling and Personalisation of Knowledge Management Systems
Authors: Razmerita Liana
Published: May 2011

This chapter focuses on the role of user models and user modelling for enhanced, personalised user support within knowledge management systems (KMSs). Personalisation can bring a utility function as well as a conviviality function with “high touch” impact for the users. From this utility and conviviality perspective, various personalised services enable KMSs to adapt their functionality, structure, and content to match the needs and preferences of users based on a user model that is stored and updated dynamically. The chapter presents a set of examples, different types of adaptations and personalised services specific to KMSs.
Communication Security Technologies in Smart Organizations
Authors: Phan Raphael C.W.
Published: May 2011

In this chapter, we discuss the security technologies that are important in guaranteeing the good quality of communication within smart organizations. We first briefly review the various forms of communication that can be used in the current information age, before outlining the possible threats that can be faced in each communication medium. We then describe the relevant security technologies that help to protect communication media from common threats, as well as the security tools available in the market that implement these technologies. The topics discussed in this chapter would serve to educate the smart organizations towards securing their various means of communication, which is vital for a business establishment to exist and coexist with peers and partners.
Knowledge Visualization
Authors: Eppler Martin J. , Burkhard Remo A.
Published: May 2011

Making knowledge visible so that it can be better accessed, discussed, valued, or generally managed is a longstanding objective in knowledge management (see Sparrow, 1998). Knowledge maps, knowledge cartographies, or knowledge landscapes are often heard terms that are nevertheless rarely defined, described, or demonstrated. In this article, we review the state of the art in the area of knowledge visualization, and describe its background and perspectives. We define the concept and differentiate it from other approaches, such as information visualization or visual communication. Core knowledge visualization types, such as conceptual diagrams or visual metaphors, are distinguished, and examples of their application in business are shown and discussed. Implications for research and practice are summarized, and future trends in this domain are outlined.
Identifying Knowledge Flows in Communities of Practice
Authors: Rodriguez-Elias Oscar M. , Martinez-Garcia Ana I. , Vizcaino Aurora , Favela Jesu´s , Piattini Mario
Published: May 2011

Knowledge sharing is a collective process where the people involved collaborate with others in order to learn from them (Huysman & de Wit, 2000). This kind of collaboration creates groups of people with common interest called communities of practice where each member contributes knowledge about a common domain (Wenger, 1998). Communities of practice enable its members to benefit from the knowledge of each other (Fontaine & Millen, 2004). To achieve this, different techniques and technologies can be used, such as shared documentation, groupware tools, lessons learned systems, and so forth. Therefore, to increase and improve knowledge sharing in communities of practice, it is important to study the mechanisms used by a particular community and understand how the knowledge flows through its members (Guizzardi, Perini & Dignum, 2003). This article presents a qualitative approach for studying and understanding how knowledge flows in communities of practice within organizations. The goal is to provide a methodological guide for obtaining useful information for the development of knowledge management tools for supporting knowledge flows in these communities. The content of the article is organized as follows. First the importance of supporting knowledge flows in communities of practice is highlighted. Then, a qualitative methodology for identifying knowledge flows in communities of practice is described, followed by some examples from a study conducted in the field of software maintenance. Finally, we present our conclusions of this work and future research.
Knowledge Management Agents
Authors: Sterling Leon
Published: May 2011

The agent has existed as a concept for thousands of years. In the human context, an agent is a person that performs some task on your behalf, for example, a travel agent planning flights and accommodation for your holiday, or a real-estate agent helping you buy or sell a house, or someone arranging marriages. Some Biblical laws specifically refer to agents.
Use and Methods of Social Network Analysis in Knowledge Management
Authors: Muller-Prothmann Tobias
Published: May 2011

Whilst the primary importance of informal communities of practice and knowledge networks in innovation and knowledge management is widely accepted (see Armbrecht et al., 2001; Brown & Duguid, 1991; Collinson & Gregson, 2003; Jain & Triandis, 1990; Lesser, 2001; Liyanage, Greenfied & Don, 1999; Nahapiet & Ghoshal, 1998; Nohria & Eccles, 1992; Wenger, 1999; Zanfei, 2000), there is less agreement on the most appropriate method for their empirical study and theoretical analysis. In this article it is argued that social network analysis (SNA) is a highly effective tool for the analysis of knowledge networks, as well as for the identification and implementation of practical methods in knowledge management and innovation. Social network analysis is a sociological method to undertake empirical analysis of the structural patterns of social relationships in networks (see, e.g., Scott, 1991; Wasserman & Faust, 1994; Wellman & Berkowitz, 1988). This article aims at demonstrating how it can be used to identify, visualize, and analyze the informal personal networks that exist within and between organizations according to structure, content, and context of knowledge flows. It will explore the benefits of social network analysis as a strategic tool on the example of expert localization and knowledge transfer, and also point to the limits of the method.
Knowledge Management Within Collaboration Processes
Authors: Cai Jian
Published: May 2011

Collaborative projects are relatively complex and, hence, are difficult to handle. Managing distributed knowledge among stakeholders in a systematic way is crucial to improving the collaboration productivity. This article provides a generic modeling approach that explicitly represents the perspectives of stakeholders and their evolution traversing a collaborative process. This approach provides a mechanism to analytically identify the interdependencies among stakeholders and to detect conflicts and reveal their intricate causes and effects. Collaboration is thus improved through efficient knowledge management. This article also introduces a Web-based information system that uses the perspective model and the social network analysis methodology to support knowledge management within collaboration.
Discovering Implicit Knowledge from Data Warehouses
Authors: Owrang O. M. Mehdi
Published: May 2011

Today, every corporation faces the problem of how to acquire, store, and share information. Knowledge management (KM) has been introduced to accomplish these tasks (Adams, 2004; Barquin, 2000; Frappaolo & Wilson, 2004). Fundamental to KM is the realization that knowledge exists in two basic forms: explicit and tacit (Adams, 2004; Barquin, 2000; Frappaolo & Wilson, 2004; Orr, 2004). Organizations have data, in the form of operational databases and/or data warehouses, which contain implicit knowledge. Some knowledge believed to be tacit (experiential and intuitive) can be transformed into explicit knowledge. Getting to implicit knowledge requires taking a look at tacit knowledge resources (i.e., domain experts or data warehouses) to determine whether that knowledge could be codified if it were subjected to some type of mining and translation process. Then, it requires implementing that mining/translation process. The majority of an organization’s knowledge is presumed to be tacit. Yet, the majority of the KM applications seem to focus on the explicit knowledge base: working on existing corporate knowledge or making individuals more effective at sharing explicit knowledge (Frappaolo & Wilson, 2004). Efforts have been put in creating an organized explicit knowledge repository, called data warehousing (Bischoff & Alexander, 1997) that is continuously fed and leveraged. Knowledge management is not truly possible without data warehousing (Barquin, 2000). It is the real-time access to an enterprise’s integrated data stores through data warehousing that complements an individual’s tacit knowledge of how something is done. Knowledge discovery is defined as the nontrivial extraction of implicit, previously unknown, and potentially useful information from data (Adriaans & Zantinge, 1996; Agrawal, Imielinski & Swami, 1993; Brachman et al., 1996; Fayyad, 1996; Inmon, 1996). The automatic knowledge acquisition in a nondata warehouse environment has been on the operational databases which contain the most recent data about the organizations. Summary and historical data, which are essential for accurate and complete knowledge discovery, are generally absent in the operational databases. A data warehouse is an ideal environment for rule discovery since it contains the cleaned, integrated, detailed, summarized, historical, and metadata (Bischoff & Alexander, 1997; Inmon, 1996; Meredith & Khader, 1996; Parsaye, 1996). In this article, we are looking at the discovery of implicit knowledge from the data warehouses. Most of the success of knowledge discovery resides in the ability of the system to elicit the right level of detail as well as accuracy from the data warehouse which has the implicit data. We look at the knowledge discovery process on detailed, summary, and historical data. Also, we show how the discovered knowledge from these data sources can complement and validate each other.
IT-Based Project Knowledge Management
Authors: Leseure Michel J. , Brookes Naomi J.
Published: May 2011

This chapter presents IT solutions supporting knowledge management initiatives within project organizations. The first section describes the background of the problem, that is the difficulty of managing knowledge in project-based organizations. The second section presents a model of knowledge management as the activity of managing compromises on a number of dimensions, and uses this model to present IT solutions for project knowledge management. The last section discusses future trends and key challenges and focuses on knowledge representation.
Knowledge Management and the Leading Information Systems Journals
Authors: Peachey Todd , Hall Dianne J. , Cegielski Casey
Published: May 2011

Knowledge management (KM) is maturing as a research topic, although there is still debate among researchers over what constructs form its basis. Because the topic has received increasing attention in academic journals, it is important for researchers to be aware of the research streams associated with KM. Accordingly, this paper reviews KM literature published in top-tier journals from 2000 to 2004. These articles are then classified into five constructs from two knowledge management frameworks. The results indicate that the majority of KM research has examined the construct of knowledge transfer. This conclusion holds whether examining academic or practitioner journals. Trends of published KM research, gaps, and imbalances in the examined literature and areas of potential research are presented.